Android

Honestly, with Apple making it incredibly fucking hard to take out their batteries with excessive amounts of glue, I'm okay with this.

Fingers crossed that this will be implemented well, im tired of having sleek electronics be irrelevant in 2 years when the silicon could go for 5 or six

Hooray! Younger generations will finally be able to experience the joy of dropping their phone and having to pick up three to four different pieces! /s

(I'm all for this change, by the way)

Phones are getting more expensive so people are holding on to them longer, so it's a nice quality of life improvement to remove the barriers to battery replacement so less people have to go down to a phone repair store to get it changed. The more of a hassle battery replacement is seen the more likely people are to just upgrade and create e-waste.

I actually love all these regulations on smartphones (mainly by the EU), like the recent USB-C standard. That one in particular makes it so much easier to share chargers around the house!

Excellent! Batteries in modern phones are surprisingly definitely removable and replaceable. I've done it multiple times. However, the unfriendly barrier to entry is glue and clips that require careful prying with spugers. It's quite clear manufacturers are happy blocking you getting in; plenty people just buy new phones when the battery gets too old.

If this goes through, I think it would be really good news. Battery failure is one of the leading things that force people to replace their smartphones, and having them be replaceable would go a long way towards making smartphones last longer.

Do y'all remember the days when you dropped your phone and it exploded into 3 or 4 pieces? 🤣 Those were the good days.

right to repair LETS GOOO

This is actually pretty crazy. Wonder how much it'll affect the overall design of modern smartphones. Will we witness the return of flagships with plastic back covers?

This is awesome. Thank god for EU legislation that directly benefits me as an American consumer. Now I can microwave lithium ion batteries in peace!

Here's hope to standardized USB-C connector charging will also happen outside of Europe for the rest of the world.

another EU win!!!

I do miss being able to swap out a phone battery and this will certainly be a step in the right direction in terms ewaste and device longevity.

One thing that I wonder about is waterproofing or water resistance. Some phones are basically waterproof in shallow water. How achievable is this with a device with a trivial way to remove the battery?

Misleading title. Phones can still be glued. Waterproof phones still don't need to have a user replaceable battery (the battery needs to be replaceable but by professionals).

Although this is obviously a step in the right direction it needs to be followed up with security updates, no point increasing the life of the hardware without doing the same for the software.

This is very neat! I wonder how this is going to impact almost all phones these days having some sort of ingress protection. They glue the phones together to keep the water out, it would still be nice to have the option for water-resistant phones, but the manufacturers just gonna have to figure it out

Good, it's a small victory but one step closer to a society that doesn't create waste just to buy the next new shiny toy. Products should be build to last, be easily repairable and create as little waste as possible (which isn't possible in a system that demands unlimited growth over anything else). If we want to have a somewhat ok climate in the future, just focusing on electric vehicles (which are doing the whole subscription to access your hardware fully, not easily repairable bs as well) isn't gonna cut it.

Thank you, Mr. EU

It might lead to thicker phones, but battery and/or SW obsolescence are the main reasons I have been swapping phone in the last 10 years.

Wonder if phone manufacturers will fragment their offerings to satisfy EU requirements or if we'll all end up with removable batteries.

I can’t wait to hear the Apple marketing word for this feature. They’ll add some gimmick like the battery is held in with magnets and say “We call it MagPack and we think you’re going to love it.”

Now make SD cards mandatory and you've got something really good.

One of the few areas where I favor a "One-world" standard.

Good. I haven't been able to replace a battery since my S4.