European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries

lightingnerd@kbin.social to Technology@kbin.social – 156 points –
European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries
techspot.com

Among the many changes, the new rules would require batteries in consumer devices like smartphones to be easily removable and replaceable. That's far from the case today...

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I'm all for this. The big argument against it is that it makes it harder to waterproof but I'll take that over a phone I have to replace every 18 months because the battery is shit.

Just don't buy fruit-branded phones and you can generally swap the battery without much hassle.

I don't think you get it. Batteries used to be swappable in 5 seconds flat.

Yeah, I get it, I just remember phones exploding into 3 parts whenever you dropped it as well as the back cover wearing out to the point it wouldn't even stay on. People really do just have the nostalgia blinders on; as long as there isn't an arbitrary lockout there's nothing wrong with having to open the phone to swap the battery. Plus you have a 0% chance of being SOL if you get a cheap Chinese battery and it blows up (the shop that swapped your battery would be on the hook).

Let me introduce you to the Nokia 3310, aka 'The Brick'.

Yeah, that phone was not as nearly as indestructible as the internet memes would suggest, thanks for proving my point about nostalgia blinders. As you can see in this video the phone utterly explodes from a simple chest high drop. The casing itself even splits open and ejects the keys out from under the faceplate. Yeah such a "brick" huh. Ironically, the new 3310 he compares it against fares much much better in that drop.

Don't know about the video, my personal experience and that of my generation is that we abused the duck out of those phones and they survived.

No, this is not your personal experiences, that's the nostalgia blinders yet again as if you couldn't prove my point any more. I am actually old enough to have had a 3310 and they exploded at the slightest drop. Sure, you could put it back together and it'd work, until it didn't.

But do you remember phones' screens cracking whenever you dropped them?

Plastic screen phones were actually more susceptible to getting utterly destroyed.

Put it in a case. It's not difficult.

So now I am having to purchase an accessory specifically to mitigate a flaw.

No, we have always had to make a compromise or a choice between sustainability, convenience, or price. The EU just decided to limit that choice to convenience or price.

That's just not true. I've always been an android user and it's non-trivial to change the battery, hasn't been easy for years.

This is 100% true, drop the nostalgia blinders.

What are you even saying? What has nostalgia got to do with phones dropping removable batteries as a feature?

I had a sony walkman in the late 90s that was waterproof. I could put CDs in it and replace the batteries. They can figure it out.