In all mobile phones. Not just iPhones.
this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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The regulation of the European Parliament and the Council will apply to all batteries including all waste portable batteries, electric vehicle batteries, industrial batteries, starting, lightning and ignition (SLI) batteries (used mostly for vehicles and machinery) and batteries for light means of transport (e.g. electric bikes, e-mopeds, e-scooters).
Not just phones either.
Boy how much i love EU regulations
Wonder if they will make EU-only variant of hardware and software which will be like totally different phone. They already did sideloading, USB-C and now this. What next?
EU iPhone 14 Pro also has a physical SIM card slot.
You know I just realized this myself a month or so ago. I swore my 14 had a SIM card slot. I was arguing about it with a friend. and whatta ya know, it’s “there” just glued in and inaccessible. That is some straight up bullshit.
I have a US factory unlocked iPhone. 🙄
It’s an eSIM. I’ve switched carriers twice using just the eSIM in my iPhone 13. What is the problem with that?
Edit: grammar
It gives your carrier too much control over what you do with a device you own and makes it pretty much impossible to use burner SIMs. Just bad for privacy in general.
A lot of carriers don't support eSIM, especially internationally, and here in the UK a lot of carriers only offer eSIMs on specific tarrifs. Some also put restrictions on the type of devices you're allowed to use them in which is hard to enforce with physical SIMs.
There should be regulation to force carriers to adopt eSIM? Physical SIM cards are an anachronism that should have died a long time ago.
That sucks! I suppose my own experience may be more unique than I had thought.
No problem at all. I like eSIM. I wasn’t complaining, It just caught me off guard. Why block the physical sim card try? If it’s an option else where, why am I restricted?
Also, I have old parents. It’s not easy for them to figure this out (as much as I try to explain these things to them) if they are traveling abroad. They just see it as barrier instead of just popping in a local sim card.
However I'm not sure that every carrier around the world has esim, so for travelling its easier to go have a physical sim currently
I love my eSIM. And, I have a drawer full of "used" SIM cards from previous phones that are just more plastic waste. Good riddance!
The different one is the US version which doesn’t have it. Everywhere else in the world does.
Question regarding the phone thing. Am I one of the only people that doesn’t care about changing my battery or is this more a popular opinion on Lemmy/Reddit?
Edit: not asking why they’re doing it. I get that.
The EU is consistently voting in regulations for consumer protection and Right to Repair is one of them. Apple frequently gatekeeps their tech, forcing you to buy another phone which is already among the most expensive devices on the market. This allows anyone to crack open an iPhone to change their battery when it becomes problematic which is likely to be cheaper than getting a new phone. There very few people I came across who had no battery issues with the iPhone 6. At that time, if you wanted to use an iPhone you either went back to the 5 or you just suffer through the issues. Most people stuck it out because Apple charge out the ass for making minimal changes to their phones.
The battery is guaranteed to wear out. The rest of the circuitry is fairly resilient. Do you really want them to be able to force you to upgrade
If you change phones every 2 years or less you should have no reason to replace the battery. A lot of people keep phones for much longer (students, retired, low income etc…) and suffer with bad battery life as their phones age. While Apple does replace batteries in store or by mail for a price a lot of people don’t want to deal with that. Also Apple stores are only in larger cities so for some it could mean driving a few hours each way.
Also even if someone swaps phones every 2 years without ever replacing the battery it matters. Unless that phone ends up wasting away in a drawer, it'll go into the secondary market. An easily replaceable battery in that case should not only benefit the new owner (who get a longer lifespan out of the device), but also the seller, since the used device gains value through this feature.
FWIW I'm not a student, retired or low income and I expect 5+ years from my phone, or I would had I not found out my phone's bootloader is locked 🙄.
If you get a new phone every few years then there's no need to replace the battery. If you're like me and use the same device for 6 years then you do.
I also like that I can just swap an empty battery to a full one and go from 0% -> 100% charge in about a minute.
A replaceable battery is like the audio jack my current phone fortunately still has. I don't use it often, but if I ever need it, it's there. I don't think I ever replaced a battery of my daily-driver phone, but more than once I've replaced my old phone's battery to repurpose it after getting a new one.
I always heard one of the main reasons for it was moisture protection. Unsealed batteries means they go bad more often from drops in water, taking them in bathrooms for showers, dropping them into dog bowls or rivers...
How much the IPA or F protection really matters... I dunno. But it makes sense on paper. I see some people discussed it below without good sauce though.
Now watch them sneakily make the phones more fragile until that becomes the norm
I changed the battery on iPhone myself. The main problem is not opening the phone, but the rest.
Now make it so I can upgrade my RAM and SSD
This might make that potentially easier because changing the battery could make it easier to open up the phone without doing damage to it.
I just don’t want it soldered into my MacBook.
How can it stay fully waterproof?
Water resistant: By being negligibly more expensive to properly engineer and build
Fully Waterproof: By being a fair bit more expensive to properly engineer and build
In both cases, the cost is reasonably tiny, compared to the markup of the price on the actual cost
Yes but how do you properly seal the phone without stuck components?
With gasket. We've been sealing most things for centuries without using a glue-in option. Usually because things need to be serviced.
Exactly this.
My first waterproof smartphone was a Motorola Defy+ from, I think, 2011. Dustproff, submersible, hardened. I put it through it's paces, too, it got absolutely battered and I regularly filmed underwater with it.
The battery was removable behind a panel on the back that could be opened with a single sliding clip. It took far longer for the phone to boot up than it did to actually swap the battery and no tools were needed.
Samsung Galaxy S5 was already reasonably water resistant (IP67). The back had a seal around the battery. See this article for the details: https://www.anandtech.com/show/7942/galaxy-s5-followup
It's something that's already been done in many devices. Many old devices too. What do you think the issue will be?
Gaskets, yes. See any wrist watch (except smartwatch) serviced or battery replaced. Very sensitive things that claim water resistance.
How often are you throwing your phone in the ocean? Perhaps try not doing that, and you'll find that "fully waterproof" is completely unnecessary. Mediocre water resistance will protect most consumer electronics from damage up to 30 feet deep, and unless you're trying to FaceTime your mom while on a scuba dive, you will not encounter a use case where "fully waterproof" would have made the difference. Basic electronics care will cover keeping the phone away from water, and any water found in the home that it may be accidentally dropped in won't be deep enough or high pressure enough to penetrate a properly sealed battery door.
Couldn't you say the same thing about your battery? Take care of it and it will last? I've only needed to replace one ever--and it was faulty and covered under warranty...
Except it won't. The battery will fail, sooner or later. A splash of water will not materialize out of thin air around the phone. Yes, accidents happen, but the battery doesn't even need an accident to fail, only the passage of time.
This bill does not do what anyone seems to think it will regarding cellphones. As written, nearly every cellphone already being made falls within the scope of the law as already having a "user-replaceable" battery. This matters so much more for other electronics than it does cellphones.
Hard disagree, article 38
A portable battery should be considered to be removable by the end-user when it can be removed with the use of commercially available tools and without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless they are provided free of charge, or proprietary tools, thermal energy or solvents to disassemble it
Did you think I didn't read that exact section before I made this argument?
Show me where they're out of compliance. The only leg you can stand on is thermal energy, and like it or not, you absolutely can pull screens without heat guns or hair dryers so long as you have suction cups. You can literally spend less than $30 to get all the bits, suction cups and picks needed for repairs so the tools are commercially available.
Suction cups count as specialist tools. They are tools explicitly for removing the screen of a smartphone.
Commercially standard means things like screwdrivers that can be used for any number of circumstances. Also pretty much every single repair guide involves a hair dryer so I'm not sure what phone you're talking about.
Commercially standard is some hogwash you're making up out of thin air. The language is "commercially available" which every single tool needed already is. Like I said that you completely ignored $30 gets every bit, pick, tweezer and suction cup needed. Every single guide calls for heat, yes, it is indeed a good idea, but it is absolutely not NECESSARY. Do you understand? You can take a readily, commercially available suction cup from a $20 kit from Amazon and remove screens (and therefore batteries) without using thermal energy.
So I'm sorry you don't know what I'm talking about, but the bigger issue is you simply don't know what you're talking about.
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