European Union is doing the work the U.S. government should be.
U.S. government is too busy worrying about what people are doing in their bedrooms, libraries and doctor’s offices.Meanwhile, one of the US parties is trying to ban universal free school meals. Sad.
We don’t get free school meals in all European countries though. It’s fairly inexpensive where I live and people with low income do get it free but it’s not universal.
Not all countries have the same school hours. In some places, the expectation is that kids get out of school by lunch time.
Also, school meals are not the first line of defense when it comes to food insecurity, like it’s unfortunately often the case in the United States.
Beyond being good for right-to-repair, this used to be the one way to be sure that your phone is off and is not listening to you. It’s a stride on the privacy side as well.
Great news! No point in 5 or 6 years of software updates when the battery gives out after 3 years.
I’ve replaced some “non replaceable” batteries in phones before… Only to find that after about 5 years of medium use the flash storage goes to shit (which causes massive slow downs), the chips begin to desolder themselves, the USB port gets janky and stops charging, etc.
Batteries are a great first step, but damn these $1000+ devices just are not built to last more than 3 years
Honestly, they are pretty damn stressed devices though.
If you think about it, they are on 24/7, with active usage at least 4-6 hours a day, exposed to god knows what humidity, unknown low and high temps, dropped every x days. It’s a modern technological miracle that they last as long as they do. Lots of read and writes with photo and video backups.
My 5 year old X died a month back (flash memory failed), I was actually impressed that it lasted that long.
Very true. Amazing technology we take for granted
Yes I’m thinking next time around to go for a good mid-range. Considering the time that phones actually last, it’s too much to pay for flagship phones.
Not too mention what even is the point of getting a flagship?
The cameras are great on most phones, the specs are good enough for most people’s use case (call, text, social media).
Hell the last few years the consistently best rated phone camera by users has been the Pixel A series of phones. The budget Pixel phones.
The only reason I got my flagship Sony Xperia is because it still had a headphone jack, sd slot, and no notch. It was expensive but everything I wanted. Last phone was an iPhone 6s. I wish there was cheaper options honestly for what I’m looking for but those 3 combinations don’t seem to exist other than Sony.
I feel you on that
I miss the days of sd slots, headphone jacks, and removable batteries.
Phone cameras are pretty good now though and the Xperia has a damn good one
Yeah, that’s the problem with these things: they’re wasting assets. If you want maximum longevity on your phone, not only do you need replaceable batteries but to purchase the absolute maximum storage so you can benefit from wear leveling on the flash. And even then, it will still slowly degrade over time.
Google tried to build a modular phone and ended up cancelling the project in part because these systems are essentially an SOC surrounded by support hardware. Still, I’d buy a modular phone or at least one that allowed swappable batteries because Android phones are still a beast on battery thanks to all the background services and large, power hungry screens.
Which makes sense since they were expecting the batteries to poop out earlier
I don’t mind that my phone battery is sealed up. I do mind that I have to bring it to a specialist that might screw it up and make me pay for the privilege.
Actually, this bothers me way more with laptops than with phones. With laptops, there’s no water resistance or any other reason besides thinness to seal the battery up. Particularly with business machines, the computing power will be more-than-sufficient for many years to come, yet many will end up in the trash because the battery’s no longer doing its job. It’s ridiculously wasteful.
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Yep, we need universal right to repair/ease of repair regulations to stem all the electronic waste.
Many laptops/ultrabooks have easily accessible batteries nowadays, any specific example when you mean sealed up?
All of them. You could argue that the time and expertise needed to replace a laptop battery is negligible, but I say it’s an unnecessary increase of time and risk required to do so.
What do you feel are the benefits of embedding a laptop battery in the case?
What do you feel are the benefits of embedding a laptop battery in the case?
Portability for one. You can move your laptop without worrying about the battery latches getting damaged.
I used to refurb laptops and I’ve seen plenty of externally mounted batteries that just wouldn’t reliably sit on the laptop anymore.
I definitely agree 100% with the spirit of your comment. In my experience servicing business laptops like Dell latitudes or precisions etc, it hasn’t been very hard to get to the battery it’s usually just a couple of screws to remove the bottom panel and maybe another fastening screw that anchors in the battery and then you just swap it out. In general, again this is just in my experience, One of the things that you’re paying for when you get a business level device whether it’s a laptop or a desktop computer is the ability to service it more easily and replace broken parts because it’s often more efficient to do it in house than to have the manufacturer do it even if you paid for the service.
The flip side of this though is that a lot of people are terrified of opening up a laptop and that’s totally understandable because there’s a lot of little delicate parts that you could possibly break. I would be totally unsurprised if this was a mindset that was specifically nurtured and engendered by the industry itself because it’s much better for them if you just buy a whole new laptop then a cheap battery especially if it’s from a third party seller.
This makes me wonder what it would take to make people in general feel encouraged and emboldened to take apart and repair the devices that they own. I also wonder if inflation is just the thing to do it.
This is a big part of why I bought a Framework laptop. Every part is easily accessible and they sell replacement parts. The laptops are even modular and upgradable
I remember when I was looking for a new laptop, I made a replaceable battery a requirement, since my previous laptop’s battery (which wasn’t replaceable) lost its charge very fast.
Out of the hundreds of laptops available today, I could only find two or three laptop models total with a replaceable battery. And none of them were in physical stores, so a less tech-minded person would never find them.
Interestingly, the replaceable battery also seems to be higher quality than the permanent battery was.
I got one of the framework laptop over a year ago and it’s been fantastic other than having a defective trackpad (which took all of 10 minutes to replace after receiving a free replacement part from their support team). I will even be able to upgrade to a newer mainboard with an AMD CPU from the current 11th gen intel later this year when the boards start shipping.
It really grinds my gears when companies claim that repairable devices aren’t possible to make in modern form factors, especially when a rinky dink startup was able to do it.
Out of the hundreds of laptops available today, I could only find two or three laptop models total with a replaceable battery.
Nearly every business class laptop has a replaceable battery, you just need a philips-head screwdriver for most.
Anything that is meant for consumers shouldn’t be bought anyway, Dell Inspirons and HP Pavilions and shit are not made to last unfortunately. Nor are they made to be easily repairable. I’d go as far as recommend an 8 year old thinkpad over some brand new consumer models. It’ll last longer.
Older Business laptops are a reasonable choice in that case. E.g. you can get a ThinkPad T590 from 2019 for about 500€ and the battery (and everything) is easily replaceable by unscrewing a metal plate at the bottom.
Good, now add SD card please.
And headphone jacks
These days I don’t buy a phone if they don’t have a micro SD slot. Need that extra space without paying a bullshit upcharge for the larger model phone
tbh SD cards are out and mostly for power users, make them compatible with M2 drives :))
SD cards and M.2 drives are not really comparable, since they are used for different things. It would be cool to have a phone that has main storage a M.2 drive, but i would still want it to have an SD card slot.
Screw M.2, I want to use my enterprise grade 7TB U.2 Kioxia drive in my 50 bucks Chinese phone, I just can’t live without it!
M.2 would make phones inordinately thick and un-usable. If you really need more than 1TB of storage on your phone, dump your pictures and Videos every so often to a home NAS PC running TrueNAS Core or Scale. And if you have Music on your phone that you own the files to, consider using your home NAS as a Media Server using Plex and use Plex Amp or some other app to stream the music direct to your phone.
The performance would be wasted on android since file access has gotten so damn slow on recent versions. It would be awesome on a Linux phone though.
I don’t even want to replace my battery. I want it to last. At least 5 years.
Bring legislation that enforces a 5 year warranty on batteries that are built-in. That would help the environment much more than being able to replace a battery every year that shouldn’t fail in the first place. And yes, it’s possible to build batteries that last longer. It’s more effort, true. But so is building exchangeable batteries or doing an exchange. I rather shell off 50 € more for my phone when I know that the battery will make it 5 years.
I want it to last. At least 5 years.
That is something that would be very hard to legislate. Especially since battery lifetime is dependent on a variety of external factors (charging-style, temperature of the device, luck). Build quality certainly also factors in, but even the best battery won’t survive a 10 year old regularly overheating their phones with games and charges it for the entire night. I would love to see OEMs implement nice things like “capacity settings”, where you can set your device to stop charging at 80% and show it as 100%.
This is exactly what happens in cars. Usually, you have an 8 year warranty for your battery.
Yes, a phone is smaller. Less space and weight. But 5 years are less as well. The electronics can track everything, shut the phone down if it’s too hot (and not when it’s so hot that it’s in danger to burst into flames like it is now). Adjust the charging speed by temperature. Do not charge the battery to 100 %. …
All things the manufacturer can influence.
These are all things that most phones already do, though. I think a realistic expectation of battery lifetime is needed here. Better allow for easier replacement in my opinion, the batteries themselves are not expensive (though we don’t want to generate unnecessary waste, so, of course we try to make them last as long as feasible)
No, they don’t.
The switch off far too late. The battery is built for weight and size, not for durability. The do not keep a margin to preserve battery life and charge way too high and too low.
Replacing batteries is the wrong approach, because it wastes resources we don’t need to waste.
I’m firmly convinced that 5 years battery life is achievable, if we just force the companies to do it. It’s just cheaper for them not to do it right now. And companies always do what is cheapest.
And worse: This legislation will actually cement the battery degradation, because the companies have even less reason to build batteries that last. “Just replace them!” will be the answer if it’s dead after 6 months.
Do you have a citation on that 5 years being achievable now (or soonish)? I am not very knowledgeable on the state of battery manufacture and from my thinking the constraints we have to work with in phones are mostly volume. In a car you can just “add more battery” as a buffer, but in a phone that space just isnt there.
TL;DR: is there research on this kind of battery lifetime without major limits when it comes to capacity?
On a Phone, people are already conditioned to have their phone work all the time, no matter what you do to it, and there is an advertised Maximum Battery Capacity.
People don’t do the 80/20 rule on Phones because that’s outrageous to them.
But EV Manufacturers have built in the 80/20 rule into their cars. When you do long distance EV trips, the Route Planner will automatically tell you where the next charger that you will arrive at 20%-ish battery capacity will be and route you there. And the car will stop charging itself at 80% and you’ll be ready to go.
Phones on the other hand, tell you “Hey moron, I’m at 30% you should charge me!” And most phones don’t have a Battery Protection setting to cut charging at 80% (Samsung added this about a year ago to their phones)
If you shouldn’t charge over 80%, why don’t manufacturers just report a battery at 80% its “real” capacity as 100% charged? Same for the lower margins. It would probably make things easier for people to understand.
Because then people would be up in arms about the lower battery life. People want a phone that can go all day without charging. And they never slow charge their phones overnight.
It’s a product of people just being absolutely stupid.
They would probably have to switch to LiFePO4 batteries to get 5 years reliably. That would increase the thickness of the phone quiet a bit if you want the same capacity.
Lipo batteries are not capable of being cycled daily for 5 years, even under ideal conditions.
Android (or at least some) have this feature now, the charging rate is usually adjusted based on time of the day, next alarm clock setting, charger type, etc
It’s not android, but Google as far as I am aware. At least my battery settings (latest graphene OS) are… limited to say the least
It would be nice to have it covered in a phone warranty or something. Would like to also see legislation requiring software updates for 5 years, is kind of silly how fast devices are considered obsolete by their manufacturers. Even Microsoft supports Windows versions for like 10 years.
This is what sucked me into the Apple ecosystem in the first place. The first couple of Android devices I had were paperweights within 2-3 years. Shifting to Apple, I’ve yet to have a device last less than six years.
Yes! mandatory usb C and replaceable battery, and i’d like the 3mm headphonr jack to also be a standard 😁
Me too, but that one might be dead for good.
Out of the phone vendor fuckery with the connector, battery, micro SD, and headphone 3.5mm, the headphones were always the biggest thing.
Bring it back please EU hear my prayers. Right now I’m listening to music on my iPhone with a half broken dongle that pauses if I jiggle it wrong.
The fucking audacity to remove a quintessential port is typical Apple. Was the same with DVDs, Ethernet, now even USB. Next thing I know there’ll be no more ports, you’ll have to wirelessly (and inefficiently) charge your phone even if you like it or not
Not for any technical reason afaik. My LG G7 is plenty modern and has a 3.5mm jack. It also has Bluetooth, so it’s not like it’s an either/or choice. It’s just the manufacturers dictating what choices consumers have.
The EU has been good at holding phone manufacturers to account on this kind of thing, glad it’s gone through. I’ve had at least two phones die on me through the battery breaking, it shouldn’t be cheaper to just buy a new phone than get the battery replaced. So much waste.
Hoping us UK folk will see the benefit of this as I imagine it’s less effort to just bring the change about across the board than to be specific about geography.
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Back in the day I used to just keep 2-3 fully charged spare batteries if I went out. No need for a battery pack to recharge if I can just quickly swap battery and get a days worth of charge instantly.
I used to keep 2 extras as well back in the day when using the phone for an hour straight would kill it and I was on the go. I agree that batteries should be more easily replaced and the current design philosophy of hidden screws hidden behind a glued together screen is crazy .
That said I think power banks are better. They store better they are universal so you can use them with different phones and devices and thanks to that theres less e-waste. They take longer to charge but if you know you need it you can just plug in before you get too low so you dont have to be plugged in to long.
Agreed that power banks are better for those uses, but it’s also about what you do when the internal battery has degraded.
Laughing in Fairphone
Same! But the beauty of it is that this effectively creates a competitive advantage for Fairphone. Fairphone is already compliant, while all other smartphone companies will have to develop this from ~scratch.
oh thats so good that will force other phone manufacturers to stick to competitive pricing…
Still bummed they wont bring these to the USA
You can import it! I got one in Canada using a site called Clove Technology
Doesn’t work on US networks IIRC.
Depends on where you live and what service provider you use. There is quite a bit of overlap between European and American cell frequencies, but it’s not something you can just assume will work.
It’s unfortunate that Fairphone sucks in other ways (such as having limited firmware updates due to using an old SoC, as I understand it).
And the headphone jack. Et tu Fairphone
The main problem with Fairphone is… It won’t come to the US. However, I am very happy that this will affect Apple, because I am making the switch from Android to iOS. I know that Apple won’t be stupid enough to have two separate plants, one to make EU Compatible phones, and one to make Global phones.
The costs for such a thing would be inordinately high even for Apple.
It’ll be interesting to see what Apple does, between this and the USB-C mandate.
Considering they currently sell multiple phone form factors, they may just decide that the EU gets more expensive phones with removable batteries and USB-C, and the rest of the world continues to get what they’ve got.
Also, I’ll be interested to see how “removable” gets defined. I’ve replaced iPhone batteries, so they’re technically removable.
Or, Apple might claim that their MagSafe battery packs make them compliant.
Nah, the main problem of the FairPhone is it’s water resistance. Which is the lowest of low. Not quite sustainable in that regard: youre always one wet pocket away from disaster.
Did not know about this, thanks
It must be nice to have leaders that actually do useful things.
For every good thing they do 2 bad things come next. The grass is always greener on the other side.
Curiously as someone who only usually sees the greener side. As a US Citizen, what EU laws would I be shocked to see?
Well… I can cite a few laws. First, the part that protect DRM, second, the law that require search engines to make contract to quote article, third, the interest in policing private communication, and last, a project that isn’t really advanced to infringe net neutrality.
I doubt a US citizen will be shocked about them. But they are likely to dislike them.
(but I tend to see the greener side of “for 1 bad things, 2 good things come next”)
There’s currently a law in the pipeline that would scan all conversations, videos and images sent over social networks as well as chat apps like Whatsapp for illegal material. It would also include backdoors in encryption technologies and possibly banning any services that don’t comply with the scanning, e.g. Signal. Love the EU in principle, but unfortunately it’s often used by national governments to push things like increased surveillance.
This is why I got a Fairphone. I was done complaining about the direction of the mobile market and decided to buy a phone which lets me do all of this and has longer support for software and hardware. It’s the best phone I’ve had since the S3.
It only works for me because I like Android, live in Europe and have big enough pockets, though… the thing is a brick.
Big enough financial pockets, or trouser pockets? :-). One reason I am discouraged from getting a fairphone phone is that I like smaller mobile phone screens.
Haha, trouser pockets! I thought it might come across that way, but that would be a flagship Samsung.
It’s one of the biggest phones I’ve owned and I sometimes wish it were smaller.
longer support for software and hardware
Not to rain on your parade (I love the idea of the Fairphone!), but that’s actually a bit of misadvertising on Fairphone’s part — the SoCs they use are very outdated and near the end of their vender firmware and driver support, meaning they get maybe 2 years of the full support you’d expect when you say a manufacturer “supports” something, and then however many more years of hobbled support. Additionally, they’re just really bad about security.
You’ve got me down a rabbit hole now.
Shorter than expected SoC support is one thing, but the hardware root of trust trusting AOSP test keys which was also stated by GrapheneOS is something else. That’s a total amateurish blunder and the only reason it’s not a complete disaster is you need to boot into EDL mode first to actually flash a recovery. The verified boot is practically useless.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention, I’m not purchasing another phone from them. Unfortunate, because I liked the removable battery and seemingly long support. Back to the drawing board.
Yeah when I found out about the Fairphone originally I was extremely excited and really wanted one for my next phone, but I use GrapheneOS my pixel right now so I figure I just check why it doesn’t support it and sure enough I found this stuff :(
Thanks for the info. From the perspective of GrapheneOS, verified boot for custom firmware is going to be one of the most important aspects and that wasn’t something I expected from the device. It would be a nice-to-have for longevity as running an unlocked bootloader is an awful idea. The lack of a secure element also won’t help the case. I was aware that “support” might mean “only security patches past two years” which is acceptable to me.
However, I can see your point about fixes from SoC manufacturers as that is a crucial part of these updates. I was aware that the SoC was older but only really thought about performance impacts. In that case, the device will only receive Android platform and kernel fixes?
Maybe I’ll have to think about switching to something else after that point, then. I spent about as much as I wanted to on a phone and it will only be unfortunate that I didn’t get more years out of it. I’ve already been slightly concerned that they’re steering away from their “mission” and selling ordinary earbuds which are unsustainable by their own standards.
I though about getting a Fairphone but it really didn’t work for me due to the missing headphone jack.
I’ve got on okay without it but I already had Bluetooth headphones. It was understandably a pretty unpopular move.
I kind of questioned it from their “sustainability” ethos, too. It means more people might throw away working wired earphones and buy much more complicated, expensive Bluetooth ones… which use more resources to make.
I got the king Kong Mini 2. The opposite of a brick (it’s tiny), probably US compatible, and the back literally has screws on it for when you need to change the battery/sim. Also £80
Man I wish the Fairphone had a US version. I totally would have bought one.
Look into the king Kong Mini.
Any battery is replaceable if you pry it hard enough
Every component is replaceable ~by buying a new iPhone~
-Apple
The language in the article does seem to forget that plenty of early smartphones had replaceable batteries… Yeah, it might add some bulk, but it’s not exactly going to be a major hardship.
… but it seems like a good reverse step to me. Any consumer replaceable part is a good thing as far as I’m concerned.
Yes! 🥳
