All phones sold in the EU to have replaceable batteries from 2027

I have never used a phone without easily replaceable battery (where "easily" means no screwdriver necessary, just pop the backcover and pull the battery out). It just happened this way, but I think I'd refuse to buy one anyway, as aside of obvious repairability and maintainability issues having the battery sealed in is also a big factor that makes dropping the phone so dangerous. When I drop my phone, the battery is easily set free to disperse its kinetic energy away from more fragile parts of the device, so it's much harder to break the phone this way. I have made some small dents and scratches from drops over the years, but no serious damage.

Aren't today's phone batteries already replaceable with commercially available tools? I can walk into a non-apple store with my iPhone and walk out with a replaced battery 20 minutes later.

This isn't even what drives obsolesce of phones, it's software updates.

If you really want to be able to self-swap your own battery, you can just buy an Android that has a replaceable battery.

Do we need to regulate something that isn't a problem? All regulation has downsides, is it worth paying this price here?

If a battery can do 1000 cycles and remain above 80% capacity it is exempt from this, which is exactly what Apple implemented a few years ago.

Low cost phones will be most affected.

While this is a good step forward, it feels like complaining about the 0.025% of plastic from straws in the ocean while ignoring the 75% of plastic from fishing nets.

I own a 2020 Kona EV. The battery cannot be upgraded. Eventually, I'll have to replace the entire car to get a longer range. BEVs should be mandated to have upgradable batteries and modular interfaces so that the shell can continue to be reused, the batteries (and BMS) upgraded, and old batteries easily recycled.

What if we regulate batteries even more? i.e. what if, in some magical perfect world, the world get's together and agrees on batteries for phones like how we agree on AA,AAA,D,C batteries? Even more though.. a standard connector, a standard comms bus, a variety of sizes, and they were designed for reuse as efficiently as possible.

Now we can scale up volume, swap them out, be free to purchase from a different manufacturer, and have scaled up recycling services.

I was looking forward to finally be able to easily switch out (i)Phone batteries again - after 20 years - but turns out the lobbyists managed to get a loophole in the law - exempting Apple & Co from making their phones more repairable / longer live-able.

> If a battery can do 1000 cycles and remain above 80% capacity it is exempt

Batteries have been used as part of planned obsolescence for too long and a whole small business industry of replacing phone batteries has appeared because of it. Next the EU are going to have to address security patches because its another aspect being used to sell new phones.

>The regulation states that batteries must be removable using ‘commercially available’ tools

This is doing a lot of work here. There's enough wiggle room for this to be absolutely meaningless. Anything short of I can slide off the back cover and maybe unscrew two or three screws to replace the battery means that a lot of people are going to end up not being able to replace the batteries.