[HN Gopher] The EU's fight for user-replaceable smartphone batte...
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The EU's fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries
Author : ZacnyLos
Score : 163 points
Date : 2023-06-25 08:44 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| i think they want to address the chip shortage (or a possible
| repetition of the shortage) by extending the life of the
| smartphones - which doesn't make the smartphone producers happy.
| thesnide wrote:
| The battery is indeed the HW part that has the most decay.
|
| But in that 5y time-frame the SW part is the one that is the most
| problematic.
|
| It would be nice to be able to replace the ROM easily after the
| EOL of the device.
|
| Will self-regulate itself immediately, as then incentives to have
| longer life is real and you cannot _force_ customers to just buy
| another device because you decided it 's time.
|
| By "replace ROM easily" it means that one has the access (keys)
| and documentation to do it.
| mrweasel wrote:
| The sad part is that you can't even do "ROM" replacements, it
| won't work for most people. Many countries have multiple apps
| that you more or less need to function in society, there needs
| to be a requirement for those apps to be installable on jail
| broken phones, not just via the official app store, if custom
| firmware is to make sense. Otherwise that old phone isn't going
| to provide much value anyway.
|
| 10 years of software update isn't actually unreasonable, if you
| can replace the battery on your phone easily. An iPhone 7 for
| instance is still a pretty useful phone for many, and I don't
| see any use cases that would chance that in the next couple of
| years.
| threeseed wrote:
| > there needs to be a requirement for those apps to be
| installable on jail broken phones
|
| That will not happen.
|
| You can't just allow banking and financial software to be run
| on a compromised OS. It is great for you but terrible for
| older people who would be exposed to rampant criminal fraud.
|
| The better approach is to force OEMs to support their phones
| for longer. 10 years is realistic.
| phh wrote:
| I'm pretty confident that by most metrics custom ROMs are
| less compromised than OEM ROMs. It will have less malwares,
| I better sandboxing, less 3P backdoors _, more up-to-date
| security updates.
|
| _ 1P here being the user /owner of the device
| pteraspidomorph wrote:
| It's not just the official store. Google Safetynet, used by a
| whole lot of essential android apps such as banking apps
| (particularly essential in the EU after app confirmation
| became legally required for online transactions) and also
| completely unnecessarily by a lot of frivolous apps, prevents
| implementing apps from functioning in open/rooted android
| installs, unless you jump through a bunch of hoops to fool
| the app about the device's rooted state.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Is ROM really used anymore? It seems like these days,
| everything is OTA update compatible.
|
| Customers aren't forced to buy new devices, they just no longer
| get software updates after N (5?) years. You would need an
| alternative OS, like a version of Android that lacks google
| apps or something.
| crote wrote:
| "ROM" is just used as a term for the system image. It is no
| longer truly "read only". And replacing that is often
| intentionally made difficult by cryptographically signing the
| image, making it impossible to boot a custom one.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Oh wow, that's a weird anachronism that I didn't expect.
| Here is the explanation from wiki:
|
| > The term "ROM" is sometimes used to refer to a ROM device
| containing specific software or a file with software to be
| stored in a writable ROM device. For example, users
| modifying or replacing the Android operating system
| describe files containing a modified or replacement
| operating system as "custom ROMs" after the type of storage
| the file used to be written to, and they may distinguish
| between ROM (where software and data is stored, usually
| Flash memory) and RAM.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read-only_memory
|
| So what was once a very hardware term had become a
| completely software one.
| account-5 wrote:
| I hope this happens. Making a phone more of an appliance like a
| washing machine etc. I hope this happens for TVs too since smart
| TVs are a load of shit just now.
| f6v wrote:
| I don't know. I already have to click cookie buttons on every
| goddamn web site I visit, it's annoying as hell. These EU
| initiatives can be a bit pointless.
|
| Battery needs to be replaced like once every 2-3 years. Why
| change the device design to make battery user-replaceable when I
| can bring it to the repair shop?
| lawn wrote:
| > Battery needs to be replaced like once every 2-3 years.
|
| Having a replaceable battery is a godsend when you're
| traveling. Changing the battery in my Fairphone 4 takes less
| than a minute.
|
| I also live in a small village without a repair shop (closest
| one is probably a 1-2 hour drive away). What a shitty option.
| leptons wrote:
| I want to be able to change the battery far more often -
| possibly every 8 hours if I'm using the phone a lot during an
| off-road adventure or other adventure where having a charging
| device isn't a great solution. When I used to travel a lot I
| had a smartphone with a replaceable battery and I carried
| several replacement batteries. Going from 5% battery life to
| 100% battery life in the few seconds it takes to change the
| battery was a very useful thing when I wasn't able to charge
| the phone easily. And no, battery charging bricks are not
| convenient. They are way more bulky and take far longer to
| charge the phone than popping in a fully charged battery.
| sroussey wrote:
| You will be able to change your Tesla batteries after this as
| well!
| torginus wrote:
| According to the wording of the draft legislation (according to
| the article):
|
| It also says that spare parts should be available for up to
| seven years after a phone's release, and, perhaps most
| importantly, "the process for replacement shall be able to be
| carried out by a layman."
|
| This means, that basically every phone where you can unscrew
| the back, disconnect the connector, remove the glue with a pull
| tab, and put in a new battery, is already compliant. Its
| basically the same set of steps any corner shop repair tech
| would do (but its something you could do yourself).
|
| It just states that manufacturers cant interfere with this
| process, and have to sell the parts to you for 7 years after
| purchase.
| croes wrote:
| They cookie banners are the fault of the website owners. They
| did this on purpose so the users would blame the laws.
|
| Could have simple valued the Do-Not-Track flag but they didn't
| want to.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| If thats true then their competitors will gladly not ask for
| permission and enjoy higher user satisfaction and the banners
| will disappear due to that long term.
|
| But we all know thats bullshit and the law actually did cause
| this.
| kaba0 wrote:
| It's almost like "the user will choose the best product" is
| bullshit. It has never been true, people are not rational
| agents, otherwise marketing wouldn't work at all.
|
| The best we have is to define small markets with strict
| regulations - within that some competition can happen that
| will tend to raise better products.
| Timon3 wrote:
| Especially since it's not like there is a manufacturer
| for every cell of the feature matrix. Every single option
| has its downsides, and the optimal option most likely
| doesn't exist.
| croes wrote:
| All these sites make money from tracking, if they back out
| once the customers would knew they get screwed.
|
| And not all websites have banners
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Its so much worse in Europe too. Didnt realize until I traveled
| there after this regulation.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Because most people won't:
|
| - it's expensive
|
| - it takes their phone away
|
| If changing the battery is a one hour cheap deal, a lot more
| people may do it.
|
| And I am very happy about those EU initiatives: this way I know
| what sites are tracking me and how much. This tells me which
| sites values annoying me with their banner so they can sell my
| data.
|
| Have you noticed there is no banner on Hacker news despite the
| fact that:
|
| - they serve in Europe
|
| - they use cookies
|
| That's because it's not about cookies, and the banner is only
| for privacy abusers.
| f6v wrote:
| > Because most people won't:
|
| > - it's expensive
|
| > - it takes their phone away
|
| Ok, people don't go to shops to replace battery now? "oh,
| it's 99$ to replace the battery? I'd rather pay 1000$ for a
| new iPhone!" That's a bit silly.
| cbg0 wrote:
| Most people don't have a $1000 iphone, which is even more
| problematic, because if you have a cheaper $3-400 phone,
| that $99 replacement would be very expensive.
| arepublicadoceu wrote:
| Exactly this! I keep seeing this nonsense that a $70/99
| store replacement battery is a great cheap deal.
|
| Yeap, only compared to a brand new phone. When you have a
| cheap iPhone from 5 years ago and you compare the price
| of a battery replacement to the actual price of your
| phone it quickly become obnoxiously expensive.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Expensive? It's like 50-70EUR to swap an iPhone battery and
| you get a warranty for the battery.
|
| There's no way a user-swappable battery will be cheaper than
| that.
| leptons wrote:
| Back when phones had replaceable batteries they were
| nowhere near 50-70EUR. Half that, if that much.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| They were also really tiny capacity-wise.
| ascorbic wrote:
| There you go. Half the price
| https://www.ifixit.com/products/iphone-8-replacement-
| battery...
| tzs wrote:
| In the US having a battery replaced at a shop is cheap and
| you can probably find a place that will do it in less than an
| hour. There are a few nationwide chains of third-parties that
| do it, plus numerous independent local repair places.
|
| As far as HN goes it is not clear whether or not they are
| covered by GDPR. Yes, the site is viewable in Europe and
| people there can make accounts. But that's not sufficient.
|
| GDPR asserts extraterritorial jurisdiction when you are
| either (1) offering goods and services in the Union or (2)
| monitoring the behavior of data subjects in the Union that
| takes place in the Union.
|
| One of the recitals clarifies that the mere availability of a
| site to Europeans does not necessarily mean it is offering
| goods and services in the Union. The site has to envisage
| serving people in the Union.
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| You are probably the first poster I've seen in here who "gets
| it" about the cookie banners
|
| If you aren't being a bastard, you don't need to show me a
| banner.
| _gianni_ wrote:
| game changer
|
| "I don't care about cookies"
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-a...
| noirscape wrote:
| Better gamechanger: https://consentomatic.au.dk/
|
| I don't care about cookies takes a very secondary approach to
| tracking privacy - if it can't figure out the cookie form,
| it'll just agree to whatever is being asked of it.
|
| Consent-O-Matic will leave the window up if it can't figure
| it out so you can reject them yourself.
|
| Edit: IDCAC also has been bought by notorious crapware
| antivirus scanner manufacturer Avast, so that's another
| reason to stay away from it.
| progfix wrote:
| > Why change the device design to make battery user-replaceable
| when I can bring it to the repair shop?
|
| You'd rather go to a repair shop and pay a service fee for
| something that you can probably do in a couple of minutes at
| home?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> You'd rather go to a repair shop and pay a service fee for
| something that you can probably do in a couple of minutes at
| home?_
|
| HN userbase in a nutshell
| f6v wrote:
| I think that making battery replaceable by user will affect
| the phone design. I had a ton of first-wave Android devices
| back in the day. I don't remember carrying an extra battery
| with me. Maybe someone did, but how many of total users?
|
| Another point is that making a phone water-resistant is
| likely not trivial when you can take the whole back panel
| away.
|
| My point is: are these dramatic changes worth it when the
| battery degrades only couple years after purchase?
| Levitz wrote:
| I've replaced batteries with tools. It's a slab inside the
| phone and it tends to get somewhat hot, there really aren't
| that many places to put them, I have a really hard time
| believing making repairs difficult is not the main reason
| defining the current standard.
|
| Now, things like bluetooth earphones, those I'm curious
| about.
| algas wrote:
| Yeah, the waterproofing concerns me. Neither of the
| examples they brought up in the article had ip67 water
| resistance, which I consider a _bare minimum_ after water
| damaging too many cheap phones. The best phones are more
| water resistant than that. As a meche, you 'll always get a
| better water seal with glue than with screws or snaps. I
| can see this being a real issue.
| plandis wrote:
| I feel like this will lead to more expensive or bulkier phones
| (or both!)
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| I have never used a phone (nor a laptop) where the battery wasn't
| easily replaceable and to be honest I can't really imagine using
| one. Batteries can (and do) go bad and start expanding. Using a
| device where the battery isn't easily accessible feels absolutely
| distressing.
| scotty79 wrote:
| The only device I've ever seen firsthand that had its battery
| swollen was a Macbook. Battery was glued of course so
| replacement wasn't totally easy.
| veave wrote:
| Which goes to show that the option is there and people don't
| take it because they simnply don't want it so this regulation
| is the EU being the EU.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| The option is there indeed, although I'm not sure if the
| general population would be happy with e.g. an Openmoko phone
| back when I already was :P
| onli wrote:
| Disagree. First, the devices with removable batteries are
| exceedingly rare right now. They also often enough are niche
| products. Second, it is not reasonable to expect every
| consumer to always think about what is right, and not instead
| to follow what marketing tells him to buy. This is exactly
| what regulations are good for and historically have solved.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Yes people are too stupid to make their own choices. The EU
| should just start coming out with "5 Year Plans". What
| could possibly go wrong?
|
| The EU's regulations must be why there is a thriving tech
| sector in Europe...
| f1shy wrote:
| There is good development in the UK! Oh... they are not
| EU ... The ones that downvoted this comment will be
| surprised in 10 years...
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| Europes tech sector is thriving, but it's all boring
| technology that actually solves real problems that nobody
| cares about like SAP and shit so the HN crowd don't think
| it exists :)
| scarface_74 wrote:
| "Thriving" a bunch of SaaS companies? If you add up the
| valuations of all of the tech companies in the EU, do
| they sum up to the value of Apple?
|
| That's not even to mention the pay differential for tech
| employees.
| veave wrote:
| Interesting argument against democracy that you have in
| there - we should go back to monarchy. After all, it is not
| reasonable to expect every citizen to think about what is
| right, since instead they follow propaganda.
| Levitz wrote:
| When a chosen official makes a law that the citizens have
| to abide by, that's democracy and not its opposite.
| onli wrote:
| The danger of manipulation through propaganda is indeed
| an argument used in political discourse, though in
| reasonable discussions when talking about direct and
| indirect democracy. The layers of parliamentary systems
| are partly a means of protection against manipulations.
| If you want to read an interesting and nice to read book
| that partly talks about this, then I'd recommend Profiles
| in Courage by John F. Kennedy.
|
| Though a consumer decision is not the same as a political
| vote, at least the latter is not supposed to be similarly
| thoughtless, so there is no need to interpret my comment
| that broadly.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Oligopoly and cartels are adept at serving their interests
| and not the interests of society and customers.
| holri wrote:
| Regulation is not made for the benefit of individuals, but
| for the benefit of society as a whole. In this case, for the
| environment or the planet. I doubt that people don't want a
| planet to live.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Society as a whole is just a bunch of individuals. If its
| bad for individuals its bad for society.
| holri wrote:
| The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > used a phone
|
| there are almost no smartphones where you can easily replace
| the battery these days.
| superkuh wrote:
| But there are options. And instead of having people chose
| themselves to pick these options and refuse to buy terrible
| phones the EU is instead saying it will use the force of
| government violence against other people so that only phones
| of their desired non-shittiness are sold there.
|
| I really don't thinking bringing violence into this situation
| is called for. The EU is showing is an implicit assumption
| that people cannot make choices for themselves and violence
| must be used by the state to get them to make the correct
| choices. That's nasty and a very slippery slope to
| authoritarianism. As a human person with volition I simply
| chose not to buy bad, anti-consumer devices. It is possible.
| And I do it without the government threatening violence on my
| behalf.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Come on, what a stupid take.. what violence? Let's also
| call out the EU next for "using violence" and disallows
| selling grinded shit as food.. capitalism _doesn't work
| without rules_ , period!
|
| It's as per the very Adam Smith! Libertarianism is
| absolutely divorced from reality.
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| Was this comment written by an LLM?
|
| You know those of us in the EU elect these people who write
| these laws, right? And there's public consultations and
| shit?
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| What percent of phones sold in the EU last year had user
| replace batteries?
|
| It seems like revealed preference is for devices without
| replaceable batteries.
| Levitz wrote:
| The people, themselves, are the ones electing EU officials
| and passing these regulations.
| mftrhu wrote:
| You are the one who is bringing "violence" up. Telling
| people that there are standards they have to abide by
| before you will be willing to associate with them - before
| the EU, made up of multiple institutions which are voted by
| and represent its citizens, will allow a certain kind of
| devices to be sold on its market - is not _violence_.
|
| I have no idea how it could ever be considered "violence",
| given the fact that we are not talking about a law against
| human people - with or without volition - but against
| goods.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Thankfully, in the niche I'm interested in it's still common.
| On my Librem 5 I can replace the battery with nothing but a
| fingernail to take the back cover out, and could do so the
| same way on all the other smartphone's I've used in the past
| too.
| Semaphor wrote:
| While it's probably not _easily_ , it was (to me)
| surprisingly easy to change the battery in my OnePlus 5. The
| battery itself was glued, but not in a way that removing it
| would destroy anything else. The other parts just required
| normal phone repair tools.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| I recently replaced the battery in a Pixel 4. Definitely not
| latest-and-greatest, but also still just about getting
| feature updates. I think the biggest challenge for most
| people would be confidence, rather than it being
| intrinsically difficult.
|
| iFixit sold me a kit with all the necessary (OEM) parts and
| (iFixit) tools, and they have a web page with sufficiently-
| detailed instructions.
| sroussey wrote:
| Last time I changed a battery in a phone I paid apple $69
| and walked the mall for an hour. Pretty painless.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| That (or the independent retailer equivalent, and for an
| Android) was plan A, but over a year after formulating
| that plan, it hadn't actually happened. The kit was a
| smidge cheaper, and honestly I quite enjoyed doing it
| myself.
|
| As a bonus, I still have the tools.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Last time I changed a battery in a phone I used my
| fingernail to pop the back cover out and swapped an empty
| battery with a fully charged one in about 30 seconds.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Replaceable vs long-lasting batteries is not quite equivalent.
| You can have two replaceable batteries as easy backup.
|
| I prefer replaceable.
| nuker wrote:
| I'd hate to lose waterproof feature on iPhone. For it'll be
| dealbreaker.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Apple hasn't lost the technology of gaskets, they just chose
| not to use it.
| kaba0 wrote:
| The iphone 14 already fulfills the EU requirements. It is not
| about "on-the road replacement", it's about possibility of
| replacement.
| vletal wrote:
| Submarines are not glued tight, yet they are waterproof.
|
| Much bigger deal for Apple is design. Exposed screws sealing
| the back cover would give Jony Ive OCD ticks, I'm sure
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Submarines are also waaaaaay more expensive. Largely due to
| all the engineering and quality control that goes into what
| you're talking about.
| mastax wrote:
| Thankfully, Jony Ive is gone. Though their design has only
| gotten marginally more practical since.
| algas wrote:
| Every part of your first sentence is inaccurate.
|
| Submarines are glued tight; all the body panels are welded
| together. They do this because making waterproof riveted
| joints is hard [0]. Riveted joints would flex and open up,
| requiring constant maintenance and caulking, and early
| riveted subs would leak trails of fuel behind them (and
| significantly into the sub itself!)
|
| Second, submarines aren't even waterproof. There's lots of
| things that are hard to seal, like the spinning propeller
| shaft. Submarines have a natural advantage over your phone in
| this regard: all the water that leaks in can be pumped out.
|
| Under the new regulations, phones can't be glued or welded
| shut, and there's not much room for a bilge pump in the
| average modern smartphone.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?p=1518898
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| None of that really matters since we have the technology to
| seal phones now, Apple just chooses not to because it makes
| engineering, manufacturing, and designed in obsolescence a
| bit easier for them.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Galaxy S5 was IP67 certified despite having a removable
| battery.
|
| iPhone users had to wait two additional years to get the same
| feature.
|
| It's a solved problem - it's just that Apple dragged its feet
| on it.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| And if you had the rubber cover secured tightly covering the
| ports...
| cbg0 wrote:
| You won't lose it, it's possible to make phones with removable
| battery that are IP68:
| https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover6_pro-11600.ph...
| progfix wrote:
| Why do you say that? There are many devices that are waterproof
| and have replaceable parts (cameras, watches, ...).
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| FWIW, my old iPhone 7 started to have a bulging battery. It
| started pushing on the screen, which started separating from
| the case. Since I could see the innards, that thing was
| probably no longer waterproof. I'd have to take it in for
| service, and I'm not certain that they guarantee its water
| tightness after a repair.
|
| Contrast this to my Galaxy S5. When the battery started
| bulging, I changed it with a new one, and I was back to the
| races.
|
| Bonus points for the whole ordeal taking 5 minutes to go in the
| store, grab the battery, pay, and replace it. Compared to the
| circus that was apple's certified repair shop, which didn't
| quite understand how appointments work, and took 6 hours to
| replace the battery.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| People always bring up the s5 and leave out the part that is
| only water proof if the cover is over the ports and if you
| make absolutely sure that the battery cover is on correctly.
| amlib wrote:
| Having replaceable batteries doesn't require phones to be
| built exactly like they were 15 years ago. It's more about
| the battery being a few easy steps away from being replaced
| rather than the current situation where you need a bunch of
| exoteric tools, lots of patience and disassembling about
| 80% of the phone just to get there. And then requiring even
| more steps in a potentially dangerous process to unglue it.
|
| And by "easy steps" I mean not necessarily something that
| anyone could do with their own hands in 10 seconds (like
| the old phones), but at least something you could do with
| your own tools (standard COMMON screwdrivers and so on..)
| at your leisure within 10 minutes without having any prior
| practice, just following a simple guide. They CAN design
| something like this that also meets all the size, weight,
| cost, safety and water proofness characteristics of the
| current phones. They just don't chose to, either for lack
| of incentives (our competitors won't do it, why should we?)
| or just because they want to profit as much as they can on
| the back of their customers who know no better and has no
| way defend from this racket.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I hope there is a provision in there for laptops as well. All
| this glued in shit is just another plank in the planned
| obsolescence strategy.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Glue and soldering. Modern laptops aren't upgradable anymore.
| onli wrote:
| That's actually in the article :) one of the two laws covers
| all devices with ~~batteries~~ portable batteries.
| amelius wrote:
| Also Airpods?
| onli wrote:
| Yes, see the quotes below.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| Edit: Hm, I re-read the article and I still can't find that
| passage, the word 'laptop' doesn't appear. Can you point it
| out for me?
| vhanda wrote:
| "In addition to not offering the longevity loophole,
| Opsomer also points out that the battery regulation covers
| all products with a portable battery; it's far wider-
| reaching than the phone and tablet-focused ecodesign
| regulation."
| onli wrote:
| Almost didn't find it myself this time. But here it is:
|
| > In addition to not offering the longevity loophole,
| Opsomer also points out that the battery regulation covers
| all products with a portable battery; it's far wider-
| reaching than the phone and tablet-focused ecodesign
| regulation.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Ah! Then they really should give that factoid much better
| billing, including the title. Thank you once again.
| onli wrote:
| Np :) And I agree, that really is an awesome part of this
| progress.
| layer8 wrote:
| An interesting implication is that it apparently also
| applies to devices like the Apple Watch and AirPods.
| sroussey wrote:
| Likely those will no longer be offered or will be twice
| as large in Europe as elsewhere.
|
| I really don't want politician directed design and
| engineering for my devices.
| rlupi wrote:
| https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2023-023
| 7...
|
| > (11) This Regulation should apply to all categories of
| batteries placed on the market or put into service within
| the Union, regardless of whether they were produced in the
| Union or imported. It should apply regardless of whether a
| battery is incorporated into appliances, light means of
| transport or other vehicles or otherwise added to products
| or whether a battery is placed on the market or put into
| service within the Union on its own. This Regulation should
| apply regardless of whether a battery is specifically
| designed for a product or is of general use and regardless
| of whether it is incorporated into a product or is supplied
| together with or separately from a product in which it is
| to be used. Placing on the market is considered to take
| place when the battery has been made available for the
| first time on the Union market, by being supplied by the
| manufacturer or importer for distribution, consumption or
| use in the course of a commercial activity, whether in
| return for payment or free of charge. Thus, batteries
| placed in stock in the Union by distributors, including
| retailers, wholesalers and sales divisions of
| manufacturers, before the date of application of relevant
| requirements of this Regulation do not need to meet those
| requirements.
| sroussey wrote:
| So do EVs need replaceable batteries? Telos can longer
| integrate them into the structure of the car?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _So do EVs need replaceable batteries?_
|
| If swappable EV battery form factors had been
| standardized and enforced from the outset, free of DRM
| and lock-in, we'd be enjoying incredible advantages by
| now. History will see this as a missed opportunity
| without a doubt.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _EU: Smartphones Must Have User-Replaceable Batteries by 2027_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36394922 - June 2023 (13
| comments)
|
| _European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36361510 - June 2023 (605
| comments)
|
| _EU parliament passes law on user replaceable batteries_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36336190 - June 2023 (15
| comments)
|
| _Non-replaceable battery? Not if this proposed EU law passes_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34129250 - Dec 2022 (234
| comments)
|
| _EU legislation could bring back user replaceable batteries_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34085963 - Dec 2022 (23
| comments)
|
| _Replaceable batteries are coming back to phones if the EU gets
| its way_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30867892 - March
| 2022 (14 comments)
|
| _EU to make it mandatory to use customer-replaceable batteries
| in household items_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30660953 - March 2022 (637
| comments)
| bjackman wrote:
| I think this is fantastic news. It will be interesting to see how
| it affects the amount of phones that get discarded.
|
| I think the next bottleneck is likely to be software longevity.
| This has improved a lot lately!
|
| But basically I think phones have now reached a place like
| laptops and desktops where HW capabilities are stable, and
| there's no good reason for devices to be obsolete in 5 years any
| more.
|
| I wonder if regulators said "your software has to get security
| updates for 10 years" would that be enough to get mobile SoC
| vendors upstreaming their HW support and Google streamlining the
| Android update process? (To Google's credit they have already
| done a _lot_ of positive work in that area as I understand it).
| danieldk wrote:
| The second proposed legislation from the article seems to
| require that at least 5 years of updates must be provided after
| the device was last sold. This is far more than many low-end
| and mid-range Android phones, moreover many Android phone
| manufacturers start counting after the device was released, not
| last sold.
|
| Interestingly, they also seem to put upper bounds on how
| quickly these updates should be rolled out. Eg. functionality
| updates must be rolled out within 6 months after another phone
| from the same brand has that update. So eg. if Samsung makes
| Android 12 available on their flagship phone, they also need to
| make it available within 6 months on the other phones that were
| sold to up to 5 years ago.
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa...
|
| This is such an improvement over the status quo.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Is it? It is going to meant that Android can't take advantage
| of the high end features of the new phones that are being
| released, and that old and slow phones are going to get
| updates that makes them run even slower.
|
| To top it of, it is not like manufacturers are into throwing
| away money, so this will likely mean that prices on the
| cheapest phones will increase more.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| It means you'll be getting a "This phone isn't available in
| your country" pop-up when shopping online and all SKUs sold
| in Europe by the maker's subsidiary will have different
| model numbers. Of course, because of the need to support
| the phone for longer on patched kernels and the
| impossibility of charging for updates, the phones will be
| more expensive. The removable battery will also mean that
| the phone isn't waterproof.
| trazire wrote:
| Wasn't the Samsung Galaxy S5 waterproof despite having a
| removable battery?
| 3836293648 wrote:
| It was less so than later phones, but it absolutely
| handled its intended use case of browsing reddit in the
| shower
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| If the hardware was more open it wouldn't even be a
| problem. People could pick and choose ROMs best suited for
| their phones and use cases, just like Linux. Newer phones
| could use bleeding edge features for their HW, and older
| phones could use more stripped down versions to preserve
| battery life.
| brookst wrote:
| What percentage of consumers want to pick the ROM their
| phone runs?
| tomjen3 wrote:
| That is the first good suggestion I have seen in this
| thread. We just need to make it illegal to not allow you
| app to run on an open device.
| XorNot wrote:
| I mean realistically there's never been a good reason
| that phone OS's are as specific as they are. The driver
| situation is _absurd_. The most common highly integrated
| feature - the camera - doesn 't even really run on the
| phone OS anymore since there's usually an image processor
| of some sort inline.
|
| I have absolutely no problems with running a USB-C on the
| phone and component manufacturers to get their act
| together and figure out an open standard to support
| common components (i.e. basebands, cameras, audio
| routing, security chips) so hardware can be supported
| after release (which I would hope in practice would just
| be "in the Linux kernel tree").
| wmf wrote:
| In recent years I think phone hardware has managed to
| outrun software bloat. My latest phone doesn't feel any
| faster than the previous one and it didn't noticeably slow
| down after three Android updates. Five years of updates
| would probably be fine.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > It is going to meant that Android can't take advantage of
| the high end features of the new phones that are being
| released
|
| That's perfectly ok, what you don't have you can't use.
|
| > and that old and slow phones are going to get updates
| that makes them run even slower.
|
| It would be up to the manufacturers to ensure that this is
| not the case. One way to do it would be to reduce bloat.
|
| > To top it of, it is not like manufacturers are into
| throwing away money, so this will likely mean that prices
| on the cheapest phones will increase more.
|
| This makes no sense: manufacturers are competing with each
| other, if the prices on the cheapest phones will increase
| more then surely someone will exploit that.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| >This makes no sense: manufacturers are competing with
| each other, if the prices on the cheapest phones will
| increase more then surely someone will exploit that.
|
| You assume it costs nothing to maintain software for old
| phones.
| cbzoiav wrote:
| So release a handful of budget models and support them
| well instead of 60+ per year.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It wouldn't if they opened up the hardware.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Maybe it'll play out differently on the low-end, but on
| the high-end it seems there's been some "soft collusion"
| where one manufacturer raised prices, and others saw that
| as a signal they can also raise their prices.
| tormeh wrote:
| I think it's more that higher price = more flagship. A
| higher price is in itself a sales argument to a certain
| audience. If you just want a competent phone there's no
| reason to buy a flagship one.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| IDK, I always save up and buy flagships, and convinced my
| wife to do the same, because that's the only reliable way
| to guarantee neither of us will have to suffer through a
| phone that chokes under its own stock software, and is a
| constant pain to use. So yes, I'm one of those for whom
| "higher price = more flagship" is an argument, mostly
| because so far, "most flagship = bestest specs" and "=
| most care taken by the vendor".
| tomatocracy wrote:
| Yes - at the very high end, smartphones are a luxury
| goods market. There's an old adage in luxury goods that
| "if your product isn't selling fast enough, raise the
| price".
| benj111 wrote:
| In the low end, surely you'd get more standardisation.
| Same processor, screen, Bluetooth and mobile chips.
|
| So that from an update pov it's easy. They can always
| differentiate with cameras, batteries, cases etc.
| sroussey wrote:
| So a communist phone for the lower class?
|
| That's the not-nice way of saying the same thing.
|
| I'm not sure if I am for or against that without more
| thought.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I'm still on a dumb phone and that's because I think
| spending $800 on a phone is ridiculous. And it's not like
| I can't afford it.
| cbzoiav wrote:
| I'm on a pixel 6A. It cost me under PS200 factoring in
| the trade in deal that let me trade in a 10 year old
| phone (if you don't have one eBay one for PS5).
|
| And there are plenty of reasonable smart phones for less
| than PS100 these days. You can get something like a
| Motorola E13 for under PS70 that will do everything most
| people use their phones for well (beyond the camera being
| nothing special, but we're comparing to a dumb phone).
| sroussey wrote:
| I spend money where I spend time: phone, chair, monitor,
| mattress.
|
| I rarely drive so my car is 19 years old.
|
| I use my phone daily (right now!) so I have the newest
| one.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| Why explicitly the newest one?
| sroussey wrote:
| I'm on the apple upgrade program. So I just pay monthly.
| I could skip a year and own the phone, but don't really
| care. I want the best cameras. Life is too short.
| klipt wrote:
| An iPhone SE is half that. A budget Android half again.
| Both completely usable, just won't replace your
| mirrorless camera just yet.
| jacquesm wrote:
| There are other reasons.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Standadized parts are an idea from the industrial
| revolution, not communism.
| bmicraft wrote:
| White-labeling an oem part is not exactly the kind of
| communism Marx was known for
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, that is a problem, but that's a different kind of
| regulation (anti-trust). The EU _also_ tends to be pretty
| good at busting such things, but they take their sweet
| time to do it.
| Mystery-Machine wrote:
| This is great because the more expensive phones get, the
| less likely people will want to replace their 2-year old
| phone with a new one.
|
| Plus, those new high end features...there have been barely
| any new features in a smartphone in the last 5+ years (I'm
| exaggerating a bit of course). Check out Fairphone. That's
| an interesting project!
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Isn't this the ultimate "let them eat cake" argument?
| There are many people in the world who can't afford
| anything but the cheapest phone.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Those people don't live in the EU. And anyhow the higher
| cost of the phone are balanced out by the increased
| longevity and support of the device. Lifetime cost may
| very well be lower when people end up replacing their
| phones less frequently and just have to swap a battery.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Has the EU also made poverty illegal?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Sort of? Almost all EU countries have social welfare nets
| and public services strong enough to have people's basic
| needs covered. I think in most countries welfare even
| directly covers basic phone plans.
|
| We aren't in a situation where we need to allow
| environmentally damaging products here for the sake of
| the poor because they're not out on their own. This
| sounds like the old pro-sweatshop arguments people
| sometimes made about developing countries.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| https://www.slowboring.com/p/they-have-homelessness-in-
| europ....
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Poverty is a relative thing, not absolute. As for your
| link downthread - homelessness has _many_ more causes
| than just not being able to afford a place to stay.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| IDK, cheapest phones don't work, and I don't think the
| store price was ever that clear a differentiator, as
| telcos routinely disrupt this signal. You can easily get
| the newest flagships, and phones from the next price
| group below, cheaper than you can get mid-range phones -
| as long as you're willing and able to sign up for a 1-2
| years contract.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Outside of the US and a few other companies, people pay
| full price for phones.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Eventually, always, but not up front. Poorer people
| "prefer" somewhat higher price that gets spread out over
| years, to paying full price up front.
|
| (I put "prefer" in quotes, because it's less of a choice,
| and more the only option they can afford.)
| hexagonwin wrote:
| Phones nowadays are pretty powerful, even on newer
| softwares older devices are pretty usable. I actually still
| daily drive an MSM8974-powered Android phone with an
| Android 11 custom firmware, and it still runs much better
| than some of the cheapest phones on the market.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| It would be interesting if a side effect of this proposed
| legislation, Android manufacturers stop pumping out new
| models as aggressively. It would make sense if that's how it
| turned out, because these manufacturers would effectively be
| crafting their own support nightmares by continuing to put
| out new models at a high cadence.
|
| This in turn should make for better parts availability since
| the window that any given model is manufactured in is wider.
| It'd also incentivize sharing parts between models where
| possible.
|
| All in all, positive for the end consumer. It might've been a
| problem in the earlier days of smartphones, but the category
| has more or less plateaued by now and so the benefit of high
| model churn with each new model sharing little with its
| predecessor is dubious at best.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Fantastic point. Chinese manufacturers pump out SKUs like
| crazy - several new models every six months or so.
|
| Of course, it might turn out as theluketaylor says but I
| doubt it
| theluketaylor wrote:
| Or it actually accelerates the model pumping. If the
| software has to be supported for 5 years after it's last on
| sale there could be a perverse incentive to roll SKUs like
| crazy even if there are not any actual changes so you only
| have to support for the shortest possible time.
| mschild wrote:
| That would still effectively be 5 years of updates which
| is a hell of a lot better than what most manufacturers
| currently offer.
| pizza234 wrote:
| In my experience, the current bottleneck with (Android) phones
| is that the get very slow without any apparent reasons after a
| few years.
|
| I've had multiple reports of acquaintances complaining about
| their phones getting slow after a few years, and I've always
| assumed that they were just full of apps... until it happened
| to me. I can't find an unambiguois explanation; my guess is a
| mix of CPUs deteriorating over time due to heating, and disks
| due to cell degradation, but it's certainly a mystery.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Android seems to suffer from a phenomenon similar to "Windows
| creep" where performance decays over time for no reason in
| particular, even for users who are good stewards of their
| devices. It's more of an issue for some devices than it is
| for others for reasons that are unclear.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I used to think this at well, but then I removed all of the
| useless apps I'd gathered over the years. The improvements
| were almost instant. Installing apps doesn't have a
| noticeable impact on general system performance, but
| install enough of them and you'll find everything mote
| sluggish than you remember.
|
| My phone feels as fast as the day I bought it, which so far
| must've been about four years ago now. It came out with
| Android 9 and is currently running Android 13 through a
| custom ROM.
|
| Newer devices certainly feel snappier, but the old phone
| works as well as it ever did, except for the battery
| carrying almost half of its original capacity. I still have
| my OnePlus One and I can't say it feels like the phone is
| slower than when I bought it.
|
| I think the slowness is caused more by the change in
| perception thsnt be degradation of hardware and the ever
| growing software bloat. Modern phones software comes with
| fluid, high resolution, high speed animations and
| transitions everywhere that don't work well on older
| devices. Once you turn those off, you'll quickly find that
| many older devices will work just as well with modern
| software as they did with their older software.
|
| Bargain bin devices that come out with specs that can't
| even run the factory firmware are the exception, of course.
| However, that segment seems to have shrunk significantly
| since I last looked into buying a phone.
| Levitz wrote:
| I finally made the switch last year, but I used a moto G
| (rather popular model, at least in Europe:
| https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/osprey/ ) for some 6
| years.
|
| It did slow down at one point, but it came back to life after
| installing lineageos, so now I blame bloat for the slow down
| phones suffer from.
| js8 wrote:
| The bottleneck on the Asus phone I replaced recently and I
| had since 2017 or so (before that I had T-Mobile G1 for maybe
| 8 years) was the glass - it breaks really easily because
| there is no plastic protection along the edges as it used to
| be on older phones.
| wesapien wrote:
| How old? I'm still using two LG V20's from 2016 and don't
| experience issues.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| > CPUs deteriorating over time due to heating
|
| I might be wrong, but AFAIK this is not a thing within the
| usual timescales.
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| That interpretation is incredibly generous to the companies
| that benefit from you feeling a need to replace that phone.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's not a mystery at all. Planned obsolescence is a thing
| and manufacturers have all kinds of perverse incentives to
| ensure that your perfectly serviceable phone gets traded in
| for a newer model.
| palata wrote:
| I like to call it "premature obsolescence". I don't believe
| that the manufacturers actively try to make your old phone
| get slower.
|
| Rather the opposite: they don't try to keep your old phone
| working. The devs probably have the latest phone, and write
| code that works well with them. This code can be
| inefficient, as long as it works well on the newer phone,
| even if it makes older phones slower.
|
| Maybe I am being pedantic, but I think it is different: it
| is _not_ that manufacturers actively pay their devs to make
| the phones slower (which would be planned obsolescence),
| but rather they _do not pay_ the devs to make sure the old
| phones _do not get slower_. The latter is "passive", that's
| (to me) premature obsolescence: the manufacturer could
| fight premature obsolescence, but it has a cost (and
| obviously they don't want to pay for it).
| shortcake27 wrote:
| I have an iPhone XS. For what I do, the hardware is still
| perfectly capable. I use basically the same apps I used 5
| years ago. Except now, I often can't run more than 1 app
| at a time. I'll have an app open, switch to another app
| and it'll reload from scratch. Then when I switch back to
| the first app, it too will reload from scratch.
| Multitasking can be very painful.
|
| My understanding is that apps use more RAM now because
| newer phones have more RAM. The result is that older
| phones with less RAM will aggressively kill apps because
| there just isn't enough memory to go around.
|
| As a developer I can see both sides of the coin. On one
| hand, I know it would be possible to reduce the memory
| consumption. On the other hand, I realise this would also
| cost more money. But it isn't malice. Just a choice.
|
| Apple as a manufacturer have gotten a lot better over the
| years. I remember when iOS updates made the iPhone 3G
| literally unusable, but that isn't the case any more. I'm
| running iOS 16 on my iPhone XS with no performance issues
| at all. I expect iOS 17 to be just as fast. They also
| implement features to increase the longevity of their
| phones, like reducing performance and maximum power
| delivery when the battery is degraded. They were lamented
| for this feature but it genuinely saved my iPhone 6S
| which kept on shutting off.
| noirscape wrote:
| There's some degree of active involvement with this. I've
| long suspected Apple to do this for example. The best
| version of iOS for any iDevice is usually the one _just_
| before the one that they use as the hard cutoff point.
|
| Granted, my big example of this is quite old (the iPhone
| 4 would run iOS 6 really well, while on iOS 7 it was a
| glitchy, slow, battery-draining mess) but it does seem to
| be a common trend (my last Apple phone, the iPhone 5 ran
| quite well on iOS 9 but would just have a complete
| breakdown if you installed iOS 10).
|
| They were IIRC also caught red-handed a couple times
| deliberately releasing updates to older iDevices that
| would just _wreck_ their battery life and have a few
| lawsuits pending about that.
| Tagbert wrote:
| " They were IIRC also caught red-handed a couple times
| deliberately releasing updates to older iDevices that
| would just wreck their battery life and have a few
| lawsuits pending about that."
|
| Are you going to just drop an inflammatory statement like
| that and not even try to provide any information to back
| it up?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Is google down or something?
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/11/18/936268845/apple-agrees-to-
| pay...
| Kirby64 wrote:
| That has nothing to do with "wrecking battery life"
| though. They added a fix to prevent the device from
| turning off early due to battery brownouts at lower
| states of charge. It did result in reduced performance
| (and they got a lawsuit cause they weren't open about
| why/how they did it) but this wasn't causing excessive
| battery drain.
| jq-r wrote:
| Lets not use this case as a scapegoat and pretend that
| slowdowns don't exist in iOS.
|
| Pretty much from the first iPhone model it's well known
| that newer iOS releases will slow down your phone and/or
| make your battery drain faster. I even remember when they
| actually broke wifi on a lot of phones with an update and
| pretended that the hardware was defective all the time
| (which it wasn't). Hell I'm looking right now my old
| iPhone 8 which got a new genuine battery, and it's a
| lagging, hot mess so I only use it when I don't want to
| burn the battery of my new phone.
|
| My good colleague resisted updating her iPhone 11 to any
| newer version of iOS from the one she got, but couple of
| months ago she couldn't install her banking app anymore
| so she broke down and updated the OS. Instant laggines,
| and battery lost close to 40%. Just like that. She got
| mad, and when the madness subsided, she bought a new
| iPhone. Mission accomplished for Apple.
|
| All of this could be much avoided if they would allow you
| to install previous versions of iOS, but they don't for
| obvious reasons. And before anyone mentions security,
| that is a load of BS because even previous iOS versions
| get patched up. So planned or premature obsolesence, the
| user just gets frustrated with an old phone which
| hardware-wise might be perfectly fine, but software-wise
| an unusable mess and buys a new phone. I hope the forced
| user battery replacement works, and I'm sure they could
| look into these forced software updates which are also
| largerly contributing to larger problem at hand.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| I had a Samsung Galaxy S2 and a Nexus 10 which both suffered
| from flash related problems making them incredibly slow.
| Samsung never fixed that nor was there ever a recall.
|
| I also owned a HTC One M7 which worked well for a very long
| time but it also got slow even though there were no hardware
| problems. The M7 worked just as good from day one if I
| factory reset it, it only becomes slow again once all the
| apps are updated. What I think is happening here is that apps
| move to the newer Android API but keep compatibility with
| older Android versions through compatibility layers, and they
| compound so once the entire compatibility layer stack becomes
| "too thick" the CPU gets bogged down and the whole thing
| becomes slow...
| summerlight wrote:
| It's probably due to old battery causing imperfect thermal
| control then extreme throttling. Phones are not really well
| tested on aged batteries since it's hard to artificially make
| such one that fits well to real world scenario, and
| manufacturers also don't have good incentives to do so.
| jemmyw wrote:
| I haven't noticed this at all. My phone is 4 years old and
| feels just as fast as always. My previous one I remember
| thinking how snappy it was after a factory reset when I sold
| it on. The one before that died. The one before that kept its
| speed but the battery turned to shit and I couldn't be
| bothered trying to get it changed. I'm just about to replace
| this one but it's still in great working order so one of my
| kids wants it as their first phone.
|
| There was one Android device my wife had that got slower and
| slower and it was a known issue with the disk.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| > But basically I think phones have now reached a place like
| laptops and desktops where HW capabilities are stable, and
| there's no good reason for devices to be obsolete in 5 years
| any more.
|
| Unless you care about your phone working as a phone. 2G was
| discontinued years ago, 3G is rapidly being dropped by the
| carriers and how much longer before 4G is discontinued?
|
| > streamlining the Android update process? (To Google's credit
| they have already done a _lot_ of positive work in that area as
| I understand it).
|
| What exactly is Google doing? Apple released a security update
| for the 2013 iPhone 5s earlier this year.
| Freeaqingme wrote:
| Then there's still wifi of course. Admittedly, a phone
| without cellular connections is less useful, but it could
| still be used to function like a tablet that's simply kept at
| home etc.
| crote wrote:
| > Unless you care about your phone working as a phone
|
| Most of that is a chicken-and-egg problem. 3G was dropped
| because very few phones were still using it, and you could
| not run 3G on the same frequency as 4G/5G. If phones lasted
| longer, more people would've remained on 3G, so they would
| not have dropped it. Furthermore, 4G and 5G can share the
| same equipment and frequency due to Dynamic Spectrum Sharing,
| so there is no technical reason to quickly get rid of 4G like
| we wanted with 2G & 3G.
| linooma_ wrote:
| Not here in the US. The carriers wanted to discontinue 3G
| for years. They really only started it in earnest in 2018.
| It took them about 3 years longer from the first dates
| given to finally kill 3G. It sound to me as if 3G phones
| didn't bite the dust as fast as carriers assumed or
| customers refused to upgrade at the rate they expected.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| 3G was dropped because the same frequency could better used
| for 4G. Unless you somehow found a way to get around the
| laws of physics.
| phh wrote:
| > Unless you care about your phone working as a phone. 2G was
| discontinued years ago, 3G is rapidly being dropped by the
| carriers and how much longer before 4G is discontinued?
|
| First 4g devices were released in 2012, in 2014 you could
| find sub 150EUR 4G devices. If you bought the last 3G phone
| in 2015~ (there were still 3G phones after that, but nothing
| reasonable), 10 years of network support is still reasonably
| within reach.
| XorNot wrote:
| Even in your example you point out that 3G "is being rapidly
| dropped" but it's not dead yet. The iPhone 3G came out in
| 2008. So just today, 15 years later, it would still work on
| most networks (certainly I can still use 3G in Australia).
| pdw wrote:
| That's the situation in the US. In most of the EU, you can
| expect either 2G or 3G to be available for at least five more
| years.
| p0ppe wrote:
| Nope. 3G is being shut down in Finland as we speak. Should
| be finished by early 2024.
| bobviolier wrote:
| It's pretty well explained here what Google is trying to do:
| https://www.xda-developers.com/android-project-mainline-
| modu...
|
| That being said, Apple is atm way better in providing
| longterm software updates, but that doesn't mean Google isnt
| doing a lot of work there also.
|
| Next to that, there is already a lot of apps that are updated
| through the Play Store instead of an OS update. Mail, Dialer,
| Android Auto, Photos, Camera, Keyboard, Contacts, Clock, Play
| services, ...
| scarface_74 wrote:
| They've been "trying to" do the same thing since 2014.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_One
|
| And none of those apps help when there are security
| vulnerabilities at lower levels.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| 3G is alive and well in IoT.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| All of the US carriers are shutting down 3G.
|
| https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/the-3g-shutdown-how-will-it-
| aff....
| PeterStuer wrote:
| What I implied was it might not be a big thing for
| smartphones, but there are a lot of IoT devices out there
| that will fail the 3G sunset.
| c2h5oh wrote:
| Qualcomm is still terrible at getting their SoCs supported in
| mainline kernel and as a result as soon as they stop providing
| updates to the kernel fork you're SoL.
|
| This can happen as early as 3 years after initial SoC launch
| phh wrote:
| > To Google's credit they have already done a _lot_ of positive
| work in that area as I understand it
|
| They haven't. I've extensively worked on their Project Treble,
| and they did a beautiful work to perfectly versionize every
| behavior OEM might depend on, or version driver APIs. They
| could use that to provide long term support (which is what I do
| in my own project, the foundation is very sound), but in
| practice they use it as a way to obsolete code faster:
|
| Before Project Treble, Android kept whatever code was in use.
| So if some OEM was still using a 5 year old code path, and it
| was still working fine it would remain.
|
| After Project Treble, every driver API has a new version every
| year, and the older ones will be deprecated (read: purposely
| broken or completely removed) within 3 years.
|
| Before project treble, OEMs could maintain the Android for
| their platform quite effortlessly for 5 years _, nowadays they
| have to rewrite whole parts of drivers after 3 years.
|
| _ someone will come and say that since Project Treble OEMs have
| been upgrading for longer. But I consider it 's completely a
| matter of timing, the smartphone market stagnating. Look at
| nVidia Shield and fairphones for reference.
| layer8 wrote:
| Interestingly, the regulation apparently also applies to small
| devices like smart watches and wireless earbuds.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| That's not great - those devices really do not have space for a
| replaceable battery. And no, I don't want them bigger than they
| already are.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Replaceability is not about space but design.
|
| In particular this legislation lets the maker build sealed
| and compact products as long as there's a reasonable way to
| open them and replace the battery.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Replaceability is very much about space. LiPoly batteries
| are very dangerous without an outer impact shell. If
| they're bent or punctured they'll catch fire or explode.
|
| Batteries sealed in a device use the body of the device as
| their impact shell so get more battery mass and thus
| storage for a given envelope. A replaceable battery needing
| its _own_ impact shell will have less storage for the same
| envelope volume.
|
| This is very much a space problem. For any given envelope a
| replaceable battery will end up with less storage than a
| non-replaceable battery.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > A replaceable battery needing its own impact shell
|
| Why ? Current battery replacements are sold without an
| impact shell, and the main issue is to have to remove all
| the parts to reach the battery at the very bottom of the
| stack and then deal with the dirty gluing.
|
| A design where you remove the bottom first, unglue the
| battery through pull tabs and stick the new battery would
| have exactly the same properties, the body would still
| act as an impact shell, the only difference being it's a
| 5 or 6 step process instead of literaly 55.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Current LiPoly replacement batteries are _not_ sold as
| consumer items. You can 't buy them off a peg at a normal
| retail store. Take a look at phone batteries sometime and
| make note of the logos everyone ignores.
|
| A UR mark (its a backwards printed UR) is a UL
| certification for components meant to go _in_ a UL listed
| product but themselves aren 't individually certified as
| UL products. Not that UL or any other testing labs are
| the end-all be-all of safety but in _liability_ terms
| they are important.
|
| The UR testing means the component isn't outright
| defective for purpose when installed in the UL listed
| device. So if there's ever a lawsuit around a device and
| all the components are UR labeled and the product is UL
| listed the manufacturer is unlikely to be forced to
| recall that entire class of device.
|
| In order for a battery to get UL listed instead of UR
| listed it needs additional testing (money) and any sub-
| models or major changes need to be retested. It's much
| easier to get UR labeling for a component that can only
| be used in the intended UL listed device. Phone retailers
| do not want component-only certified things sitting in
| warehouses in shitty retail packaging.
|
| Besides the whole liability issue there's issue of scale.
| Manufacturing a hundred million widgets with glue to hold
| batteries in place is more efficient than screws. Screws
| require screw holes, assembly is slower, and screws work
| themselves loose with thermal expansion/contraction. Glue
| is more efficient for assembly and overall safer over the
| life of the device (measured in the total manufacturing
| run divided by defects from battery slippage).
|
| Devices _could_ require fewer disassembly steps but it
| would be at the cost of assembly complexity. A $1 more in
| assembly costs is an extra hundred million it costs Apple
| or Samsung for just one model of phone.
|
| I know Apple is just evil and can do no right but there
| _are_ reasons shit is built they way it is. iPhones are
| far sturdier and resilient than they were ten years ago
| and their batteries last as long /longer despite higher
| power draw of their SoC and radios. Part of that
| sturdiness is gluing pieces together to better handle
| impacts and batteries that have more power storage per
| volume because they do t need thick impact shells.
| There's pretty good odds that making an iPhone with less
| glue and more easily replaced batteries would lead to
| more phones going in the trash due to them breaking more
| easily.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Thanks for the details.
|
| If I correctly get your point, the whole UL/UR system
| will need to be revised to adapt to more consumers
| directly buying replacement parts, as they'll expand
| beyond the nerds following iFixit tutorials.
|
| On the glue part, sretch release strips are simple enough
| to deal with.
| progfix wrote:
| I did a 10 second internet search and found earbuds that have
| a replaceable battery and are not bigger than usual ones.
|
| https://pqearbuds.com/
| layer8 wrote:
| There's certainly some compromises to be made for
| sustainability, but I don't think they have to be a deal
| breaker.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| As long as it has any impact on weight, battery size, water
| tightness or make the device bigger its a deal breaker for
| me.
| layer8 wrote:
| Sounds like you're incredibly lucky that current products
| just happen to barely not exceed your deal-breaking
| threshold. A few years ago you wouldn't have found any
| products meeting your requirements.
| mk_stjames wrote:
| In the last decade and a half I have owned 4 phones total and I
| have yet to have one that has such a poor battery that it has
| needed the battery replaced before the phone itself was
| essentially obsolete. I don't know if maybe other people just use
| their phone so much more than me... Mine sits here on my desks
| and I look at it for notifications every now and then, maybe send
| a text... Thats it. Take a phone call once every few days.
|
| My phone is a Pixel 2 from 2018. The battery lasts nearly 2 days
| without charging, easily. If I am about to go out and use it
| heavily on maps or GPS... I charge it, and I get an evening's use
| out of it still easily.
|
| Maybe I'm just not the normal user. But for these people running
| batteries dead more than once a day and needed to replace a
| battery once every 2 years... I don't get it.
|
| And this is a level of regulation that I don't think will
| actually do much to save batteries from landfills.
|
| Meanwhile in Spain there single-use vape pens for sale in every
| Tabac shop that have small lithium ion cells in them, and people
| everywhere are literally buying and tossing those cells in the
| trash every goddamn day. I find them laying on sidewalks all the
| time. This is still allowed, but a battery tightly sealed in a
| phone that should last a normal person years is a problem?
| MitPitt wrote:
| So, you don't use your phone, and it doesn't run out of
| battery. Interesting observation.
| mk_stjames wrote:
| The revelation here isn't that I don't understand batteries,
| it's that I don't understand how people use their phones...
| c2h5oh wrote:
| I the last 5 years alone I've replaced batteries in:
|
| - Pixel 4, more than doubling it's battery life
|
| - Pixel 2 XL making it usable again
|
| - One Plus 6 almost doubling it's battery life
|
| So clearly mileage will vary.
| askonomm wrote:
| No more waterproof phones I guess. This saddens me. I find it
| very useful when driving my bike outdoors with it being mounted
| to my bike.
| c2h5oh wrote:
| You can still have a waterproof phone with replaceable battery
| through the revolutionary technology of gaskets ;-) There were
| several models like that already before manufacturers figured
| out it's cheaper to glue them
| robotnikman wrote:
| The Samsung Galaxy S5 has a replaceable battery and was
| waterproof, so they are not mutually exclusive options.
| kwanbix wrote:
| Yeah, I honestly don't see the advantage.
|
| What I would ask is that companies that create phones without
| replaceable batteries, should provide replacement by a
| reasonable fee (let's say no more than 9% the cost of the
| phone).
| celestialcheese wrote:
| The problem that these bills are trying to solve isn't just
| consumer, it's End of Life management at the recycler level.
| Glued-in, Li-ion batteries over the years have caused so much
| headache for ewaste processors. Apple has improved over the
| years with their glue tabs, but it's still a big problem in
| the market as a whole.
|
| https://www.popsci.com/energy/lithium-ion-batteries-
| recyclin... https://www.waste360.com/business/li-ion-battery-
| fires-unfai...
| kwanbix wrote:
| That is why I said that companies should provide a
| reasonably priced battery exchange program.
| kvdveer wrote:
| Contrary to how this bill is usually portrayed in the news,
| this bill allows for using screws and gaskets. Those are enough
| to make a phone waterproof. Lots of other waterproof equipment
| achieves Ip68 with only screws and gaskets. I don't see why
| phones should be any different.
| limuc wrote:
| No. There are already phones that can do this. For example the
| Samsung Xcover 5.
| lost_tourist wrote:
| You have that little confidence that engineers can make things
| waterproof? all it takes is a sealed environment with a gasket
| and a bunch of screws. Making "clip in" backs that are
| waterproof is a challenge, but there's no reason that has to be
| the norm, screws have worked for centuries and don't break
| nearly as often as clips
| Nocturium wrote:
| [flagged]
| mantas wrote:
| Iphone battery is already pretty close to replaceable by this
| law.
|
| You need a common tool to get in (trident screwdriver is
| available in most DIY shops), then glue tabs can be pried by
| hand.
|
| Doable for layman? Well, some people are afraid of opening up a
| device in any way. How do we (or, rather, lawyers) draw a line?
| ekianjo wrote:
| > then glue tabs can be pried by hand.
|
| There should be no reason to use glue for batteries.
| Unnecessary hazard that can easily lead to house fire if you
| have to use force of a thermal source to remove the glue.
| 05 wrote:
| If you discharge the battery first it won't catch on fire if
| you puncture or overheat it.. so, don't replace a fully
| charged battery and you should be fine.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Yes. But you don't expect everyone to do that, when you
| think about safety. You assume the worst, not the best.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| If we can't expect people to be safe with accessing
| batteries we should make the batteries less accessible,
| not more accessible.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > accessing batteries we should make the batteries less
| accessible
|
| or use screws to secure batteries, not glue, you know.
| XorNot wrote:
| People know not to puncture a battery. But if you set it
| up to force them to apply force to a battery, some
| batteries are going to get punctured.
|
| Which is the exact point of this law: the batteries
| should be designed to be easily replaceable.
| adhvaryu wrote:
| > Doable for layman? Well, some people are afraid of opening up
| a device in any way. How do we (or, rather, lawyers) draw a
| line?
|
| Start by not requiring a screwdriver in the process of changing
| batteries. I remember the early days of Samsung/Android phones
| where you only needed to pry open the back cover using your
| nail and the battery was easily taken out.
|
| It's a small change but the layman will be way less afraid.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > Start by not requiring a screwdriver in the process of
| changing batteries.
|
| Thats not actually part of the law though, is it?
| deergomoo wrote:
| > Start by not requiring a screwdriver in the process of
| changing batteries. I remember the early days of
| Samsung/Android phones where you only needed to pry open the
| back cover using your nail and the battery was easily taken
| out
|
| God no. With those designs you lose so much capacity to the
| extra stuff required to support it.
|
| You effectively need two backs--one to cover the battery and
| another to cover the components inside. You also largely lose
| the ability to do non-rectangular/multi-cell batteries, which
| is critical to maximising capacity in many modern phones.
| kaba0 wrote:
| That's not part of the law, and it absolutely shouldn't be.
| minimaul wrote:
| My experience was that those kinds of back covers would
| always come loose over time and/or after they were removed a
| few times they never fit properly again.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Maybe it depends on how they're made.
|
| My Galaxy S5's cover never had any issues, even after a few
| months with a bulging battery. It stayed in place no
| problem, and the phone was still waterproof enough to not
| care at all about being in the pouring rain on a motorcycle
| for several hours at a time.
| mvanbaak wrote:
| Those phones were not water resistant. While maybe not
| important to some, to others it is
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| The Galaxy S5 was IP67 rated. The back cover could be
| opened with just a fingernail.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Only if the rubber port was on the port. Not exactly
| engineering excellence.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Right. Although there wasn't any cover on the headphones
| jack, and apparently newer phones can have waterproof
| open ports.
|
| Engineering excellence or not, the fact is that that old
| phone was both weatherproof and had an easily replaceable
| battery.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Don't you think "only if the port was covered" and if the
| battery and the cover were put back just right are big
| caveats?
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I don't know what you mean by "just right" for the cover.
| I just clipped it back on, without taking any special
| precautions, and it seemed fine under heavy rain.
| Granted, I didn't try throwing it in a pool, though, so I
| don't know if it would have survived that.
|
| Furthermore, the port cover was just in the way if I
| didn't clip it back in, so I always did, and, as above,
| never had any issue.
|
| While I agree that I much prefer not having an USB port
| cover, I think that's pretty much a solved issue, seeing
| how my iphone 7 didn't have one and survived just fine in
| a downpour.
|
| My point is that it is absolutely possible to have an
| easily replaceable battery while keeping the phone
| waterproof.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-
| galaxy-s5-smart...
|
| > After every charge and boot sequence, the phone reminds
| the user to preserve the IP67 rating by securing the back
| cover and making sure the USB flap is closed. This
| reminder gets old fast, but is necessary considering how
| rushed and absentminded people can be
|
| On top of that, to get a reputable battery for it that
| includes NFC support (because the NFC was built into the
| battery) was not that much cheaper than just taking an
| iPhone to an authorized dealer for replacement.
| adhvaryu wrote:
| > Those phones were not water resistant.
|
| And it's 10 years later in 2023. If Apple/other big
| companies want to they can do R&D and come up with
| waterproof+dustptoof solutions.
|
| Let's face it, they don't want to because it sells more
| phones.
| orwin wrote:
| It will be left at the judge's appreciations if it ever come to
| courts.
|
| Tbh, i can only see things go to trial if a consumer
| association (iFixit) deems the law not followed, and knowing
| consumer associations, they will first talk to and advice the
| offending company before going to courts.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| People understand screws and covers, use screws and covers. The
| gluing is done because it's cheap and easily done on mass
| production scales. When people have to start prying apart glued
| together parts they get nervous and stop, especially on a $1200
| phone.
| kaba0 wrote:
| > How do we (or, rather, lawyers) draw a line?
|
| That's _literally_ what courts do.
| brvsft wrote:
| Those tabs are not that easy to pull by hand. Very easy to
| break and then you're forced to pry out the battery, which is
| less safe than if it didn't need prying.
|
| I know the glue is unnecessary because every time I've replaced
| a battery, I didn't glue the new one back in, and my phone
| performed fine.
| dagmx wrote:
| Your last sentence is odd because obviously the glue isn't
| something like thermal paste. It won't affect performance.
|
| The glue is there for structural reasons. Adhesion allows
| better rigidity by making use of the structure around it.
| arghwhat wrote:
| iFixit disagrees:
| https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+14+Battery+Replacement/1...
|
| Hairdryer, suction anti-clamp, pick that must NOT be inserted
| more than 3mm or you break the device, both pentalobe and
| triwing security screws (screw types that only exist to stop
| users from opening things), numerous fragile cables that must
| be disconnected, and of course a glued in exposed cell battery.
|
| I don't think we have to worry about this being classified as
| easily user replaceable with basic tools.
| systemtest wrote:
| It is interesting that the EU only wants to regulate markets that
| they are not participating in. They don't make smartphone anymore
| so any regulations isn't hurting them. It would be admirable if
| they held the same standard for vehicles, including brands from
| the EU.
| XorNot wrote:
| I mean if this is too onerous a regulation, the smartphone
| makers are free to pull out of the world's third largest
| market...
| crote wrote:
| The EU doesn't make smartphones anymore in the same way that
| the USA doesn't make smartphones anymore. There's still plenty
| of design going on, but the manufacturing is outsourced to
| Asia.
| refurb wrote:
| This is a good observation.
|
| It's easy to pass onerous regulations when you won't take an
| economic hit for it.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| I would think the ban on petrol cars (2035?) does affect
| europeans manufacturers.
| forty wrote:
| I'd consider the being the buying side of a market as
| "participating" in that market.
|
| Vehicles are definitely regulated in Europe (see that story
| with Volkswagen, an EU brand, cheating the regulation as an
| example [1])
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
|
| EDIT: I realize this started in the US but EU countries also
| went after VW and other EU brands after that
| jeroenhd wrote:
| While car companies obviously need to follow regulations,
| those regulations are quite lax compared to the USA.
|
| We didn't have as big an emissions scandal in Europe because
| the European Commission knew about the manipulation as early
| as in 2010 but didn't act on it.
|
| When it comes to regulation in the car industry, I can't help
| but feel like the car manufacturers are the ones writing the
| law. They'll gladly make the safety technology they're
| already building into every car mandatory to get rid of
| foreign competition, but when emissions come up, progress
| slows down all of the sudden.
|
| This stuff happens everywhere regulation applies, though. I
| distinctly remember an absurd article shared here on HN that
| detailed how over in the USA there was a conspiracy by Big
| Pasta to alter regulations in such a way that would prevent
| European brands from competing, for example.
| forty wrote:
| I think it can go both ways: heavily regulate stuff built
| abroad to reduce their profit, heavily regulate stuff made
| locally so that standard is too high for foreign
| competition to join the market.
| jq-r wrote:
| Oh yeah, EU regulators huffed and puffed when it was
| discovered that they are not doing their jobs and actually
| are in cahoots with the industry. Great example there.
|
| If EU, or maybe just Germany was even concerned about ecology
| they would heavily tax those heavy monsters of "crossover"
| cars and similar garbage and transfer that money to EVs, but
| they don't. Nobody touches EU car industry where it actually
| hurts.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > It would be admirable if they held the same standard for
| vehicles, including brands from the EU
|
| This regulation does cover vehicles.
|
| It also covers a wide range of devices, including ones that are
| indeed made by the EU.
|
| Beyond that, I think "only regulate things you make" is a silly
| standard. The point of regulations are (or should be) to
| protect consumers, not to disadvantage companies. The EU has
| lots of consumers who buy smartphones and thus has a very
| legitimate reason to want to regulate them to protect their
| consumers.
| sroussey wrote:
| One EV is like thousands or hundreds of thousands of
| headsets.
|
| So redesigning Tesla cars will get a bigger result than apple
| AirPods.
|
| And there is a Gigafactory in Germany that will be first up
| to make clunky Teslas. So they are definitely regulating
| themselves.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| As a European citizen I agree that the way car manufacturers
| are given the satin glove treatment is despicable.
|
| That said, the EU does regulate every market it participates
| in. If you can find it on a store shelf, you'll find EU
| regulation about it.
|
| One of the major driving forces behind the Brexit vote was to
| "get rid of all of the EU paperwork". Of course they still have
| to get their paperwork in order if they want to export to the
| EU now, but for their internal market they're free to ignore
| all the EU regulations if they want to. As it turns out, most
| of those regulations were quite reasonable so a lot of the old
| regulations remained unchanged, but they were definitely there.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| Is there a significant amount of electric vehicles that get
| discarded because it's too hard to change the battery?
| bluescrn wrote:
| EVs should absolutely be required to use standardised and
| replaceable battery modules. (Replaceable by any competent
| mechanic, at least). Although theft would become a concern,
| when the battery pack makes up over half of the value of any
| EV.
|
| But it's amazing how many people are so quick to essentially
| say 'F the planet, I don't mind buying a new phone every 2
| years, and I really don't want my next iPhone to be 2mm
| fatter!'.
| hef19898 wrote:
| You don't hear about them, but they do exist...
| systemtest wrote:
| Nokia has been sold, I don't know about any EU smartphone
| brands outside of Fairphone. The market is so small that
| adding regulation isn't hurting the EU, which is why its an
| easy target compared to the automotive industry.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > I don't know about any EU smartphone brands outside of
| Fairphone.
|
| That's your problem then, don't you think?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_phone_brands_b
| y...
|
| Now, whether all of these are actually manufactured locally
| or not is another matter, but the EU _definitely_ is
| regulating its own market. As they have been empowered to
| do so.
|
| I'm all for it. And I would love to see standardized
| battery packs for electric vehicles as well because I think
| that will be a much bigger issue in the longer term.
| systemtest wrote:
| > That's your problem then, don't you think?
|
| No need to play the man or be belittling.
|
| Point still stands that the EU smartphone market is so
| little that any regulation isn't hurting them. Regulation
| on car repairability definitely would, hence why you stil
| need to visit the BMW dealer if you want to change the
| 12-volt battery or activate your heated seats. The EU
| will not likely do anything about that.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It is _their_ market to regulate.
|
| And right to repair is very much a part of EU
| regulations. Without those regulations you'd be in a far
| worse situation.
|
| https://single-market-
| economy.ec.europa.eu/sectors/automotiv...
|
| If BMW idiocy gets you upset: don't drive BMW. My car is
| 25 and I can do just about anything I want on it. Your
| beef is first and foremost with BMW, and I'm fairly sure
| that if the EU deems this kind of behavior anti
| competitive it will be smacked down, even if the
| participants are all EU based.
|
| You seem to want regulation to be perfect, but in light
| of manufacturer abuses it's a catch-up game.
|
| https://www.automotiveworld.com/articles/how-far-will-
| the-in...
|
| Is a good article on the subject, it also helps to see
| that there is a fine line between what _has_ to be made
| available and be subscription free and where
| manufacturers may have some leeway.
|
| I agree with you that changing out a battery (which is a
| pretty common affair) should never require a trip to the
| stealer.
| systemtest wrote:
| It is their market but they don't have any significant
| participation in it, which is why regulation is easy.
| There isn't any significant downside to it for them.
|
| I don't have beef with BMW, that was just an example.
| "Don't drive a BMW" is the equivalent of "Don't buy an
| iPhone" if you care about repairability. It shouldn't be
| like that.
| Levitz wrote:
| Consumers are the whole reason as to why any market
| exists. You can think about regulation as "You have to do
| this to sell here" but also as "They have to do that for
| you to buy it here". The EU comes in agreement as to what
| kind of products they ought to purchase and this is the
| result. Your wallet is not the only way to vote in modern
| capitalism.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You see correlation and infer causation but maybe the
| better way to see this is to realize that the EU is
| large, has a ton of work on their plate already and
| relatively limited budget to work with whereas
| manufacturers will always just see how far they can
| stretch it.
|
| The number of EU companies affected by EU regulations is
| _far_ larger than the number of companies from abroad.
| Your example fails because the same amount of regulation
| that applies to EU car manufacturers _also_ applies to
| manufacturers from abroad. The EU is in that sense one of
| the fairest players.
|
| According to your philosophy no amount of regulation on
| mobile phones would be acceptable because the EU has no
| big name phone manufacturer any more. But as others have
| already pointed out this legislation affects far more
| than just mobile phones so your argument simply fails.
| systemtest wrote:
| The EU has time to responds to Apple rumours so it
| appears they have time to crack down on BMW, Mercedes and
| many other EU brands that limit user repairability.
| jacquesm wrote:
| So, you want them to target BMW, Mercedes and other EU
| brands rather than to address all of the car
| manufacturers in the same way?
|
| That's exactly the kind of thing they don't do, and for
| good reasons.
|
| As you can see from the link posted above they do a lot
| to ensure right to repair, but it isn't perfect. Give it
| some time.
| poetaster wrote:
| The wp article does mention gigaset and
| https://www.shiftphones.com/ but not Fairphone nor
| https://www.carbonmobile.com/ who as with shift and
| gigaset are building manufacturing in Germany (mostly
| north east). Shift has a plant in China and just does
| finishing in Germany. But that's a given, I believe.
| Can't source all things in one country. Or?
| jacquesm wrote:
| If everything that sourced a component or subassembly
| from China would disappear the world would be a
| substantially different place.
| palata wrote:
| Hmm I can see Fairphone on that Wikipedia article...
| hef19898 wrote:
| There are regulations around repairability of cars for
| example. You just don't hear about those on HN. Plus all
| the safety regulations around aircraft, cars and aon on.
| Markets in which EU-based _companies_ very much operate in.
| poetaster wrote:
| Gigaset is a German company who manufactures and assembles
| in Germany. https://www.gigaset.com/hq_en/smartphones/ A
| German remarkting firm Volla sells them with their own
| Android. The swiss company Rephone also rebrands with
| upgrads the GS5 (6GB RAM instead of 4).
|
| All the recent Gigaset phones have replaceable Batteries. I
| use a GS5 and a Rephone with SailfishOs.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Oh wow, I remember them from ISDN wireless phone times.
| All a bit large for me, but cool that they exist and do
| this :)
| poetaster wrote:
| It's also perhaps of interest that one of the few
| alternative OS efforts is still being led by ex-nokia folk
| out of Tampere, Finland. Jolla.
|
| Much of the Plasma development for mobile is spear headed
| by devs in Germany (KDE folk).
|
| Point being, the heritage of Nokia is not quite dead yet.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I have one and it is a pretty good and solid phone. Not
| quite a smartphone (it runs Linux) and I very much like
| it. Absolutely indestructible, cheap and unbelievable
| battery life (so long I sometimes forget I have to charge
| it at all).
| hyperdimension wrote:
| What model are you talking about? I'd like a portable
| Linux device. I was born too early for the N900, and it
| wouldn't get cellular coverage in this day and age even
| if I were to buy one...
| jacquesm wrote:
| N800 tough. They are pretty serious about the 'tough'
| bit, I'm fairly sure you could use it in hand-to-hand
| combat and at least the phone would survive.
| hyperdimension wrote:
| Thanks, that looks like a pretty nice phone. Even has a
| microSD card slot and a 3.5mm jack. Also, I didn't know
| KaiOS was based on Linux. Is it exposed anywhere? Can you
| get a terminal on it or ssh into it?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, you can, but I haven't actually used that. The
| camera is pretty crappy and there are some (minor) UI/UX
| issues, but overall it is very solid, it's essentially a
| repackaged 8110 with a focus on battery life and
| robustness.
|
| It has dual SIM capability but if you use that you lose
| the SD slot.
|
| There is also GerdaOS (instead of KaiOS) and you can run
| Debian on it. When I get my next phone (which could well
| be years, this one is now 4 years old and still going
| strong) I plan on running stock linux on it to see what
| else you can do with it. I paid about 80 euros for it.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > It is interesting that the EU only wants to regulate markets
| that they are not participating in.
|
| The EU _only_ regulates markets they are participating in. The
| only country that regulates markets that they do not
| participate in is the United States, and for the most part they
| seem to be doing so for fairly good reasons (such as with the
| anti money laundering and anti terrorism financing laws).
| Though of course you are free to disagree with whether or not
| you think those are good reasons.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Why are you ignoring what he means for an alternate
| interpretation of that particular sentence? He explicitly
| clarified that he's talking about the EU not making
| smartphones. Your reply is more like hijacking his comment
| than actually conversing.
| jacquesm wrote:
| And he's wrong about that too.
| cududa wrote:
| Do any phones designed by EU companies move more than a
| million units per year?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Are you going for the record of all moving the goalposts
| comments?
| DuckFeathers wrote:
| [dead]
| kaba0 wrote:
| The EU doesn't produce anything. You know, not everything
| works by lobbying on this side of the pond.
| amelius wrote:
| > It is interesting that the EU only wants to regulate
| markets that they are not participating in.
|
| It's great! Exactly because there is no conflict of interest.
|
| (From another viewpoint, they have ASML which is crucial for
| the creation of these products so let's not pretend they are
| only on the consumer side of things)
| [deleted]
| cbg0 wrote:
| > the EU only wants to regulate markets that they are not
| participating in
|
| This is incredibly inaccurate, there's tons of regulations in
| the EU for just about anything produced or imported here. One
| big example: cars, which the EU produces quite a lot of, see
| EURO emission standards for a specific example.
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