News: EU mandating changeable batteries starting 2027

[Sophisticatednut]

How so? Apple could simply include the cost of shipping in the replaced component price and ship both ways for free, and only charge if not returned.

Or, they could design a cheap disposable kit and include that in the component price.

If you bought 3rd party products they should have to include the required tools.

Thats providing a requirement to rent and not purchase

As you can see here it would be quite hard to do that. Considering the price need to be reasonable for said replacement part.

And a portable battery needs to replaceable by common tools unless Apple decides to give them free of charge. And the ability to replace the battery with another compatible battery without affecting its functionality or performance.

 

[jlc1978]

Thats providing a requirement to rent and not purchase
View attachment 2250760
As you can see here it would be quite hard to do that. Considering the price need to be reasonable for said replacement part.

Nothing in that requires a low cost, just a reasonable cost for a battery, nor an easily copyable design. You could, for example, make the battery part of the back plate and require replacement of the entire back, making copying and matching colors difficult while making a case for a higher cost for the battery. It also doesn’t prevent serialization as long as the phone still works. Apple or others could still warn it’s not an OEM part and refuse trade-ins on that basis. Of course, you’d simply save the old one to drop in then, and as long as the device powers on you could trade it in.

And a portable battery needs to replaceable by common tools unless Apple decides to give them free of charge. And the ability to replace the battery with another compatible battery without affecting its functionality or performanEnce.

The questions are: “Is the economic operator responsible for providing any specialized tools or the original device manufacturer?” and “if a manufacturer offers the tools for sale to anyone does that make them ‘commercially available?’”

As much as I like the idea of a replaceable battery as long as it doesn’t impede the water / dust resistance I can see where manufacturers can be compliant without a return to the old pop off the cover and drop in new battery days.

The return rule is interesting - in the text you provided you’d only need to put a return at a company store or from an authorized reseller, and only take back your own batteries, not 3rd party. I suspect most companies will simply contract with a 3rd party to handle recycling to keep things simple and not have to make consumers sort batteries by manufacturer.

Here’s a scenario:

The entire back plate is the battery. It has a gasketed contact with the device to provide power, and the device back is solid to prevent dust and water intrusion. It snaps into place into a gasketed fiting, and can be removed with a small putty knofe or a cheap tool the manufacturer sells cheaply. That would meet the reg but even a reasonable price might be a 100 euros given the design. Unless knockoffs are colour matched they are likely to be less popular, plus the anticipated demand for a battery that only fits one year’s model is likely not to be very economically viable to knockoff.

I simply think this will not be the panacea many people seem to think it will be becasue manufacturers have lots of wiggle room in how it is implemented. I’m not claiming any company will do what I postulated, just that there are ways to make cheap competitors far less likely.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

Nothing in that requires a low cost, just a reasonable cost for a battery, nor an easily copyable design. You could, for example, make the battery part of the back plate and require replacement of the entire back, making copying and matching colors difficult while making a case for a higher cost for the battery.

Well indeed, but reasonable cost is easy to ascertain, and unless the backplate is physically a part of the battery structure they would require to be separate and not glued together. Such as the MacBook Pro retina 2012

It also doesn’t prevent serialization as long as the phone still works. Apple or others could still warn it’s not an OEM part and refuse trade-ins on that basis. Of course, you’d simply save the old one to drop in then, and as long as the device powers on you could trade it in.

We’ll of course it can always be serialised as long as the device functions as normal

The questions are: “Is the economic operator responsible for providing any specialized tools or the original device manufacturer?” and “if a manufacturer offers the tools for sale to anyone does that make them ‘commercially available?’”

Well as it says in the paper

And as defined By EU.

As much as I like the idea of a replaceable battery as long as it doesn’t impede the water / dust resistance I can see where manufacturers can be compliant without a return to the old pop off the cover and drop in new battery days.

The return rule is interesting - in the text you provided you’d only need to put a return at a company store or from an authorized reseller, and only take back your own batteries, not 3rd party. I suspect most companies will simply contract with a 3rd party to handle recycling to keep things simple and not have to make consumers sort batteries by manufacturer.

Here’s a scenario:

The entire back plate is the battery. It has a gasketed contact with the device to provide power, and the device back is solid to prevent dust and water intrusion. It snaps into place into a gasketed fiting, and can be removed with a small putty knofe or a cheap tool the manufacturer sells cheaply. That would meet the reg but even a reasonable price might be a 100 euros given the design. Unless knockoffs are colour matched they are likely to be less popular, plus the anticipated demand for a battery that only fits one year’s model is likely not to be very economically viable to knockoff.

I simply think this will not be the panacea many people seem to think it will be becasue manufacturers have lots of wiggle room in how it is implemented. I’m not claiming any company will do what I postulated, just that there are ways to make cheap competitors far less likely.

 

[jlc1978]

Well indeed, but reasonable cost is easy to ascertain, and unless the backplate is physically a part of the battery structure they would require to be separate and not glued together.

I agree, but a company could easily design the backplate to be part of the battery.

Well as it says in the paper View attachment 2251767 View attachment 2251768

And as defined By EU.
View attachment 2251769

So it seems if Apple or another manufacturer offers tools fore sale they are compliant. I see thatvas a big loophole.

 

[DevNull0]

Based on what you wrote do you expect battery replacements similar to those of the original PowerPC iBooks and 1st Macbook Pros?

Doing this would lengthen the replacement cycle of laptops from 4-6 years to 10 years or more.

Smartphones would be lengthened from 3-4 years to 8 years or more.

Same with tablets.

Isn't the law a very good thing for every Apple customer and the environment if that's true? If the only reason people are buying 300 million iPhone and 30 million other apple products a year is to replace the battery this law is long since over due.

On that note, my 2011 MBP is still in daily use (with the 4 gig of memory maxed to 16, the 320 gig spinning HD replaced with a 1TB SSD, and a newish battery which is easily replaced with some screws to open the case and has a nice connector). My 2017 MBP is already trashed (it was fully rebuilt by Apple under warranty in 2019 and lasted a year before it lost the ability to charge. My 2020 MBP performs like a total piece of crap, very slow, sub 1 hour battery life, many web pages don't load even on the latest OS, and a ton of other problems. I've reinstalled the OS several times and can't get it to feel like anything but trash. It's loaded with 32 gig of ram and a 2TB SSD, and it is very much a secondary machine to the 2011 in my household. After 2 lemons in a row, I really don't see myself trying again.

Apples just get worse year after year. I'm still using an iPhone XR and see zero reason I'd replace it.

 

[dotnet]

If the only reason people are buying 300 million iPhone and 30 million other apple products a year is to replace the battery this law is long since over due.

But it isn’t. No one in their right mind would buy a new phone just because the battery is dead.

A battery replacement, supplied and installed by Apple, for my iPhone 12 Pro for example (which still has 85% capacity left, BTW) costs AU$145. For me it would actually be free since I have an AppleCare+ plan. In contrast, a new iPhone 14 Pro would cost me AU$1749.

Your premise is nonsensical.

 

[DevNull0]

But it isn’t. No one in their right mind would buy a new phone just because the battery is dead.

A battery replacement, supplied and installed by Apple, for my iPhone 12 Pro for example (which still has 85% capacity left, BTW) costs AU$145. For me it would actually be free since I have an AppleCare+ plan. In contrast, a new iPhone 14 Pro would cost me AU$1749.

Your premise is nonsensical.

You'd think that, but if it were true, the EU decision wouldn't be a big deal and Apple wouldn't try so hard to shorten the life of their products. I even agree with you that it's nonsensical, yet it is the reality that Apple has created.

What differences are there between the iPhone 14 series and the iPhone 11 series? A faster CPU that I literally can not tell is different in practice, an arguably better camera (I say arguably because I don't care for the cartoonish AI "enhancements" the phones do now to hide how poor the cameras are and give a fake "DSLR look" generated in software). And no more physical SIM slot. If you have any iPhone made in the last 4-5 years, there's just no reason to upgrade.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

I agree, but a company could easily design the backplate to be part of the battery.

And People Will easily produce replacement parts. And seems easier to replace

So it seems if Apple or another manufacturer offers tools fore sale they are compliant. I see thatvas a big loophole.

If they offer the tools without it being proprietary

And specialized tools is very likely to mean something that is tailor made for the job and can’t be used for something else. But we have 27 different members and they might all have a legal definition of what specialised means.

So don’t expect apples 79 pounds of equipment to pass the bar and be sold for a reasonable price compared to general tools.

 

[dotnet]

You'd think that, but if it were true, the EU decision wouldn't be a big deal and Apple wouldn't try so hard to shorten the life of their products. I even agree with you that it's nonsensical, yet it is the reality that Apple has created.

You think people would spend 10+ times more than necessary, in order to just get a new battery? And that’s a “reality that Apple has created”?

Could it not be that people actually want a new phone for features, capabilities, bragging rights?

 

[jlc1978]

And People Will easily produce replacement parts. And seems easier to replace

I’m not so sure a manufacturer can’t make an easily replaceable battery that is hard for a third party to manufacture at a reasonably lower cost and not use any proprietary technology in an OEM battery.

As I have said, my main point is teh EU reg doesn’t necessarily mean a return to the days of pop of a cover and drop in A battery if the manufacturer doesn’t want such a design. I can see Apple design an iPhone that is fully compliant but still has a complex battery that is not easily replicated by 3rd party manufacturers and so may not have any cost advantage.

OTOH, why not just redo MagSafe? Hold the battery in place via magnets, charge using MagSafe built into the battery pack, and dump USB-C altogether. Easily replaceable and easy to carry a spare, would allow you to change colors at will.

Of course, who knows how this all will play out?

If they offer the tools without it being proprietary

All it has to be is available for sale and any patents licensed on a FRAND basis and it is by definition not proprietary.

And specialized tools is very likely to mean something that is tailor made for the job and can’t be used for something else. But we have 27 different members and they might all have a legal definition of what specialised means.

So don’t expect apples 79 pounds of equipment to pass the bar and be sold for a reasonable price compared to general tools.

If the EU wanted to prevent the use of single purpose tools they should have limited the tool definitions to basic and not include the commercially available definition. It’s almost as if that was thrown in to allow tools such as Apple’s as long as they are sold on a non-discriminatory basis.

I find several things interesting beyond the tools:

Will any seller of 3rd party batteries be required to take any and all batteries back? Will a small shop be required to take and return any and all batteries? It seems to be the required by the rule.

How will the EU ensure safety and quality of 3rd party batteries and who will be liable if they cause problems? I realize the EU has a lot of safety rules and laws but that doesn’t stop shady companies from stamping items as complaint and shipping them to the EU. Is the shop owner liable if they bought what was marketed as tested but turns out the marks were fake?