News: EU mandating changeable batteries starting 2027

[Wando64]

With EU rules and regulations 1st with usb C and now this I have a feeling that apple may just pull out of the EU all together and discounted selling apple products all together this is getting ridiculous at this point

Yes sure. Apple will give up to >95$bn per year because they don't want to make a few changes to their products.
You better start selling your AAPL stock if you really believe that.

(Keeping also in mind that they were always going to replace Lightning with USB-C at some point any way)

 

[Longplays]

Lovely.
My wallet is ready. Can you kindly point me to an iOS phone with user swappable battery?

Looking forward to exercise my ability to choose as a consumer.

You're a niche similar to someone looking for a MacPro with a i9 + 4090.

 

[Wando64]

You're a niche similar to someone looking for a MacPro with a i9 + 4090.

Did you look at the comments in this thread?
There seem to be a lot of niche people here.

 

[klasma]

It absolutely isn't The case View attachment 2219296
For an act to be adopted under the ordinary legislative procedure, the co-legislators must at some point during the procedure agree on a common text acceptable to both the Parliament and the Council. This requires that the institutions talk to each other, which takes place in the form of trilogues: informal tripartite meetings on legislative proposals between representatives of the Parliament, Council and Commission.


Trilogues may be organised at any stage of the legislative procedure and can lead to what are known as 'first reading', 'early second reading' or 'second reading' agreements, or to a 'joint text' during conciliation. Trilogues consist of political
negotiations, although trilogues may be preceded by preparatory technical meetings (attended by the three institutions' experts). The main tool of work is the four-column document: the first three columns present each of the three institutions' respective positions and the last one is reserved for compromise proposals'. During trilogue meetings, which are chaired by the co-legislator hosting the meeting (i.e. either Parliament or the Council), each institution explains its position and a discussion in view of finding a compromise develops.

The Commission acts as a mediator with a view to facilitating an agreement between the co-legislators. The participants in trilogues operate on the basis of negotiating mandates given to them by their respective institutions. The three delegations explore possible avenues of compromise in an informal manner and report back or seek new instructions on a regular basis according to their respective institutions' internal rules, i.e. via the negotiating team and/or in committee for Parliament, in Coreper or the responsible working party for Council (see the flowchart above).

Any agreement in trilogues is provisional and has to be approved by the formal procedures applicable within each institution

The trilogues have already happened (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legi...-revision-of-the-eu-battery-directive-(refit)). All that remains is the Council adoption in the bottom right of your diagram, and publication in the Official Journal.

 

[Longplays]

Did you look at the comments in this thread?
There seem to be a lot of niche people here.

MR is a niche who demand all M1 and M2 base models to have 2x RAM and 2x SSD at current SKU MSRP.

Outside of here people see the value of 8GB & 256GB.

Create a thread on how awesome owning a iPhone mini and you'll get as many replies as on this thread.

But have market research people present shipping numbers and it makes sense why Apple did not release a refreshed 14 and probably 15.

 

[h.gilbert]

Remember when LG decided to stop making phones? They were reasonably good at it, but they couldn't find enough customers to make it worth while. You'd think if there was a huge number of customers who really valued replaceable batteries that LG would have done that to stay in the game.

But here's the thing: customers do value replaceable batteries, but they value other things more.

Engineering is the art of tradeoffs. You can't have everything you want, so you need to figure out how to find a combination that works. Size, reliability, performance, battery life, features... Serviceability. When you prioritize one over the others, the others suffer. Nature of the business.

Companies spend their energy figuring out what people most want to gain a competitive advantage. This leads to the best products for people. When people value size and reliability over serviceability, we get smaller phones that can fall in a toilet and live, but that we need to take for service every 5 years or whatever if we want a new battery (I typically keep my phones that long or longer without needing to replace the battery).

So, if you ask consumers if they'd like cheaply and easily replaceable batteries, the answer will be yes. I'd answer yes. I'd like to be able to do that. If you ask consumers what they're willing to sacrifice to gain that capability, things start to take a different shape.

The problem with these forums is things like this:



Do you notice the word "just" in there? Apple has thousands of engineers working on products like this for a decade but forum people, for some reason, think they know the easy fix. "Guys, guys, guys... You just have to give it a twist!".

And this:

Ah, friction! Brilliant! Who cares about wear and contact resistance in a product that sees continuous shock and vibration and spends enormous design effort to squeeze out every Joule from the battery. And screws! No chance of stripping those little guys, over torquing, under torquing, or compromising an environmental seal anywhere.


So many people here think they know the answer to questions that these massive organizations have been studying for years. So many others think this is some major conspiracy. People are convincing themselves that there are no tradeoffs involved because they simply don't understand how things are designed and built, especially in quantities of hundreds of millions.


If e-waste is an issue, tax e-waste. Tax it high enough to incentivize people to create less of it and to mitigate what they do create. Governments should manage and regulate negative externalities like pollution. They shouldn't mandate engineering design decisions because that's the path to unintended consequences. This and the USB-C nonsense are mandating engineering decisions and we will be worse off for it.

Macrumours users are majority professional armchair engineers followed by junior consultants, didn't you know?

 

[PsykX]

The same law, but about RAM. 💯

Then the SoC technology will die and Apple will go back to separated Video RAM and CPU RAM and lose their advantage with Apple Silicon.

They'd need to charge a reasonable price for RAM and I'd be all good.

 

[Longplays]

Then the SoC technology will die and Apple will go back to separated Video RAM and CPU RAM and lose their advantage with Apple Silicon.

They'd need to charge a reasonable price for RAM and I'd be all good.

If all devices were forced to seperate RAM from SIP then smartphones as we know it would be way bigger, have shorter battery life and be more expensive.

Apple leveraging SoC on the Mac is the best thing that ever happened to it.

What I'd want is Apple charging up to 2x market price of RAM & SSD. As it stands right now they're priced above that.

Apple needs to make money for their efforts but not to the point that you just scratch your head.

 

[dotnet]

I wonder what this means for electric vehicles.

 

[Silly John Fatty]

Not sure if it was already mentioned, but do you think this legislation will also end the era of soldered RAM memory and SSDs in Macs?

 

[Longplays]

Not sure if it was already mentioned, but do you think this legislation will also end the era of soldered RAM memory and SSDs in Macs?

Mac laptops are gonna go back to bad battery life with the added bonus of heavier and bigger.

If you want that then buy any AMD or Intel laptop. They're way cheaper than any Mac.

 

[Silly John Fatty]

Nobody is above us 🇪🇺❤️

Dude, that was super embarassing. Don't misuse that flag, lol. What will people think of us, if we say things like these?

It's not about one being above or underneath the other. That's a toxic philosophy to begin with. I don't even think in such categories and I recommend anyone else not to …

 

[Silverstring]

Thank god EU is pushing for some sanity in this consumer world, which will benefit us, the consumers.

“Consumers” are not a monolith.

No clue why some here are so pissy about it.

The explanation couldn’t be more simple: choice. Do you really have no clue why consumers would be pissy about reduced choice.

I think it’s great if manufacturers make phones/devices with removable batteries, and even greater if people who want those models buy them. Hell, I might even be one of those people!

…but I also understand that everything in design—particularly product design—is a series of trade offs.

I would love there to be a variety of choices, so that I can independently decide as a consumer whether I want a device with a removable battery, with the gains/tradeoffs that that entails, OR a device with a sealed-in battery, with the gains/tradeoffs that that entails. The choice should be mine, and, by extension—the market’s.

Spare me the tinfoil hatters that believe that devices that have replaceable batteries have ZERO compromises/tradeoffs as compared to sealed-in batteries. That the ONLY reason to choose sealed-in batteries is “planned obsolescence”, and that they are “sure” that Apple or any other company could design a device that is equal in every other respect other than a replaceable battery vs. not. Anyone who claims the latter has clearly never engineered/designed anything in their entire life, and doesn’t understand what “opportunity cost” is. I doubt any one claiming that has ever even made something as simple as a recipe, if they can’t understand that every choice has a domino effect on the rest of the result.

Yay for replaceable battery devices, but BOO to *only* (easily user-serviceable) replacement battery options, enforced by law, which limits consumer choice.

 

[lindros2]

I wonder what this means for electric vehicles.

See: Nio.

 

[lindros2]

“Consumers” are not a monolith.


The explanation couldn’t be more simple: choice. Do you really have no clue why consumers would be pissy about reduced choice.

I think it’s great if manufacturers make phones/devices with removable batteries, and even greater if people who want those models buy them. Hell, I might even be one of those people!

…but I also understand that everything in design—particularly product design—is a series of trade offs.

I would love there to be a variety of choices, so that I can independently decide as a consumer whether I want a device with a removable battery, with the gains/tradeoffs that that entails, OR a device with a sealed-in battery, with the gains/tradeoffs that that entails. The choice should be mine, and, by extension—the market’s.

Spare me the tinfoil hatters that believe that devices that have replaceable batteries have ZERO compromises/tradeoffs as compared to sealed-in batteries. That the ONLY reason to choose sealed-in batteries is “planned obsolescence”, and that they are “sure” that Apple or any other company could design a device that is equal in every other respect other than a replaceable battery vs. not. Anyone who claims the latter has clearly never engineered/designed anything in their entire life, and doesn’t understand what “opportunity cost” is. I doubt any one claiming that has ever even made something as simple as a recipe, if they can’t understand that every choice has a domino effect on the rest of the result.

Yay for replaceable battery devices, but BOO to *only* (easily user-serviceable) replacement battery options, enforced by law, which limits consumer choice.

Waterproof/damage proof is harder with a non-sealed device.

Opening up any sealed device ruins the weather seal.

And for those pointing to GoPro, etc - their doors SUCK. We have a HERO 5 and HERO 11 and they’ve gotten worse.

 

[I7guy]

Waterproof/damage proof is harder with a non-sealed device.

Opening up any sealed device ruins the weather seal.

And for those pointing to GoPro, etc - their doors SUCK. We have a HERO 5 and HERO 11 and they’ve gotten worse.

My old blackberry with removable batteries used to have the door come loose from the phone when it was dropped.

 

[Analog Kid]

Spare me the tinfoil hatters that believe that devices that have replaceable batteries have ZERO compromises/tradeoffs as compared to sealed-in batteries. That the ONLY reason to choose sealed-in batteries is “planned obsolescence”, and that they are “sure” that Apple or any other company could design a device that is equal in every other respect other than a replaceable battery vs. not.

This seems as good a place as any to quote iFixit:

"Achieving the high levels of durability that we all expect is an incredible engineering challenge. When you drop an iPhone 13, its metal frame absorbs that shock, transmitting and spreading the force across the glued-in battery and sturdily adhered rear glass. The iPhone 14 meets this same challenge, but achieves the required torsional rigidity in a totally different way. A new midframe sits between the display and the guts of the phone and takes the brunt of force distribution across the frame and battery."​

The battery is laminated into the assembly and forms a structural core to the device because it's a part that can handle stress better than the more delicate components around it.

 

[Torty]

Good. The USB-C thing was a test baloon and just the beginning. Apple accepted and now must face the consequences. Many more mandates will follow. Freedoms are very easily lost and very difficult to regain.

 

[Konrad]

The EU, in reality, is the only pro consumer government and all should be thankful for the progressive legislators to diligently work for the end users interests among other direct and indirect benefits. Americans can be often confused and misinterpret the role of a dedicated to the public government(s) as they frequently carry the narrative “less government” = better society. Yeah, right. Apple is the very best example of successfully playing the gullible general public not only with shiny gadgets at phenomenally high prices, but also with solutions forcing consumer to just keep buying more, spending and perpetually filling the already overstuffed bank. All while adding to the landfill with no end in sight. Freedoms? The freedom to upgrade your RAM, the freedom to upgrade you SSD? The consequent freedom after i.e. MBP upgrade not to have to migrate to app subscription? Comments pertaining to Apple pulling out of the EU market are as simply absurd as BMW pulling out of the US. And beside some discounted American fast foods, Apple is the only recognizable US brand outside of the US. There is nothing else. Zero. The pull out not going to happen. And the new iPhone 15, now with signs of stripping additional markets from a SIM tray, as it may have a positive effect on the environment, it is fundamentally ugly (if you analyze the vast implications) to the consumer’s, you guessed - the freedom.

 

[blazerunner]

You're a niche similar to someone looking for a MacPro with a i9 + 4090.

If such a Mac existed nobody would buy the existing overpriced Mac Pro.... but then again, Apple would price it the same if not more so it'd be well out of reach for normal consumers. You'd also have a bunch of Apple jockriders justifying the price as well; and you can bet your life on that because it happens on Macrumors EVERY DAY.

 

[blazerunner]

My old blackberry with removable batteries used to have the door come loose from the phone when it was dropped.

You know.... somehow I dont believe you ever owned anything that wasnt Apple branded.

 

[Grey Area]

Smartphones with user replaceable batteries are few and far in between.

Apple does not offer one. Can you point to a Samsung one? Xiaomi? OPPO? vivo? Any other brands?

Samsung has a whole line dedicated to this: Samsung XCover6 Pro, Samsung XCover 5, ...

Are there tablets with user replaceable batteries? Apple never had one. Samsung? Amazon? Huawei? Lenovo? Any other brands?

Samsung Tab Active4 Pro and Active3

Of course, these are just a niche in the line-up, most devices have sealed batteries. The XCover/Active devices are mostly marketed towards corporate and agency customers who value durability and maintainability, though Samsung gladly sells them to consumers, too.

There is a whole bunch of corporate-centric rugged manufacturers (Panasonic, Motorola Solutions, Pidion Bluebird...) with similar devices, though they tend to be more clunky and are infrequently updated - Samsung seems to be the only one that maintains close to "civilian" dimensions and performance in their rugged line.

How about wireless earphones?

That is rare indeed. Early Samsung Galaxy Buds had this, but they switched to soldered batteries several generations ago.

 

[blazerunner]

Consumers largely do not want them if it means thicker/heavier/shorter battery life.

This is a lie; consumers never had a say. If they ever did, all phones would have a MicroSD card slot. Manufacturers aren't putting them in anymore (except for Sony) for one reason; money.

One more thing; I want a user replaceable battery. So your wrong either way.

 

[senttoschool]

This is a lie; consumers never had a say. If they ever did, all phones would have a MicroSD card slot. Manufacturers aren't putting them in anymore (except for Sony) for one reason; money.

One more thing; I want a user replaceable battery. So your wrong either way.

I think that's the wrong way to put it.

The truth is that SD cards aren't important enough in a phone for consumers to care. Phones pack more and more technology. Consumers want that technology. That technology is expensive to R&D and manufacture. In order to pay for that extra tech, phone manufacturers remove SD cards and force consumers to pay for it by being cheap on storage.

Basically, storage upgrades pay for the other tech in phones. Consumers seem to be ok with it.

If phone manufactures add external storage into phones, then they will cost more. It ends up being the same cost really.

 

[Longplays]

Samsung has a whole line dedicated to this: Samsung XCover6 Pro, Samsung XCover 5, ...


Samsung Tab Active4 Pro and Active3

Of course, these are just a niche in the line-up, most devices have sealed batteries. The XCover/Active devices are mostly marketed towards corporate and agency customers who value durability and maintainability, though Samsung gladly sells them to consumers, too.

There is a whole bunch of corporate-centric rugged manufacturers (Panasonic, Motorola Solutions, Pidion Bluebird...) with similar devices, though they tend to be more clunky and are infrequently updated - Samsung seems to be the only one that maintains close to "civilian" dimensions and performance in their rugged line.

That is rare indeed. Early Samsung Galaxy Buds had this, but they switched to soldered batteries several generations ago.

How easy it is for consumers to find them? Are they available at Best Buy or Walmart?