Now require manufacturers to provide like 5 years of OS updates so devices aren’t insecure bricks once you get updates.
OR disallow banking apps from blocking custom ROMs/root, so you can just install your own updates ROM without losing updates.
Already a EU regulation.
Huh? Which part?
Five years OS upgrades. I was mistaken though it’s not law yet, just a finished commission proposal, scroll down to the end and look at the annex.
Oh wait that’s actually the same thing that’s promising replaceable batteries.
Oh shit, amazing!
It must be nice to have leaders that actually do useful things.
For every good thing they do 2 bad things come next. The grass is always greener on the other side.
Curiously as someone who only usually sees the greener side. As a US Citizen, what EU laws would I be shocked to see?
Well… I can cite a few laws. First, the part that protect DRM, second, the law that require search engines to make contract to quote article, third, the interest in policing private communication, and last, a project that isn’t really advanced to infringe net neutrality.
I doubt a US citizen will be shocked about them. But they are likely to dislike them.
(but I tend to see the greener side of “for 1 bad things, 2 good things come next”)
There’s currently a law in the pipeline that would scan all conversations, videos and images sent over social networks as well as chat apps like Whatsapp for illegal material. It would also include backdoors in encryption technologies and possibly banning any services that don’t comply with the scanning, e.g. Signal. Love the EU in principle, but unfortunately it’s often used by national governments to push things like increased surveillance.
The motherboard is so freakin’ tiny compared to the actual battery, there really is no reason for it not to be swappable.
I had the battery for my OnePlus 6T replaced, extending the phone lifetime for probably 2 years. It cost me about $100.
Forcing manufacturers to make batteries easily replaceable by the user without special tools and skills seems like it could make phones less lightweight and less waterproof. I would be fine if they just require manufactures to make it available as a reasonably priced service.
I’m fine with internal batteries, but please use some form of standard cell size and connector.
The EU already standarized chargers IIRC.
Yeah, even Apple has to comply
I used to have a phone with a replaceable battery and it was awesome. I would charge the other battery while using the phone all day, carefree. When it was about to die, I’d swap out the battery. It was basically like I had an instant charge of 100% on my phone. Those were good days.
And you used to be able to buy super battery packs too. You could get a pack that would power your phone for days.
Now let’s hope that the batteries aren’t provided in overpriced proprietary formats with a software lock attached to them like Apple’s iPhone screens.
Good!
I wouldn’t even care about it being super easily replaceable. It would just be nice if the phone wasn’t basically filled with glue…
Good. With this, my next phone might also last 6 years, as my last one did. I’m not so confident with my current phone, as it’s exactly one of these glued shut types where replacing the battery is extremely difficult.
This is a much bigger demand than the usbc charging. I wonder if they can actually pull it off. I’d be happy with simply the right to be able to use a fully independent 3rd party to replace a battery.
Yes! mandatory usb C and replaceable battery, and i’d like the 3mm headphonr jack to also be a standard 😁
Me too, but that one might be dead for good.
Not for any technical reason afaik. My LG G7 is plenty modern and has a 3.5mm jack. It also has Bluetooth, so it’s not like it’s an either/or choice. It’s just the manufacturers dictating what choices consumers have.
No, it’s easy as shit to smack a little audio DAC in there. It probably means your phone has to be at least as thick as the whole port, but so what? It’s a fashion statement to move to pure wireless really.
I don’t hear about it so much anymore, though, so it seems it was accepted.
Out of the phone vendor fuckery with the connector, battery, micro SD, and headphone 3.5mm, the headphones were always the biggest thing.
Bring it back please EU hear my prayers. Right now I’m listening to music on my iPhone with a half broken dongle that pauses if I jiggle it wrong.
The fucking audacity to remove a quintessential port is typical Apple. Was the same with DVDs, Ethernet, now even USB. Next thing I know there’ll be no more ports, you’ll have to wirelessly (and inefficiently) charge your phone even if you like it or not
I wish this would and bring replaceable phone batteries back to the US as well, since it would theoretically be easier for brands to just have a single model for all countries, but unfortunately I highly doubt that we’ll be the case, as demonstrated by Apple taking extra effort to put geolocation code in their phones that unlocks “sideloading” when you are in Europe but then locks it again when you’re outside of your Europe. As it turns out the extra effort it takes to create an exception to your hardware and software for Europe is far outweighed by the extra profit of being able to keep giving a more locked down products to everyone else.
The big issue for me is waterproofing. It seems that this would present a significant opportunity for fluid ingress. Personally, that is a design trade I would be unwilling to make.
We’ve had waterproof phones long before glass and metal sandwiches with irreplaceable batteries became the norm. Sure it’s probably a bit more difficult, but not impossible.
If nothing else there are fairly simple steps that can be done to at least make a battery swap not too painful.
Phones had removable batteries and were waterproof. It was all marketing saying they changed for waterproofing.
They changed to increase their profits.
Any battery is replaceable if you pry it hard enough
Every component is replaceable ~by buying a new iPhone~
-Apple
