https://www.slashgear.com/2107938/removable-battery-phones-making-comeback/
Many of today's mobile phones, like the slim iPhone Air, are lightweight and sleek, with an advanced design and the latest in modern technology. It's a far cry from previous models, which were bulkier, had buttons, and bulged in your pocket. But while mobile phones have evolved over the years, the current fixed-battery design is reverting to its old form, thanks to legislation from the European Union (EU). Based on these new guidelines, phones will once again need batteries that can be safely removed and replaced by the user.
The EU's legislation also mandates that replacement batteries, while meeting the device's technical specifications, not be bound by proprietary limits. This means that a phone must be able to accept a compatible battery that meets the device's safety and technical standards, whether or not it's manufacturer-branded. Plus, replacement batteries must be available to the user for at least 5 to 7 years following a model's end of production. The EU has placed a date of February 18, 2027, for these expectations to be met.
[...] The EU's new legislation requiring smartphones to have removable batteries accomplishes a few different things. First, allowing users to replace a spent battery with a new one helps extend the life of the device before its final disposal. Plus, it also enables battery repair or replacement without throwing out the entire phone. By giving users this capability, the rules are meant to encourage reuse of existing phones and help cut down on electronic waste.
[...] But if removable batteries become the norm once again, then phone design could take a step backward in terms of overall construction. That's because cases may need to become thicker to accommodate the removable batteries, and additional safety features would need to be added to protect the new design as well. Until the top phone manufacturers reveal newer models to satisfy the EU's standards, it's unclear what changes users can expect to see.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02, @01:15AM (9 children)
You say that like it is a bad thing.
When was the last time new shiny makers listened to what people wanted?
(Score: 4, Informative) by aafcac on Monday March 02, @04:17AM (8 children)
The main advantage to a non-removable battery is that it makes it a bit easier for the manufacturer to make it in a waterproof design. But, I think that in most cases, it's not really worth it. But, OTHO, I've rarely, if ever, had issues with the battery in a cellphone being an issue. The main reasons that I've liked to have a replaceable one are for swapping out if I know I'm going somewhere that I won't be able to charge and that it's easier than remembering what random set of button presses it is to reset the phone if it freezes. Neither of which happen to me very often.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Undefined on Monday March 02, @12:16PM (2 children)
Another benefit of previous swappable designs was the option to pop a much higher capacity battery on the phone.
Those of us who aren't subject to the consumer's inexplicable love affair with "maximally thin" really liked that.
YMMV ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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(Score: 2) by aafcac on Monday March 02, @03:49PM (1 child)
True, but with a swappable battery, you've got nearly unlimited power provided you have the batteries and don't need it to run continuously.
(Score: 1) by Undefined on Monday March 02, @10:13PM
With a larger battery, I've also got a phone that actually fits in my hand and I'll do less battery swapping. Double win on top of the anti-planned-obsolescence win.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 02, @04:27PM (2 children)
Ah, this reminds me of my long ago Samsung Galaxy S5 phone. It was waterproof. It had a removable back -- which has a visible gasket. You could remove the battery, which revealed a removable SIM and micro SD card slot that could be populated.
So it had replaceable SIM, SD and battery, yet was waterproof. There were and probably still are YouTube videos of people swimming with this phone, running the phone through the washing machine on porpoise not by accident.
So how did Samsung improve upon this?
The Samsung Galaxy S6 phone was made of glass and could break. Could not be opened. Nothing was serviceable or replaceable. So I moved on from Samsung to others.
Infinity is clearly an even number since the next higher number is odd.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DadaDoofy on Monday March 02, @05:59PM (1 child)
"It was waterproof."
Nope. The Samsung Galaxy S5 is not waterproof. It has an IP67 rating, which means it is water resistant. When new, it can withstand immersion in water up to 1 meter deep (about 3.3 feet) for 30 minutes.
iPhones, with their sealed battery compartments, have a an IP68 rating, which is good for 6m/30min.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 02, @08:05PM
Good catch. I was happy that it was "waterproof" enough for most ordinary instances of getting it submerged accidentally.
Infinity is clearly an even number since the next higher number is odd.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Tuesday March 03, @08:02AM (1 child)
The main reasons that I've liked to have a replaceable one are for swapping out if I know I'm going somewhere that I won't be able to charge
This.
The argument that the phone might need to be 10 nanometers thicker is a ton of bullshit. They carry on like it is 10 cm.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aafcac on Tuesday March 03, @02:11PM
It genuinely annoys me how hard it is to find a phone that's small enough to actually fit in a pocket. I don't need a thinner phone, I need one with a slightly smaller screen size, and even many of the cheaper phones have unnecessarily large screens.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Tork on Monday March 02, @01:32AM (4 children)
I am not, of course, of the opinion that the entire market should bend to my whims. But I will warn ya'all that it wasn't all sunshine and roses, and now we're a lot more addicted to these things than we were way back when. I do hope hope hope if we're really heading this way they'll address that instead of using it for planned obsoleteness. Every cut they put into a phone case is a weakness to its integrity.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02, @02:35AM (1 child)
I have a phone waiting for me to take its battery-pillow for recycling. (Those things _scare_ me..)
and ya know what? It just "jostled itself apart." All that tape along the outter rim, and all that.. er.. tape. Yeah.
Hey, I bet you could fix your jostle problem with some (strong, decent) double-sided tape! If you want it to be _really_ hard to get apart, try using hot glue. (Hot glue tip: Wait for it to _really_ melt, not just "ok it's maleable now." That lets it bind much more thoroughly, and heat the surface it's binding to before it resolidifies.)
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday March 02, @03:07AM
I was thinking Crazy glue (super glue / cyanoacrylate ester) but double-sided, duct tape, whatever.
It's much easier to convert a removable battery phone into a non-removable one than the other way around.
I'm with you on the Li-ion battery worries. I've never had a fire but I've had several that fatten up. I have someone's Samsung tablet that's all puffed up and so far I haven't been able to get it apart.
I never used to think much of hot glue, but over the years I've used it more and more. I bought a really good hot glue gun- it has two heat settings. I pretty much always use it on high, and I let it sit a while to get the glue really hot, and yup, it sticks very well.
Another key is to get the parts together very quickly. If you let it start to cool too much as you slowly squeeze the parts together you'll get a gap and bad joint. You could use a hot air gun (heat gun) to preheat the parts you're going to glue to make very sure the glue bonds to the parts.
I was surprised to find out how much furniture and cabinetry (including kitchen cabinets) are held together with hot glue. I've had to repair some where the joints weren't quite knitted together and started coming apart.
You can use a heat gun to soften the glue.
A few years ago I replaced someone's well pump. It came with a waterproof wire splice kit, which was just some butt splices (metal cylinders) and hot glue-lined heatshrink tubing.
Where I work we build electronic stuff and we use mostly hot glue-lined heatshrink tubing. It seals very well.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mhajicek on Monday March 02, @03:48AM
This problem was solved in the 90's. I had a little flip phone with a removable battery, and it was rock solid.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Funny) by cereal_burpist on Wednesday March 04, @04:29AM
You say that like it's a bad thing.
RIP MDC
(Score: 5, Insightful) by coolgopher on Monday March 02, @03:25AM (3 children)
Give me a thicker phone with a bigger battery! I used to only need to charge my phone once a week. I liked that. And it was easier to hold than these modern wafers.
(Score: 2) by SvenErik on Monday March 02, @06:28AM (1 child)
Yes, I remember those, and that was possible when a mobile phone was just that, a mobile phone. These days, they are miniaturized computers that can make phone calls with all the extra power consumption that causes...
"Every demand is a prison, and wisdom is only free when it asks nothing." Sir Bertrand Russell
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02, @11:54AM
Turn off wifi except when you are actually using it.
Turn off location services.
Disable as many Google things as you can find.
Do not install things like Friendface. In fact, do not install any apps except those that you really, really need - use websites instead.
The above will turn your lucky-to-last-a-day-and-a-half battery into something that only needs recharging about every 6 days.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Saturday March 14, @02:04PM
Hold on a second, I'll get right on that...
http://jasassin.multics.org/upload/cellphone.webp [multics.org]
Gotta take this call...
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02, @04:21AM
This will make phones:
Less durable
Less resistant to the environment
More expensive
Impossible to make out of innovative materials (like the ceramic Essential Phone)
Thick and clunky
And it will solve:
A problem that mattered twenty years ago
Batteries have improved so much that nobody keeps a phone long enough for them to wear out. Even if the screen isn't broken and the software is somehow still usable, the radio won't be compatible with the current networks. In today's phones the OLED screen will burn out five times over before the battery wears out.
I have an ancient phone because all the current ones have gigantic camera warts and OLED screens that last two years at most. It's hard to get a signal with it because it's not compatible with 5G and it's only compatible with about half of the LTE frequencies. The battery, while certainly not as good as new, is not a problem at all.
(Score: 2) by Bentonite on Monday March 02, @06:38AM (3 children)
and additional battery safety features aren't steps backwards - rather those are steps forward.
A too thin demon rectangle isn't practically useful, as without adding a case to made the device thick enough, really such will constantly slip out of the operating hand (the hand of course belongs to the master).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by krishnoid on Monday March 02, @06:56AM
Sometimes you can get a battery case to both thicken up the phone and add battery capacity. Maybe a thin sealed battery that's only drawn on as an emergency UPS-style backup, along with a battery case that can power the phone directly would be a good combination.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by DadaDoofy on Monday March 02, @05:35PM (1 child)
You're a bit confused. The safest batteries are ones consumers can't fuck with.
The "additional battery safety features" are required because, when consumers have access to the batteries, the more intellectually-challenged of them will replace them with cheap, poorly made ones that are a lot more dangerous.
(Score: 2) by Bentonite on Tuesday March 03, @06:56AM
You are well aware I am not confused corporate shill.
It's sad you support ecocide, despite how Earth is the only planet you can live on.
Batteries have always been available for devices - but how hard it is now to get the stupid devices open, with metal tools required, has rather made it *more* likely for a battery to be stabbed.
Previous models of the Samsung Galaxy's (i.e. S1, S2, S3) had a removable battery, with seemingly only voltage and temperature safety features, with a plastic back-plate that you opened with your hand without any tools and I haven't come across against a report of a single problem with such batteries.
After all, such configuration is pretty much idiot-proof, as there's no metal tool to stab the battery and nothing happens if the battery is put in backwards (maybe some idiot maimed themself somehow, but that's just natural selection).
Having a Li-Ion battery sealed in a device behind stupid screws and glue is dangerous, as for batteries that balloon, the battery has an increased chance of deflagrating, due to its expansion being restricted.
In a device without a removable battery, it's often hard to notice that the battery has ballooned - as for example, when the battery balloons on a Horrible Products laptop, the only indication is the trackpad no longer clicking - which means the device continues to get used with a ballooned battery.
Also, disposing of a sealed ballooned battery is incredibly dangerous, as it requires prodding at the device with metal tools to force the screws out and break the glue (it's hard to not stab the battery even if you are competent), so the battery can be removed for discharging to 0V to render it safe.
Meanwhile, a plastic backplate will just pop off, making it immediately apparent the battery has ballooned, allowing the battery to be safely removed for discharging.
I haven't had any problems with realistically priced cheap Chinese batteries - while I've noticed that what should be premium batteries in HP and apple laptops sometimes balloon.
Li-Ion batteries are pretty safe compared to petrol (it has a far higher energy density and goes everywhere), but for some reason, nobody ever wants idiots to be restricted from accessing petrol?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by pTamok on Monday March 02, @10:10AM (3 children)
Very soon after I get a phone that is new to me, I buy a case to put it in. Most of the case materials have more friction with my fingers than the phone's own surface, which means I am less likely to drop the thing, or for it to slip out of a pocket. The case also helps to ameliorate the shock if the phone is dropped.
I don't think I'm unusual in doing this.
It also has the effect of making the ensemble considerably thicker than the phone. I don't think the phone thickness is as big an issue as designers and marketeers like to say.
I know some people used naked phones. I don't have that kind of money or those aesthetic sensibilities. I don't think I'm alone.
As for waterproofing: this is not difficult. You don't need to open the battery compartment often, as is demonstrated by people who never do this during the life of their phones. Glueing the compartment shut with reversible/replaceable glue would work fine. The point is designing to make this possible without voiding the warranty.
Perhaps physical headphone sockets will be mandated next? I can but hope.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Monday March 02, @05:02PM (2 children)
As I said below, the XCover series of phones are IP68 and have removable batteries.
It's really not that difficult to do. In fact, mass-market Samsung products that you can go out and buy today do exactly that.
The fact that they're also rugged and have all the latest Android / 5G / whatever you might want means that there's absolutely no need for such a compromise.
Every phone could have a removeable battery in it. They just want to force you to take it to a shop to get it repaired so that you either a) pay them money or b) they can void your warranty.
(Score: 2) by Bentonite on Tuesday March 03, @07:09AM
Non-removable batteries are always about planned obsolescence - the company hopes that you throw the device out and buy a new one when the battery wears.
Most manufacturers don't have replacement batteries available after 3 years, even if you're willing to pay a ridiculous sum (a well treated Li-Ion battery can last 3-4 years or more even with regular usage, although at a certain stage, the remaining capacity isn't enough).
The only choice for battery replacement at that stage is 3rd party batteries - which the manufacturer does their best to prevent via digital handcuffs as to which batteries are accepted (thankfully, Chinese 3rd party battery suppliers go and reverse engineer such, to supply replacement batteries for popular devices).
It is illegal is any decent country to void a warranty just because a device was opened and/or battery was replaced, but manufacturers will often do so anyway.
Governments really should required that every mass market device uses a standard size and voltage removable battery (maybe 3-4 different sizes would be all that's needed), which cannot be obsoleted without a legitimate reason.
(Score: 2) by owl on Tuesday March 03, @03:03PM
You forgot: So that the marketers at the shop can influence you into buying a new phone instead of having the one you have repaired.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ledow on Monday March 02, @10:43AM (2 children)
And the XCover 5 before it.
And the XCover 7, apparently. But I've not needed to upgrade to that yet, because my phones don't just obsolete themselves.
(Score: 4, Informative) by ledow on Monday March 02, @10:45AM (1 child)
Hmmm... it stripped the first line:
Like my XCover 6 with headphone socket, 5G, dual-removeable-SIM and removeable battery?
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday March 03, @09:13AM
and Samsung toxic T&Cs
"We know you paid us £500 for a phone, we are still going to whore your data to the highest bidder"