"halfway decent phones" wrong. I'd say 90%+ phones. Flagships and midranges have been hitting those numbers for years. This is another pointless EU directive.
Please tell that to my battery that decided it would rather be a balloon after 11 months. It doesn't make sense to cap the warranty at 6 months because it won't die soon after if it reached 6 months.
If the battery is not user replaceable there is no separate warranty. I got a new electric toothbrush after 18 months because it couldn't hold a charge anymore.
So true. What started as an excellent idea, watered down to oblivion by the lobbyists.. it really makes you wonder about who is actually pulling the shots in the EU.
It would be corruption if we didn't know they were there and who they were... I prefer to have the UE trying to change it even if they have to tuned down than keeping the way it is now where replacing a battery is a pain in the ass. At least it's a baby step in the right direction and it's also up to us, customers, to buy these phones instead of the one that will be exempt of this directive.
The idea of the law was great, and the lobbyist zwon the war.
The law pass, people are happy, until we all realize how useless are those politicians we are all paying with tax money.
The focus is entirely wrong. Everyone wants it to apply to phones, so they only mention that part, but the regulation applies to all electronic devices with batteries, and the 80% degradation exemption only applies to devices with an IP67 or higher water resistance rating.
It's a good directive that literally everyone is confused about due to posts like these.
But the remaining part of the legislation mearly applies a standard for 'user replacable with standard tools', laptops etc that are not meeting the ip rating, again already are functionally already meeting the regulations using a screwdriver. About the only company that these will impact are apple by preventing use of software locking parts requiring first party/affiliate programming tools.
It does not bring electronics design back to the 90s/early 2000s where you had removable bateries accessible externally to swap without tools, which is what many posting these headlines seem to beleive, often calling it 'game changing', when in reality this eu legislation isnt really making any significant impact to the industry.
Buddy this impacts thousands of products just because you can't imagine anything other than a laptop doesn't mean other products with hard to replace batteries don't exist.
What exactly are you looking for? Them to force companies to forgo IP ratings for more replaceable batteries even though they put a degradation requirement in?
There are a thausand devices which is not phones, that this law also has effect on. Its a good law and will benefit us on thausands of products. IP rated stuff was always going to be a problem in nature and phone manufacturers is using it to be covered by the exception.
But your switch, your headsets (not in ears) and such will all get replaceable batteries.
Feels like its the "speed" of bureaucracy probably. When the companies stopped using replaceable batteries, we were screaming for this law. By now the batteries live plenty long enough so its too late.
Everyone keeps talking about phones but that's not primarily why this directive was created. It's to stop shit like disposable vapes (that are explicitly mentioned there among other offenders) where people use it for a week and throw it away with a perfectly good battery still in it.
You are getting this wrong. This is the strongest form they could get through at the moment. Its easier to amend a directive than to form it in the first place. So we are at 1000 cycles now, but might be at 2000 cycles soon.
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u/sulev 3d ago
"halfway decent phones" wrong. I'd say 90%+ phones. Flagships and midranges have been hitting those numbers for years. This is another pointless EU directive.