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Apple is working to make iPhone 16 battery removal easier to comply with EU regulations
(www.techspot.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2024
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Look, I don't expect the back to be trivial to pop off and have a battery that I can yank out and replace within 5 seconds.
The need for high capacity batteries in phones pretty much necessitates thinner-walled (and therefore more easy to damage) batteries, and phones being all-screen pretty much necessitates phones being reasonably thin, so protective cases can be used without making the phones ridiculously cumbersome.
But if it does indeed require special tools, heatguns, and a skilled technician to do this, then I will be pissed off. There is zero reason Apple and the other industry shitheads can't design a phone with a battery that can be replaced without much chance of damage, or specialised tooling, by a normal person in under 10 minutes.
I'd also like to see them be forced to publish open schematics for their batteries so alternate companies can sell batteries if the OEM decides to be a shithead and charge you £160 for a new one.
we should obviously not design phones around planned obsolescence.
Third 0arty batteries have been easy to come by for any phone. The problem is that no third party sells ones that aren't complete shit. It's not the spec. It's that no good plant will make them and they bar the original plant from making extras to sell on their own. It shouldn't be borderline impossible for me to get an oem battery for my note 20 ultra.
The EU battery regulation requires all portable batteries to be removable and replaceable by the end user, starting 2026. So I guess that means no specialized tooling or repair training required, or the tools will have to be included with the phone
Unfortunately there are all kinds of caveats in the law. E.g. phone batteries over a certain capacity are exempt, you can be exempted if you provide a battery warranty of (iirc) 3 years, etc.
Yeah, but Apple doesn’t charge labor for install of their batteries. You pay the same whether you do it yourself or bring it to an Apple Store. You only save money buying a third-party battery, which could be risky depending on the source.
Why would it be risky? I'm genuinely curious if you have any resources (other than Apple's, because they're obviously biased) that show that a third party battery is dangerous.
As far as I know, as long as the battery meets the dimensions, nominal volatage, chemistry/max charge rate/communication to the charging circuitry, discharge rate, it will function safely.
A battery is a battery is a battery. There's no concievable reason I can think of that would require you use an Apple branded battery. If you have evidence to the contrary I'd love to see it. Knowing proper battery safety is important if you mess with them in any capacity (which I do), so something I may not be aware of is important to know.
I mean a risky investment. Third-party batteries aren’t necessarily a safety risk. They could be, but more commonly they fail to have the same capacity or meet the same cycle count before failure as OEM, when created to match a proprietary form factor.
You must be too young to remember the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco.
The layers of the battery were too close together, and with the right amount of squeezing they touched, causing a LiPo fire.