The European Union has passed a new rule requiring smartphones to have batteries that users can easily replace

DT said:
I tried one of those!

View attachment 38813


Had it and the Belkin, thought maybe the Anker might be a better option for home and travel, but wound up keeping the Belkin (returned the Anker). I know what you're talking about that little Watch slide out drawer that's spring loaded, definitely seems like a potential failure point.

FWIW, this is the desk and travel chargers we use:


(oh, on sale right now!)

This is the nightstand one from Belkin:


(There's a newer, faster version)

The Belkin in addition to being bigger also plugs in via a wall-wart, so not a good travel option at all, but I really like the height and angle for the bedside.
Click to expand...
Cool! I ordered my Anker exactly 9 days before you did! Its compact cube shape in the closed position appealed to me, and I've since taken it on several trips. But it took some fiddling to get the watch drawer to open and close recently, so I suspect it'll fail at some point.

I like the design of the newer Anker, but it looks like it takes up more space front-to-back than mine, so it might be a problem on my nightstand, where space is at a premium.
 
throAU said:
I really don't see the need to mandate ANY connector. Your phone comes with a cable and a charger, use that.

If its to use some random charger you don't know, DON'T go plugging cables that also carry data into your device, as it a security risk, and use inductive charging?

What next, we are standardising on IEC C19 for all electrical devices? No? Why not? Answer: because its not suitable for all circumstances!
Click to expand...
Nobody has proposed IEC C19 for all devices, that's just a very silly strawman you invented.

Prior to the USB-C mandate, essentially all phones and tablets already used some variant of USB, just not the same one everywhere. That even applies to iPhones: Lightning is USB over a proprietary connector that requires a special Apple-supplied chip (which is there mostly so Apple can try to extract royalties from all third party iPhone accessories). It's pretty natural and rational to look at all that, realize that 100% standard USB-C could replace all other USB variants in the space, with considerable benefits to consumers (the very same benefits that accrue from mandating IEC C19 in places where that connector is appropriate!), and issue the regulation.

throAU said:
AKA stifling innovation. gg
Click to expand...
USB-C has about all the innovation you could possibly want on low-to-medium DC power delivery, it's real fancy. And if people figure out something better, they can talk to regulators about it. (Or get it added to USB-C PD, which has already been extended a couple times since the EU mandate.)
 
Roller said:
Cool! I ordered my Anker exactly 9 days before you did! Its compact cube shape in the closed position appealed to me, and I've since taken it on several trips. But it took some fiddling to get the watch drawer to open and close recently, so I suspect it'll fail at some point.
Click to expand...

I love the look also but went with some no name Amazon one.

I also have a clock app that replaced my alarm clock. It also charges my watch and can charge ear buds by mine don’t do wireless charging.
 
leman said:
What do you dislike about this one? IMO it’s the most reasonable legislation in this direction they‘ve had in a while. Certainly more sensible than the ill-thought out gatekeeper one.
Click to expand...

I'm not really the smartphone guy, but I can imagine a lot of users will be less than thrilled that smartphones will have smiliarity with a Jethro Tull album again (Thick as a Brick).

And I'm just allergic to Zensursula... And a lot of times Germany tries to push failed laws through the backdoor via the EU.
I cannot remember which law it was, but at least once German politicians said: We are sorry, but the EU forces us to do this.
And when someone checked, this specific law as introduced by the Germans in the EU...
 
Herdfan said:
Are iPhones exempt due to their water resistance because I doubt they will pass the 80/1000 test.
Click to expand...

Apple has always been a pioneer in durable batteries (in fact, they started the 1000/80 battery capacity thing back in the day with the unibody MBP ). If I am not mistaken iPhone 15 was the first model on the market to introduce a 1000/80 battery.
 
Last edited:
Herdfan said:
Are iPhones exempt due to their water resistance because I doubt they will pass the 80/1000 test.
Click to expand...
What makes you say that? The three last iPhone generations meet this standard based on everything I’ve read. I don’t know exactly what evidence Apple needs to provide to support this, but I trust they have it figured out, especially with the first iPhone 18 models only about six months away.
 
Most people don't have the manual dexterity to be working on electronics. Making phones that are "easy serviced" is going to roll us back about 20 years. I think apple was planning on dumping the charging port altogether to increase the water resistance of the iPhone.
 
Seems like a pretty straightforward legislation to get rid of cheap smartphones with non replaceable Batteries. I cannot see how this is going to be any issue in stopping innovation, or rolling us back in any way. Tell me. People who hate eu-regulations for the sake of being eu-regulations, don't bore me with pseudo arguments.
 
Roller said:
What makes you say that? The three last iPhone generations meet this standard based on everything I’ve read. I don’t know exactly what evidence Apple needs to provide to support this, but I trust they have it figured out, especially with the first iPhone 18 models only about six months away.
Click to expand...

Simply based on the battery health monitor on my phone. It is at 88% capacity after 431 cycles. Extrapolate that out and you won't make 80/1000.
 
Herdfan said:
Simply based on the battery health monitor on my phone. It is at 88% capacity after 431 cycles. Extrapolate that out and you won't make 80/1000.
Click to expand...

Battery degradation is non-linear and your single observed case is hardly authoritative. Not to mention, if your battery capacity drops below 80% without reaching 1000 cycles, you are entitled to free battery replacement.
 
Herdfan said:
Simply based on the battery health monitor on my phone. It is at 88% capacity after 431 cycles. Extrapolate that out and you won't make 80/1000.
Click to expand...
My 15 PM is at 89% after more than 500 cycles, but I don't think you can extrapolate from one device because there are so many variables, including the battery level when you start to charge. For example, I hardly ever let my phone go below, say, 30%, but that's likely different than what others do. Apple doesn't execute perfectly on all fronts, especially if you listen to the constant whine over on MR, but I trust that they know what they're doing on something that's such an important part of their business. And I suspect it's already way too late for Apple to re-engineer the iPhone 18 line if they weren't capable of meeting the new standard.
 
mr_roboto said:
USB-C has about all the innovation you could possibly want on low-to-medium DC power delivery, it's real fancy. And if people figure out something better, they can talk to regulators about it. (Or get it added to USB-C PD, which has already been extended a couple times since the EU mandate.)
Click to expand...

Let me preface this as stating that I am someone who is happily (currently) type C on everything finally...


So if I want something half the size, then what? What about double the size for 20x the bandwidth plus charging? It means I now need TWO fucking connectors to comply.

Talking to regulator instead of just catering to market demand stifles progress. You'll be tied up in committee meetings for years/decades.

Mandating a connector is government overreach. Unless it is specifically for a government contract: fuck right off.

I'm a big EU fan for a lot of stuff, but this in particular, is bullshit. I don't care what it is: mandating a particular connector by law across an entire economic region is fucking stupid.

They could have done this earlier with micro-b, and in the future a better connector may make type C look as shitty as micro-b.

You may as well mandate that all mice use AAA batteries only, or that all smart tags run on CR2032. Where does it stop, and how do we make the lunacy stop once it gets going?
 
Last edited:
throAU said:
Let me preface this as stating that I am someone who is happily (currently) type C on everything finally...


So if I want something half the size, then what? What about double the size for 20x the bandwidth plus charging? It means I now need TWO fucking connectors to comply.

Talking to regulator instead of just catering to market demand stifles progress. You'll be tied up in committee meetings for years/decades.

Mandating a connector is government overreach. Unless it is specifically for a government contract: fuck right off.

I'm a big EU fan for a lot of stuff, but this in particular, is bullshit. I don't care what it is: mandating a particular connector by law across an entire economic region is fucking stupid.

They could have done this earlier with micro-b, and in the future a better connector may make type C look as shitty as micro-b.

You may as well mandate that all mice use AAA batteries only, or that all smart tags run on CR2032. Where does it stop, and how do we make the lunacy stop once it gets going?
Click to expand...


Couple of things. First, the main point of this legislation was not even mandating USB-C, it was mandating USB-C PD. Most vendors already converged on USB for charging for obvious reasons, but the chargers were often wildly incompatible with each other. I still have some OnePlus USB-C chargers here use USB-C receptacle while not conforming to the standard. What's the customer benefit here? I see none — only the vendor lock in and maximizing profits by taking advantage of customer confusion. Second, what would be a better port? USB-C is extensible, supports power delivery in excess of any foreseeable needs, and is pretty much as compact as engineering allows. What would be a meaningful innovation in this space that this legislation would potentially block? The only meaningfully smaller receptacle would be a barrel charger, and you are literally only saving a couple of mm on the receptacle size while sacrificing data connectivity and charger compatibility. As to "20x bandwidth" — why would you need 1600 GB/s connectivity in a smartphone? This is OSFP territory, used in fastest supercomputers, costing $$$$ and being almost half the size of a modern smartphone.

While I sympathize (and agree!) with your concern about government overreach, it seems to me that the degree of customer confusion and inconvenience avoided by all the incompatible, low quality chargers is well worth barring companies from providing a custom solution to an already solved problem. One should innovate where innovation is meaningful. Mandating a connectivity standard for a well-defined and well-understood market segment (not to mention that the mandated solution supports all potential application with no noteworthy drawbacks) is similar to mandating petrol standards.
 
USB-C PD includes the type C connector. While you can obviously borrow parts of the spec for use over a different connector, I don't think you can use USB-IF trademarks to describe it.

The idea that it was awful innovation-hating government overreach to mandate USB-C PD is just silly. This was a mature market that had already mostly self-standardized on USB-C PD. Making it an official requirement only took away the few weird holdouts that were hurting consumers by not also standardizing.

And to address the elephant in the room, Apple was by far the biggest holdout. Also the weirdest one, given that it was Apple who designed the type C connector, donated it to the USB-IF, and pushed for the merger of Thunderbolt into USB 4 onwards. Out of any of the hardware tech majors (or even minors), Apple was by far the most eager to do away with legacy ports and switch over to nothing but USB type C.

At least on computers. The most obvious reason why the iPhone/iPad division might not have wanted to give Lightning up is that they were making bank on MFi (made for iPhone) licensing, which would dry up if iPhones adopted USB type C. So ironically, the EU mandate actually pushed Apple to adopt Apple's own innovation.
 
mr_roboto said:
This was a mature market that had already mostly self-standardized on USB-C PD.
Click to expand...

Exactly. All the law has done is slow future progress. The market had already sorted itself out via customer demand.
The legislation achieved nothing save for being a roadblock to future progress.
 

Similar threads

Eric
Apple and other smartphone makers will be required to support USB-C as part of a single charging standard for mobile devices across the European Union
Replies
9
Views
827
Herdfan
Herdfan
Back
Top