obviously, but stuff like this is still neat 
Now it seems Apple will need to figure out how to allow access to the battery inside future iPhones, as will every other smartphone manufacturer.
Eat shit and drink piss, Apple. I have a desk drawer full of old phones with removable batteries, we had this shit figured out 20 years ago
I bet user-replaceable will just mean technically possible for a user to do, with the right tool kit purchased at €100. I didn’t really look into it though.
Tbh the design drawbacks of easy battery swap are kinda not worth it. I would rather just force manufacturers to replace batteries at cost or host a recycling program which allows a phone to be traded in for purchase price minus fair market battery price.
Phone repair is ludicrously expensive, especially with cheaper phones. When your phone cost <150€, paying 80 to repair it just doesn't feel like it's worth it. You'd rather just get a new one at that point
If manufacturers are given the option between user-serviceable batteries vs at-cost replacement, that still amounts to a win for the users without limiting phone design possibilities. Forcing battery swap design will most likely reduce battery life by a little bit as space has to be sacrificed for serviceability.
phones have been getting thinner because of a marketing circlejerk we could had easy replaceable batteries that lasted a month in 2cm thick phones but steve jobs didn't die in time.
also if your battery is replaceable that means you might be able to get a thicc aftermarket battery or carry spare actual batteries rather than fucking around with a powerbank.
nothing about any of the trends in capitalist hardware design has actually been good for end-users.
I mean it’s hard to separate my own “true” desires versus manufactured consumerist desires, but I think it’s logical for people to want smaller thinner phones. This fact aligning with planned obsolescence doesn’t mean that there is no legitimate reason to design phones in a way that makes it difficult to replace batteries. All that said, I am sure that Apple with their $1T can figure out a good solution for a swappable battery.
no! they were already pointlessly and anti-userly thin before 2015 and that was long before the shit asses started removing headphone jacks.
Well I don’t believe the market is good for much, but the smartphone market is saturated enough that we have a pretty good idea of the form most people want in a phone when balancing aesthetics, weight, ease of handling, durability, waterproofing, screen size, etc. The concerns that you have are easily solved with a phone case, even one with a battery. I don’t miss headphone jacks either, as Bluetooth is really convenient and not that expensive anymore.
The focus should not be “the mainstream phone design shouldn’t exist” but rather on the fact that market forces incentivize standardization to cut costs, whereas a hypothetical economy driven by use-value instead of profit would be able to support production of niche/specialized commodities without concern for profit.
no we have a good idea of what apple marketing and apple-chasing companies will push.
bluetooth sounds worse than a wire and nobody wanted to buy new shitty earbuds for no reason or deal with charging issues on another device. Doubly so for anyone who replaced their mp3 player or walkman with a phone at any point and cares literally at all about audio quality. I already had these $80 earbuds that sound pretty dang good why the fuck should i buy a worse product that's easier to lose and needs to be charged?
Bluetooth headphones definitely do have their uses, but I am still firmly pro headphone jack
Having wired earbuds ripped out of my ear is annoying and it is not infrequent. Wireless is way more convenient for a bunch of reasons but especially when moving. Bluetooth also doesn’t inherently sound worse, there are codecs which are very good and will not make a difference unless you’re an audiophile with excellent equipment sitting in a quiet environment in which you could just plug into a computer jack anyway. For most situations with a phone, wireless makes more sense.
Anyway, I didn’t really want to have a battle of preferences as my original point is that there are reasons other than mustache-twirling capitalism that one would design a device with a difficult-to-replace battery. And although this EU decision is for consumers, there are actual downsides which may be outweighed by the benefits, but which exist nonetheless.
Maybe it's just me but I'd rather not buy earbuds that have a built in expiration date in the form of batteries. I don't think a marginal convenience benefit is worth that.
Markets have many uses and your example is not one of them. People can only buy what is being sold, and advertising spin warps what they would choose from among those options. It is hard to say what "the form most people want in a phone" is given we only have such wildly skewed information on the topic.
I imagine it's going to be similar to user replaceable displays, you'll need a couple specialized tools to break open the glue holding the case together etc. and a device-spesific guide. So not everyone is going to be able to do it, but there's a reasonable possibilty.