Among the best news that I’ve heard for a while is that the European Union plans to extend their legislation regarding removable batteries to a plethora of devices. This, more than trying to make the manufacturing of devices more efficient, is going to be a great step in reducing ewaste. Chiefly because something that is perfectly functional for you can continue to be functional for you until you get bored with it. And then it can be functional for somewhere else for a while. The limit is how long will developers give it support and how interested the aftermarket is in it.
Or how those manufacturers decide to interpret the letter of the law.
If The Verge is to be believed, they linked the relevant bits straight from the source this time, the legislation contains very clearly laid-out requirements.
“A portable battery should be considered to be removable by the end-user when it can be removed with the use of commercially available tools and without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless they are provided free of charge, or proprietary tools, thermal energy or solvents to disassemble it.”*
Sounds good. Not quite like back in the days when changing the battery of a RAZR took all of 45 seconds, but good enough. Naturally, the main concern is that that definition is not specific enough that, say, manufacturers won’t start using 17 different types of screws and bury the battery six layers deep. Anything to make the actual replacement annoying enough that the majority of people just won’t bother.
Nevertheless, this is an excellent piece of legislation. Especially as the market for portable devices achieves maturity. Even if manufacturers do try to be dicks about the battery change. At some point, the cost of making it irritating outstrips just having four screws somewhere. And the legislation does address the key bit, needing to apply heat to split open components or soften adhesives. Crucially, most people probably won’t bother with a battery chance. Much like other consumer goods, it’s remarkable how people will get bored and replace things by simple virtue of them being perfectly functional and totally boring as a result.
And even for those of us living outside of the EU, this should be taken as positive news. The chances of designing and building two chassis for different markets is slim. It would take an act of supreme dickery to do so for no other reason than being salty that a single-digit percentage of your customers are not going to buy a phone as frequently as they’d otherwise do…that is to say, wait to see if Apple wants to do it, though they probably won’t.
Of course what I would like them to do is something akin to what we had back in the early days of smartphones, where you could buy a dock where you would keep a spare battery. As soon as you felt the one in the phone was getting a bit low, it was a matter of pushing a button, swapping the battery and going about your day while the now-spare one charges for another tour.
The chances of that happening are somewhere to the west of “LOLNOPE”
