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European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries
(www.techspot.com)
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this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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While that's great, what I'm more concerned about is pricing for original replacement batteries. I don't really care if I have to send my phone in for 2 to 3 days (which is what it took last time I sent an iPhone 11 Pro to Apple), what concerns me more is pricing. Especially with older phones, having to pay $69 to $89 for battery repair (plus shipping) is quite a lot. Self-service parts cost the exact same price from Apple currently.
The EU should forbid charging more for replacement or repair parts than the cost to manufacture them plus a small (!) markup.
Also, please extend this law to include all kinds of electronics (smartwatches, laptops, tablets etc.).
Especially AirPods and other true wireless earbuds should have replaceable batteries, as they are basically dead after 3 to 5 years, which just feels wrong considering everything except the batteries probably lasts a lot longer and when you get an expensive "battery repair" they just give you new AirPods.
It's not that I disagree with you entirely. It's just personally, knowing how to solder, and having had to replace batteries for both external and internal battery laptops recently, I'd rather not have this extend to laptops. As it is now with modern laptops, you just open up the housing, desolder the old battery, get just about any lithium battery from anything (those cheap USB power packs are great), and solder some wires from that to the control board. Going back to detachable batteries means having to deal with every single manufacturer's proprietary awful housing and pinout slots. You either buy an OEM part from the manufacturer (if they still sell them) or risk a fire with third party batteries in awful housing. Detachable batteries is also how you end up with things like Lenovo using firmware to disallow third party batteries from charging on their laptops.
I feel it's more important that housings should be user openable with normal tools (guitar pick, razor blade, screwdriver) without damaging the housing. HP is genuinely awful for this on laptops.
I'd imagine you'd have a hard time using USB power banks to form a battery that resembles (for example) a MacBook Air battery:
Considering most power banks use 18650 cells or similar (but even if they are thinner), I can't really see how you'd form a battery pack that fills the space effectively on most notebooks anyway.
It's also a lot of work finding the correct cells to use (form and size wise), ordering them, if it's in a power bank prying that apart, desoldering the old and soldering in the new cells. >= 99% of all people would purchase complete, fitting battery packs for their model of laptop.