Once again, the EU drags the rest of us into modernity kicking and screaming.

I learned to crack open my laptop shell and replace the battery, which saved me 30 bucks when capacity was dead and I was getting a spicy pillow in the works.

My model had an easily searchable servicing guide, and I'd followed it to replace the thermal paste as well. That being said, I am looking for a future replacement as it no longer runs some indie games I have and there's no way to upgrade its internals to newer standards. My dear laptop is future e-waste, as it pains me to say.

This industry needs to go back to focus on repairability. It would push for more sustainable part and product designs, which has become a big factor in purchase consideration lately.

Yes, but ideally you can swap the battery without having to disassemble the entire thing.

I think it should be fully replaceable storage, not just expandable because a lot of companies throw out completely fine devices to get rid of sensitive information on the soldered drives

Interestingly enough, I sometimes get into disagreements with my employer's German branch because they want to do the bare minimum for standards while the US branch prefers to have internal standards that are more stringent

if it is safe for an untrained individual to do so.

Remove this part and I agree. If you don't know how to repair it yourself, you can always go to an independent repair shop. But if manufacturers don't have to make parts available, you are at the mercy of the manufacturer.

So make the parts available and publish schematics, and those who want to can attempt the repair themselves, and those who don't can take it to a repair shop.

Manufacturers use the "but it's dangerous!" excuse to lock people into their ecosystem and/or support planned obsolescence. That needs to end.

During the early days of cell phones, replaceable batteries was the norm, not the exception, and it was as complicated to perform as your TV remote. No need for training. In these modern days, you may want to turn off your phone cleanly before proceeding, but that's pretty much it!

Let's not even talk about the early handheld game sets: the GameBoy (Nintendo) and GameGear (Sega), that were using regular disposable batteries (rechargeable ones were recommended though!).

Vendors have made our devices complicated to repair to lower costs and later to make our smartphones water resistant. They started off being easy to disassemble and re-assemble.

Steam deck done.

Not really. Look up the Linus Tech Tips teardown. The battery is glued in super hard. Linus said he spoke to Valve about that and according to him Valve said they're looking into making it easier to replace at a later date. Since then I've not seen any reports about a change.

Isn't the main issue whether or not there's an ease to replace? There's like 20 steps and a bunch of easily breakable cables involved with replacing it currently.

I mean I think you can replace the Switch's battery too by that standard.

Same site even says it's only 1 extra step in total, though instead of the cables being in the way, it sounds like the shields a bit more difficult.

But like either of these replacements would require a technical user to do it.