The European Union wants us to be able to replace our batteries… To the annoyance of big brands
June 16, 2023. As planned, a year ago the European Union approved new standards related to the sustainability of batteries: material recovery, recycling efficiency, easy access to them. The goal is that, starting in 2027, “portable batteries built into devices must be removable and replaceable“, a point that seems to collide head-on with much of the progress that has been achieved in recent years.
Unibody bodies came for a reason. Manufacturers did not stop creating flip phones arbitrarily. Unibody designs have brought everything that characterizes the design of current phones: they are resistant to water and dust, much thinner than before, quite resistant (at least, at the body level) and have an increasingly efficient internal structure .
The arrival of the unibody meant goodbye to the removable battery with a cover and a new piece, now being necessary to remove the back part of the body of the terminal, in several cases breaking several adhesive layers that adhere the battery to the base, etc. In fact, in cases of mobile phones as popular as the POCO X3 Pro, you have to remove the camera module itself to access the battery. Something that is not in the hands of the average user.
There is a leader in repairability, and clear losers. ifixit is clear: iPhones are the mobile phones with the best repairability index. Their only difficulty is that they require their own screws and parts but, beyond that, screen, back glass and battery replacements are one of Apple’s priorities when designing its phones.
Diversity. For their part, they indicate that terminals such as the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra have the battery “strongly stuck, requiring extensive disassembly.” In other words, without the right knowledge and tools, it is possible to do a lot of damage in the process. The same goes for the Pixel 6 Pro, a phone where the charging port is soldered and the battery has strong glue.
These decisions correspond to the engineering on the distribution and internal design that the terminal will have. Some will be better or worse oriented towards repairability, but they represent what the manufacturer understands as the most optical way of locating each component.
What do we mean by removable. The European Union is not entirely clear. The main requirement that it puts on the table is that, starting in 2027, the batteries must be able to be removed by the end user. This will mean that manufacturers will have to provide all the facilities for the user to carry out the process but, technically, the battery of an iPhone is replaceable and removable.
The battery of a Galaxy S22, although difficult to work with, is replaceable and removable. The text suggests that manufacturers will have to make it easier for users to carry out the process. Without going any further, Apple sells a tool kit so that anyone can repair their phones (spoiler: it doesn’t cost anything).
changes will come. Although we should not expect the return of flip phones, manufacturers will be forced to progressively modify the structure and design of their terminals to make them more repair-friendly. An impulse that, on paper, should benefit users, but that can be a blow to those manufacturers in whose designs repairability was the last priority.
Image | Manzana
In Xataka | OnePlus has found the perfect ally to reinvent mobile batteries: CATL
In Xataka | iOS 18 now allows us to limit the maximum charge of our iPhone to below 100%. It has all the sense of the world
*An earlier version of this article was published in July 2023
