It had been in the works for a while, but now it has formally been adopted. From the article:
The regulation provides that by 2027 portable batteries incorporated into appliances should be removable and replaceable by the end-user, leaving sufficient time for operators to adapt the design of their products to this requirement.
Is it possible, by having a removable battery, our phone won’t be as water resistant as it is now? I love that my phone is water resistant. I have a couple of water related accidents of my phone for at least two times. One happened on a not water resistant device. If I can choose between removable battery and water resistance, I’d choose water resistance all the time. I am changing my phone every 2 years anyway.
my gopro never had an issue
There are, and always has been, waterproof devices with replaceable batteries. Phone manufacturers love that they can lie and say that a removable battery affects waterproofing. By making the battery hard to remove, and some other tricks, they make the phone less repairable. They then can convince consumers that they need to replace their phone every 18-24 months.
The only reason to replace your phone every two years is that you want the new shiny. All other reasons are artificial, marketing garbage created by manufactures who profit off of creating e-waste.
Water resistant devices are a thing we figured out in the 70s. There have been WR phones since before integrated batteries even became a thing. Even before Apple made the iPhone. It’s not a question of if it can be done. It’s a question of if enough people can be educated into preferring a WR phone, because It costs a few extra bucks to produce WR phones. And when they complete against non WR phones they always lose. Integrated batteries made the gap smaller, at the cost of making the device less repairable/maintainable.
I think the goal here is to make people not change devices every two years generating e-waste in the process. At least not for the battery. There’s not much difference between an iPhone 12 and 14 in regards of power, most of us could happily use the 12 for longer with replacement batteries.
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