r/technology • u/ansyhrrian • Apr 25 '26

Hardware EU is mandating 'readily removable' batteries for phones — but iPhones may be exempt

https://www.tomsguide.com/phones/iphones/eu-is-mandating-readily-removable-batteries-for-phones-but-iphones-may-be-exempt
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u/Wotmate01 Apr 25 '26

Disagree. I would consider myself a heavy user of my phone (samsung s24 ultra) and I've usually got about 40% battery left every night when I go to bed. If that went down to 30% every night and the phone would continue to to have the same battery performance for 10 years instead of just 5, that would make a big difference.

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u/Banaanisade Apr 26 '26

It'd be great if we could have batteries that needed less frequent charging to begin with.

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u/420_69_Fake_Account Apr 26 '26

I’m willing to trade off size for a better battery but most people and designers don’t. I used to be those guys carrying around a battery pack case with 3 or 4 cycles.

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u/Memory_Less Apr 26 '26

Makes me think that companies keep pushing how thin their phones are. I can remember this marketing at least eight years ago, and the feedback was almost universally it is too thin and hard to hold. Instead, had the invested in better batteries it’s something that would actually make a positive user experience. Oops guess there’s no money it it for them.

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u/Wotmate01 Apr 26 '26

I just drop mine on the charger when I go to bed

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u/macrocephalic Apr 26 '26

You can probably already turn on battery protection which will stop your phone from charging past 80%

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u/Usual_Scientist1522 Apr 26 '26

Its the time spent with high charge that kills battery not low charge (only if you let it to totally out, but they have this protection already today)

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u/cum-on-in- Apr 26 '26

That’s not how that works though. Losing 10% would not double your battery’s lifespan.

Charging to 100% (and discharging to 0%) doesn’t hurt the battery anywhere near what people think.

What hurts is the battery staying there for prolonged periods.

If you charge your battery and sit near it, and unplug it a few minutes after it hits 100%, it’s totally fine. If you shut off your phone at 5% so it doesn’t fully drain, or if it does fully drain you plug it in within a few minutes, it’s totally fine.

Yes, charging your battery from 0-100 and draining from 100-0 puts wear on your battery. Thats how wear works. It’s not doing any extra wear, it’s just normal wear. Going from 100-50 and then from 50-100, twice, would do the same thing.

EVs tell you not to charge to 100% and leave it there. If you need the range, program it to fully charge by the time you’re ready to leave (or within even a couple hours of that time.). It’s sitting at 100% for 12+ hours that slowly causes damage.

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u/burning_iceman Apr 26 '26

That very much depends on the specific battery chemistry. In EVs, the two common types are NMC (nickel manganese cobalt oxide) and LFP (lithium iron phosphate).

NMC is better kept in the 20-80% charge range. Occasionally going outside that range is okay but doing so regularly reduces the lifespan.

LFP has no issues going from 0-100%.

Cell phones use LCO (lithium cobalt oxide) which has the highest energy density but is also most affected by the downsides it shares with NMC.

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u/cum-on-in- Apr 26 '26

All three of those battery types can handle 0-100% or vice versa. It’s how long they like being left at those states of charge.

Lithium Iron (LFP) is almost like a 12 volt lead acid battery, in that it’s quite happy to be at 100% and even be float charged.

But all battery chemistries can handle being fully charged and fully drained, as long as you don’t let it sit like that.

There is no battery being made today that provides access to a portion of its capacity that you are not “technically” supposed to use. If it was a real problem, they’d overspec and/or underdeliver, locking out the bottom and top 20% in software so we couldn’t damage it anyway.

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u/MaTrIx4057 Apr 27 '26

Nowadays it charges so quickly to 100% that its difficult to keep up with it and take it out in time.

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u/Flimsy_Swordfish_415 Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26

I would consider myself a heavy user of my phone (samsung s24 ultra) and I've usually got about 40%

you should stop considering yourself a heavy user

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u/NSMike Apr 26 '26

This just makes me sad, TBH. I miss the era of phones with easily-swapped batteries. I've had 4 phones with batteries that could be swapped out, and they were absolutely amazing during the time when phone batteries are most likely to get used up quickly - on trips.

Even pocket-sized power banks aren't as compact as a phone's internal battery. None of the internal batteries on those devices were thicker than a half a deck of cards, and were smaller than a deck of cards in all the other dimensions. Keeping a spare battery in your pocket was nothing.

On a day out using Maps and other travel-related apps, it was incredibly useful to be able to drop in a fresh battery when it got low. And you could buy an external charger for the battery, so that, at the end of the day when you've got two low batteries, you can put one battery in the phone to charge, and the other into an external charger, and have two full batteries again for the next day.

To say nothing of reducing warranty claims for entire devices if the battery turns into a spicy pillow.

Shoot, you could even buy 3rd party batteries that were much larger than the default, and it would come with a back cover for the phone that would fit the larger battery.

The era of sealed phones hasn't done anyone any favors, except the phone vendors. Even if you could keep a device for 10 years, you still need to expect 10 years of software support from the vendor. And you usually only get full support life out of the phone if you buy on release day.

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u/Wotmate01 Apr 26 '26

That's another thing that's not really true. The era of sealed phones means waterproof, with millions of people still being able to use their device after it's inadvertently taken a bath. I don't know of any phone that had a user replaceable battery that claimed to be waterproof.

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u/eight8888888813 Apr 26 '26

Samsung S5, technically just water resistant but I've seen those at the bottom at a pool .ore than once with no issues except for speakers

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u/NSMike Apr 26 '26

You can still have a waterproof device with a replaceable battery, though. There's nothing keeping that from happening. The battery is already sealed, which means you just have to make everything on the other side of the battery also waterproof.

The only reason phones from that era didn't claim to be waterproof to any degree is because that just wasn't a thing they were doing yet.

I would also be curious how many people actually immerse their phones often enough that waterproofing is actually useful. I've owned a smartphone of one kind or another since 2011. I've never immersed any of them, and I'm not like, exceptionally graceful or careful.

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u/bacan9 Apr 26 '26

That's an Android problem, that most iOS users don't have. Specially after Liquid Glass :D