First USB-C, now this. The EU is doing the lord's work
this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
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Yup, they actually care about consumer protection.
That’s nice. Pretty sure it won’t come to us.
I mean, I like replaceable batteries and I try to repair everything I can that I own so that it lasts longer (I even replaced the battery in my wireless earbuds' case, doubling its lifetime so far), but swappable batteries have major downsides. Waterproofing is one, but a major thing is space. Sealed batteries don't need protection, but replaceable batteries do, and that increases their size by a lot. The last phones I've had probably couldn't even fit a replaceable battery inside of them how slim they are. So you either have to make phones much larger, or you have to reduce battery capacity. You also probably couldn't have metal backs and would have to return to plastic ones.
Some of these problems could be fixed but it'd make phones cost even more.
I don't know the answer to this, we should make phones more easily repairable, but I don't feel like this is the right way. Maybe mandating that phones can be repaired more easily by repair technicians and make the batteries more easily available. But I don't know how you could enforce that.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's gonna be easier to achieve than I believe, but I don't see how it's going to be possible without major downsides.
Heck yeah! I'm planning on getting a framework laptop when I next need an upgrade and if I get any input on the decision I'll be pushing for the corporate company I work at to adopt them. I'm admittedly not sure I'm ready to jump on the fairphone train yet but I'm open to the idea.
My framework was one of the best buying decisions I made. Mine came with a fan that made weird sounds so they just sent me the replacement part and I fixed it in 10 minutes. No more sending in the whole device and waiting for weeks on end.
While framekworks have virtually no drawback for me, I'm not as happy with my sustainable smartphone. I have a Shift phone (small company from Germany) that is fully user repairable. Unfortunately, the specs are only middle class, especially the camera, and the software updates are sparingly. Aside from the software updates I heard similar things from friends with Fairphones.
Yeah, right now I've got a s23 ultra and I really like it. There is too much of an advantage to the mainstream phones in camera and extra features for me to make that jump yet. I had a OnePlus with lineage before but I can't pretend I haven't enjoyed the Samsung so far. As for my Lenovo X1 Carbon I'd replace it in a second, it's still doing pretty well right now but it's absolutely not repairable and starting to show its age a bit. I've also just been lucky to not need to repair anything.
I will never get over Brexit. Europe were really looking out for us as consumers. Also supporting so many communities with grants and funding.
The EU does some really good stuff, but they also do some really absolutely stupid shit.
It's a good move but the main issue is the software rather than batteries.
Force them to release an open bootloader and firmware when deprecating devices at least.