In 2027, mobile phone batteries will become removable by law. And this will be a heavy blow for manufacturers.

The European Union wants us to be able to replace our batteries… Much to the displeasure of big brands

June 16, 2023. As planned, a year ago the European Union approved new standards related to the environmental friendliness 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.”“, this point seems to be in direct contradiction to much of the progress that has been made in recent years.

Whole bodies didn’t just happen. Manufacturers stopped creating clamshells against their will. The Unibody design embodies everything that characterizes the design of current phones: they are resistant to water and dust, much thinner than before, quite durable (at least at the body level) and have an increasingly efficient internal structure.

The advent of unibod meant goodbye to the removable battery with a cover and a new part; now it is necessary to remove the back of the terminal body, in some cases breaking several adhesive layers that attach the battery to the base, etc. . In fact, in the case of popular mobile phones like the POCO X3 Pro, you will 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 maintainability, and obvious losers. ifixit is clear: iPhones are the mobile phones with the best repairability index. Their only problem is that they require their own screws and parts, but beyond that, replacing the screen, back glass and battery is one of Apple’s priorities when designing its phones.

Diversity. For their part, they point out that in terminals such as the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, the battery is “severely stuck, requiring extensive disassembly.” In other words, without the necessary knowledge and tools, a lot of damage can be done in the process. The same goes for the Pixel 6 Pro, a phone where the charging port is soldered in and the battery is covered with a strong adhesive.

These solutions are consistent with the distribution design and interior design of the terminal. Some will be better or worse oriented towards repairability, but they represent what the manufacturer understands to be the most optical way to arrange each component.

What do we mean by removable. The European Union is not entirely clear. The main requirement it makes is that, starting in 2027, the end user must be able to remove the batteries. This will mean that manufacturers will have to provide every option for the user to complete this process, but technically the iPhone battery is replaceable and removable.

The Galaxy S22 battery, although difficult to operate, is replaceable and removable. The text suggests that manufacturers will have to make it easier for users to complete this process. Without going into too much detail, Apple is selling a set of tools that anyone can use to fix their phones (spoiler alert: it doesn’t cost anything).

changes will come. While we shouldn’t expect a return of flip phones, manufacturers will be forced to gradually change the structure and design of their terminals to make them easier to repair. An impulse that on paper should benefit users, but could come as a blow to those manufacturers whose designs had repairability as their last priority.

Image | Manzana

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*A previous version of this article was published July 2023.