Electronics manufactures must from Saturday fit all devices sold in the EU with USB-C charger ports in a bid by the 27-nation bloc to reduce waste and cut costs for consumers, who will no longer have…
There’s always an implementation period with these things, also with the USB thing, to allow companies to build and sell phones that are already in the pipeline. Expect, just as with the USB thing, replaceable batteries to become a common sight quite soon and ubiquitous by 2027. You can already get quite decent smartphones with replaceable batteries but it’s the usual suspects Fairphone, Gigaset, and (at least one model of) Samsung, those would also exist without the regulation. The “oh shit they actually passed it we’ll need to re-engineer things” models from everyone else still aren’t on the market.
And before anyone brings it up: Yes, you can make them waterproof.
Looking back, I suspect this was only an argument to make them hard to repair, as always, just worded in a sense like it’d benefit the customer.
FFS, just add some rubber… We’ve used rubber in condoms for centuries (kinda) succesfully, what made them think glue’d be better… I ain’t gonna put glue on my ding-dong, if that’s what they’re after all these years.
I suspect this was only an argument to make them hard to repair, as always
They don’t mind the benefit, for sure. But as somebody who worked in manufacturing support jobs up until a couple years ago, I’m 90% confident it’s just faster and cheaper to glue them. Probably easier to automate too. Again it just comes down to money.
Just thinking of the scale of R&D for something like a flagship phone, there are a LOT of person-hours dedicated to manufacturability.
There’s always an implementation period with these things, also with the USB thing, to allow companies to build and sell phones that are already in the pipeline. Expect, just as with the USB thing, replaceable batteries to become a common sight quite soon and ubiquitous by 2027. You can already get quite decent smartphones with replaceable batteries but it’s the usual suspects Fairphone, Gigaset, and (at least one model of) Samsung, those would also exist without the regulation. The “oh shit they actually passed it we’ll need to re-engineer things” models from everyone else still aren’t on the market.
And before anyone brings it up: Yes, you can make them waterproof.
Strongly agree!
Looking back, I suspect this was only an argument to make them hard to repair, as always, just worded in a sense like it’d benefit the customer.
FFS, just add some rubber… We’ve used rubber in condoms for centuries (kinda) succesfully, what made them think glue’d be better… I ain’t gonna put glue on my ding-dong, if that’s what they’re after all these years.
They don’t mind the benefit, for sure. But as somebody who worked in manufacturing support jobs up until a couple years ago, I’m 90% confident it’s just faster and cheaper to glue them. Probably easier to automate too. Again it just comes down to money.
Just thinking of the scale of R&D for something like a flagship phone, there are a LOT of person-hours dedicated to manufacturability.