Honestly, with Apple making it incredibly fucking hard to take out their batteries with excessive amounts of glue, I'm okay with this.
Android
DROID DOES
Welcome to the droidymcdroidface-iest, Lemmyest (Lemmiest), test, bestest, phoniest, pluckiest, snarkiest, and spiciest Android community on Lemmy (Do not respond)! Here you can participate in amazing discussions and events relating to all things Android.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules
1. All posts must be relevant to Android devices/operating system.
2. Posts cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
3. No spam, self promotion, or upvote farming. Sources engaging in these behavior will be added to the Blacklist.
4. Non-whitelisted bots will be banned.
5. Engage respectfully: Harassment, flamebaiting, bad faith engagement, or agenda posting will result in your posts being removed. Excessive violations will result in temporary or permanent ban, depending on severity.
6. Memes are not allowed to be posts, but are allowed in the comments.
7. Posts from clickbait sources are heavily discouraged. Please de-clickbait titles if it needs to be submitted.
8. Submission statements of any length composed of your own thoughts inside the post text field are mandatory for any microblog posts, and are optional but recommended for article/image/video posts.
Community Resources:
We are Android girls*,
In our Lemmy.world.
The back is plastic,
It's fantastic.
*Well, not just girls: people of all gender identities are welcomed here.
Our Partner Communities:
Fingers crossed that this will be implemented well, im tired of having sleek electronics be irrelevant in 2 years when the silicon could go for 5 or six
The silicon could go on for decades if both the modem and processor were fully documented hardware that the community can access and support in the Linux kernel.
I can run a secure and current form of Linux on 30+ year old hardware if I want to, because the hardware documentation was expected by everyone at the time even if some end users were oblivious to what this meant. The whole reason google pushes Android is because they provide a base Linux kernel that hardware manufacturers can easily slip their proprietary junk into without requiring them to add the kind of open source code needed for mainline kernel support by the community. This is the mechanism that depreciates your device. It is totally artificial and an end user exploitation by design.
Add to that requirements for longer software support. At least for security patches.
Hooray! Younger generations will finally be able to experience the joy of dropping their phone and having to pick up three to four different pieces! /s
(I'm all for this change, by the way)
Oh I remember that with Nokias. It's like shock absorbing for cars lol.
I was 12, I think, when I got my first phone. A Nokia. I was mortified the first time it happened. Then clack-clack-clack I was taught to put it together again.
Happened many more times afterwards.
I was around the same age. :) I still have the old Nokias. What a time that was, with Symbian being an OS.
Phones are getting more expensive so people are holding on to them longer, so it's a nice quality of life improvement to remove the barriers to battery replacement so less people have to go down to a phone repair store to get it changed. The more of a hassle battery replacement is seen the more likely people are to just upgrade and create e-waste.
Excellent! Batteries in modern phones are surprisingly definitely removable and replaceable. I've done it multiple times. However, the unfriendly barrier to entry is glue and clips that require careful prying with spugers. It's quite clear manufacturers are happy blocking you getting in; plenty people just buy new phones when the battery gets too old.
Worst was when the batteries were glued to the screen so you could break the entire phone apart trying to change it yourself.
I actually love all these regulations on smartphones (mainly by the EU), like the recent USB-C standard. That one in particular makes it so much easier to share chargers around the house!
Do y'all remember the days when you dropped your phone and it exploded into 3 or 4 pieces? 🤣 Those were the good days.
Three. Battery, cover and the rest. Weirdly, no damage to the plastic display. How? I guess it was the ~~weather~~ bezel
And when you scratched up the back you bought a new one for $12. No $200 glass or machined aluminum cases that we put $35 covers on just to protect them from every day use.
If this goes through, I think it would be really good news. Battery failure is one of the leading things that force people to replace their smartphones, and having them be replaceable would go a long way towards making smartphones last longer.
This is actually pretty crazy. Wonder how much it'll affect the overall design of modern smartphones. Will we witness the return of flagships with plastic back covers?
God i hope so. I miss being able to just pop the back off and change out my battery. It was great for sd and sim card slots too. I am quite excited for this
I couldn't care less if the back cover is plastic, it's just going inside a case anyway.
That'd be awesome. I don't understand why people think a glass back is premium. Your premium glass back doesn't look so fancy when it's shattered into a million pieces or sandwiched behind a $10 phone case from China.
I've hung on to my Note 4 that I bought in 2014 (no longer use it daily) and it's still in one piece even though it never lived in a case. The plastic and aluminum body have plenty of battle scars but no cracks or functional damage. This MFer is almost 10 years old now on its 5th or 6th battery and still hanging in there despite its aged hardware. Now that is a premium design.
right to repair LETS GOOO
Thank you, Mr. EU
Here's hope to standardized USB-C connector charging will also happen outside of Europe for the rest of the world.
This is awesome. Thank god for EU legislation that directly benefits me as an American consumer. Now I can microwave lithium ion batteries in peace!
Wonder if phone manufacturers will fragment their offerings to satisfy EU requirements or if we'll all end up with removable batteries.
It will be a pretty major redesign of the chasis and body to accommodate a removable battery and the cover, so I think it would make little economical sense to maintain two designs for every phone sold here.
I’m wondering how ‘user replaceable’ is defined. Will we get backs that just pop off, or do they just need to be easier to replace? (No glue or proprietary tools required)
This is very neat! I wonder how this is going to impact almost all phones these days having some sort of ingress protection. They glue the phones together to keep the water out, it would still be nice to have the option for water-resistant phones, but the manufacturers just gonna have to figure it out
Holy fuck this is insane. EU is doing something right (still salty about them wanting encryption keys but provisions to improve repair of hardware is big)
This i fucking loved the times around Samsung S4 , i literarily could just go and buy a replacement battery on amazon even with 200 MAH more snap the old one out and new one in BAM better battery.
Exchanging battery for my Poco x3 pro is complicated and would cost me atleast 70-80€ thats literarily half the device lol
Good, it's a small victory but one step closer to a society that doesn't create waste just to buy the next new shiny toy. Products should be build to last, be easily repairable and create as little waste as possible (which isn't possible in a system that demands unlimited growth over anything else). If we want to have a somewhat ok climate in the future, just focusing on electric vehicles (which are doing the whole subscription to access your hardware fully, not easily repairable bs as well) isn't gonna cut it.