If a battery can do 1000 cycles and remain above 80% capacity it is exempt from this, which is exactly what Apple implemented a few years ago.
Low cost phones will be most affected.
If a battery can do 1000 cycles and remain above 80% capacity it is exempt from this, which is exactly what Apple implemented a few years ago.
Low cost phones will be most affected.
I was wondering about that. I lost my iPhone 13 mini the other day, did the find my phone beep thing and got a distant beep from my washing machine which was on wash cycle.
Surprisingly the phone was fine and works fine after a brief rinse under the tap. It must be hard to combine that sort of water resistance with easy user changing.
Don't fall for the 'glue cuz of protection' myth - there are and had been water-resistant phones way before Apple started glueing to avoid customers doing their own repairs and them losing out on new sales.
Which phones? I ask as someone that's had to replace multiple phones after a trip through the washing machine.
Modern phone water resistance is incredible. I've even seen people literally swim with their phones and not even question if it was a bad idea.
Fifteen years ago, I had a Garmin GPS (admittedly not a phone, but similar form factor) that survived a week of knocking around the bottom of a raft.
The battery compartment had a rubber gasket and some very tight screws.
How much of the total volume of the device was the case/housing?
I suppose the glue-everything approach is partly due to the desire of making a device very thin. There's no room for strong, load-bearing outer case, the internals are load-bearing.
You just need well designed rubber gasket. Thickness is impact resistance thing in those devices
Samsung Galaxy S5 was the last one that attempted it. IP67 with a removable back cover and swappable battery.
Yes, but IP67 is not nearly as water resistant as IP68, which all modern phones are for the most part.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if IP68 could be achieved in a phone without glue. There's no clamping mechanism for the backs, they're just press-fit with small clips.
My phone (A Furiphone FLX1, which is kindof a variant of a Gigaset GX6) has a removable back with a gasket and is IP68. One of their promotional videos had them change the battery on video then boot the phone and and unlock it underwater
From a mechanical perspective ip68 is perfectly achievable mechanically and watches have been achieving it for a long time, however… with what sort of margins for the manufacturer and what sort of cost for the consumer ? Additionally a lot of them require pretty carefully adherence to instructions torques and tolerances to achieve the same waterproof rating. Personally I’d be very happy to have a phone that says, if you swap the battery you might lose the ip68 rating unless you follow the resealing process within tolerances.
Nothing stops them from adding a gasket and some screws though.
Who cares though? Sealing the battery in makes the device less drop resistant. I somehow managed to avoid water damage to my phones for decades, while none of my phones managed to avoid being dropped in a way that would most likely be fatal to them if their batteries were sealed in - and yet most of them survived to this day.
A phone needs to handle some rain droplets falling on its screen, anything more than that is a gimmick that's not worth the downsides it comes with.
quite a few people put their phones in their back pockets...
I’ve done it and seen it many times. People throw their phones to each other in pools and the beach for photos all the time. One of the best things about modern phones is the waterproofing. IP68 level is amazing.
> A phone needs to handle some rain droplets falling on its screen, anything more than that is a gimmick that's not worth the downsides it comes with
It’s actually the opposite - a user replacement battery is a gimmick not worth the downsides.
Apple know this, and they know their customers a lot better than you do.
Your position is niche at best, anachronistic really.
Apple has vested interest in getting their customers to switch to a new phone often, and the average time to upgrade is absurdly low these days (less than 4 years), which is greatly influenced by battery wear and fall damage, so I don't think this argument is very persuasive.
> Who cares though?
a lot of normal people who daily-use their phones near water and even jump into pools with them. I would bet you $100 that if you asked people "replaceable battery of water proofing to the same level you have it now", ~ nobody will puck the former.
Not once in my life I had thought "I would like to jump into this pool with my phone", while I did sometimes replace the battery on-the-go which actually made my life easier. It's an absurd take. If anything, I'd be more concerned with beverage spills, but these are still easier to avoid than drops.
Well you are the exception. Especially if you live in a hot area where a lot of people have backyard pools. Being in and out of the water constantly is a very normal in Florida for example.
Most the suburban kids in Houston had wristband attachments to their phones in the pool or would be in a floaty taking stupid pics of each other as kids do. Trying to keep a modern phone dry takes away a lot of utility.
Not a lot of people live in hot areas with plenty of backyard pools, but I can understand that waterproof phones could become more popular there than in the rest of the world based on this property alone (right now they're popular because there's not much choice).
A phone needs to handle some rain droplets falling on its screen, anything more than that is a gimmick that's not worth the downsides it comes with
Some like to read in the bathtub. Statistics say women prefer the bathtub more than the shower. Therefore your position is sexist.
(Yes, I'm being an asshat)
Maybe as a society it's better for people to have replacement insurance than to have sealed batteries that make phones so disposable. I wonder if we've defined IP68 as a "must have" without considering the alternatives. I'm thinking the percentage of people who actually "use" IP68 over the course of their phone is pretty small...yet that "requirement" drives a huge design choice.
I suspect it's a moot point. Makers have every incentive to drive replacement cycles.
Downvoted for daring to speculate. I love this place.
Not really comparable perhaps - but I had a Ericsson t18s or similar that went through a full 60C cotton wash cycle (being on at the start of the wash) and was fine after drying off.
The thing is - if the battery had been destroyed, that could have been replaced...
Samsung Galaxy S5 is the first one to cross my mind.
Also important to note that post is 1 datapoint. My "waterproof" phone fell in the bath for about 2 seconds and broke...
Re the repairs, I can get the battery swapped on the 13 mini for £49 which isn't that bad. (iSmash, not Apple).
And they weren't bulky tactical phones that looked like the smartphone equivalent of Humvees?
Samsung xCover series phones are smaller than flagship phones with a case that many people add to achieve the same durability.
Where did you see this? Can't see that in the article or a quick search on the rules PDF.
This could be "fixed" right now by a software update that limits the maximum charge level to 80% of capacity. However, this comes at the cost of how many minutes of runtime your phone can operate.
So manufactures might just responds to this by making your phone heavier with a bigger battery that is being under utilized.
This sounds great. I would've loved to have set my phone to charge up to only 60% or 80% of its design capacity to reduce wear. I do this on my laptop.
It makes a bit of a difference, but not dramatically: https://youtu.be/kLS5Cg_yNdM?t=3m26
In that experiment, it’s also unclear if the 30% lower limit or the 80% upper limit is more important. I suspect the former.
It has been on iPhones for quite some while, but on androids even longer. Before that it was in the form of some smart charging scheme that it would only finish charging until the moment it thought you would unplug it.
I charge my s25 to 80%. Previous phone (pixel) was also limited to 80%, but radio stopped working after 2 years so I had to buy a new phone.
Honestly we should define 80% as the new "100%" on such batteries and label "charging to full" as "overcharging".
Psychologically, people understand charging a battery to "125%" (or whatever) a lot better: Do it when you really need to but if you do it all the time it wears down the battery a lot faster.
Yes and yes.
I recently investigated large portable power banks (Jackery, etc.) and like that there are options to charge faster with a battery life tradeoff. Let people make their own informed choices.
Samsung phones let you limit them to 80% charge. I've had this enabled since I got my current phone.
On Pixels too.
And what about if 4 years they says that they have dettected a problem in your battery? A new battery should fix that but now you cannot do it properly because it could do 1000 cycles.
This same thing happened to Pixels 6a after 500 cycles.
Then don’t buy a phone from a company with a piss poor record of customer service.
Just looking in maps, there are three Apple Stores within a 45 minute drive from where I live in central Florida.
The situation is worse in my hometown in South GA admittedly, you have to drive 70 miles for same day service for an authorized repair place - mostly Best Buy.
> Then don’t buy a phone from a company with a piss poor record of customer service.
That is not an argument.
I wonder if this is part of why Apple is behind most competitors in terms of fast charging. Would almost make marketing sense to come out and say it at this point.
What if they don't? What if there are manufacturer errors? What if they burn your battery with updates along the way?
The goal should be reducing e-waste, and honestly this seems reasonable.
I’d rather get the additional structural rigidity, compactness, and weatherproofing that comes from the tight construction and then pay $99 to have Apple professionally install a new battery for me in 3-4 years. Forcing everyone’s iPhone to take all of the tradeoffs of replaceable batteries so some people can save $50 to replace their own battery isn’t a good deal.
I wouldn’t be surprised if forcing all phones to have easily replaceable batteries would result in a net increase in e-waste due to the additional failure modes introduced. Even if batteries were easily replaceable I think most iPhone users would have Apple do it for them anyway.
I’ve also replaced some iPhone batteries myself and it’s really not that bad if you are familiar with taking modern electronics apart. Apple will send you the entire toolkit if you want complete with a return label.
> and then pay $99 to have Apple professionally install a new battery for me in 3-4 years
In 3-4 years yes, but how about in 10-15 years? Apple will refuse to take your money then.
> Apple will send you the entire toolkit if you want complete with a return label.
Which is malicious compliance. They should allow the friendly neighborhood repair shop to purchase a toolkit so you can choose who does the repairs for you.
Apple offers replacement batteries for an 11 year old phone, now -- past performance is no guarantee but they're already way, way ahead of the pack and there's no sign they're going to stop repairing old phones.
Will we even have a compatible wireless standards in 15 years?
Isn't like most of the new phones claim at least 1000 cycles?
> Low cost phones will be most affected.
Not really. Take a 4000 mAh rated cell, advertise it as "rated for 3500 mAh" and that's it.
Isn't this pretty much what Nothing are doing? At least one of their phones has a different battery rating in India than elsewhere, despite containing the same hardware.
Funnily enough I've had a "low cost phone" with replaceable batteries (the "old school way")
So it does not seem a big deal
Wish they'd have implemented it before the iPhone 14 Pro launched. I'm at 624 cycles right now and my phone's gone below 80% fucking ages ago.
Apple’s replacement program is $99 for out of warranty battery replacement
Not really. The "estimated cost" on Apple.com is 139€ to 199€ depending on which company I take it.
My battery’s at 70%, I could replace it for $50, but I consider it a feature to get me off my goddamn phone more.
> The regulation states that batteries must be removable using ‘commercially available’ tools
I’m pretty sure that’s more or less already the case, so…
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Is 1000 cycles above 80% even possible without gimping the device like apple does with all its hardware?