I was looking forward to finally be able to easily switch out (i)Phone batteries again - after 20 years - but turns out the lobbyists managed to get a loophole in the law - exempting Apple & Co from making their phones more repairable / longer live-able.
> If a battery can do 1000 cycles and remain above 80% capacity it is exempt
Seems entirely reasonable. Embedded batteries have a lot of advantages. Cheaper, higher battery capacity, water proof, smaller, stronger. I think this will largely just make the mid to low tier android market in the EU shittier.
Citation needed.
All of those can be achieved with replaceable batteries.
Are you claiming it's not cheaper to embed batteries?
Citation needed. It seems pretty clear that a mechanism to allow a user to access a battery will increase complexity, making all the other properties harder to achieve.
You're asking for proof that effective waterproof phones with removable batteries exist?
https://m.gsmarena.com/results.php3?chkRemovableBattery=sele...
No, the list was "Cheaper, higher battery capacity, water proof, smaller, stronger". I don't think it's all that controversial to say that there are engineering tradeoffs to be made here. You can make a waterproof phone with a removable battery, but you can't make a waterproof phone with a removable battery that is as good or better than an iPhone in every other respect too. If you could, iPhones would already have removable batteries.
You're proving the point.
1) iPhones for example are ip68 rated while those are just ipx8/9
2) Do you want to be limited to the universe of those search results? Do you want to buy a Sony Xperia?
You can't make batteries directly replaceable at the same quality and price. There are tradeoffs. Obviously waterproof non-embedded batteries exist. Just like you could make a removable battery the same slimness as embedded. With massive tradeoffs. It's capacity will be terrible. No one is surprised a removable battery can be waterproof but the point is there are tradeoffs.
1 mm thickness is a fine trade-off
> just ipx8/9
Do you actually need it? For what?
It'll increase the size of the case by a small amount but a battery cell is a battery cell... Rip open an old device and you'll see.
Fairphone managed to do it, I'm sure companies with more budget than them can figure it out.
Not water proof and definitely big for its capacity.
Yes, hence why I'm sure companies with 100x the budget can do better.
What proportion of devices would need to meet this 80% rule? 50%? 90%? 99%? Could make a huge difference
I recently did a battery replacement on an iphone mini 13 with some success and some failure. I absolutely killed the screen without cracking it. A little too much pulling with the ifixit reverse clamp.
Had i gone a little slower, it would have been a very easy repair.
My iPhone 14 is 1081 days old, charged every night, battery capacity is reported as 81%. So in Apple's own measurements this is possible.
I guess there is some built in spare capacity, but that may still qualify for the exemption?
My experience with an Apple battery saying ~81% longevity remaining is that it'll die when it still reports half full and you open a demanding webpage
It's a genuinely hard problem to measure battery capacity with existing smartphone hardware, also because it's a matter of opinion how much to factor in the peak load capacity (how do you count the bottom 40%, where it can't handle peak draw anymore? Should one include half of it because the phone is still usable but in a degraded state?), so I'm not faulting Apple here at all. They choose to display this estimate and it's better than nothing / better than most manufacturers. Just that you can't take it at face value, even if you charged your phone from 0% to 100% for >=1000 days
If you charge every night from say 50%, that's not a full cycle.
The exemption is about ensuring customers get what they paid for. It shouldn’t care how the manufacturer achieves that; driving the batteries less hard is an obvious tactic, and actually also makes them safer to use.
> If a battery can do 1000 cycles and remain above 80% capacity it is exempt
Is there a definition for a cycle? 80->85%? 33->72? 22-83? 87->96? Would each of these be a "cycle"?
A battery cycle is a full discharge/charge cycle (100 -> 0 -> 100). Going from 70% to 20% and then charging back to 70% is half a cycle.
Yes, this is the most non-story I have ever seen on this topic. I do not know of any manufacturer who does not claim this, verifiable or otherwise; and even if they can't claim it, all they have to do is one minor purely-software capacity adjustment, which they will gladly do before they will even consider offering removable batteries.
What a disappointment.
Apple has no chance to claim their batteries can have 80% capacity after 1000 cycles seeing how they never achieved this so far. Lying about it puts them in a world of mass recalls and fraud investigations.
Depends on how "cycle" is defined - I'm sure they can finagle it so "any charge added to the battery" counts as a cycle.
As a datapoint my iPhone reports 522 cycles and 89% max - from march 2024. I do use the "limit charging to 80%" feature which I suspect may become mandatory before 2027 ...
> Depends on how "cycle" is defined - I'm sure they can finagle it so "any charge added to the battery" counts as a cycle.
The definition is pretty well established, and Apple themselves have for years used it consistently.
https://www.apple.com/batteries/why-lithium-ion/
> You complete one charge cycle when you’ve used (discharged) an amount that represents 100% of your battery’s capacity* — but not necessarily all from one charge. For instance, you might use 75% of your battery’s capacity one day, then recharge it fully overnight. If you use 25% the next day, you will have discharged a total of 100%, and the two days will add up to one charge cycle. It could take several days to complete a cycle.
>Depends on how "cycle" is defined - I'm sure they can finagle it so "any charge added to the battery" counts as a cycle.
the definition of a battery cycle is very well established. there isnt really any room to finagle it.
Charging to 80% significantly decreases the wear. Your battery would be way lower if you charged to 100%
I don’t think “a cycle” is up for redefining. I hope these terms are defined in the law.
But that supports my assumption that realistically the batteries don’t last 1000 cycles even when charged conservatively. The last 9% will go faster than the first 11%, the battery already has lower capacity and needs to be charged even more often.
On the other hand if I only get to 1000 cycles by charging up to 80% then I’m not getting 100% of the battery, am I?
Dieselgate was caught by some dudes with an emissions measuring device. It’s not that extreme to get a number of iPhone batteries, test them to 1000 cycles and see if statistically they still retain 80% capacity. If they don’t Apple could be looking at replacing everyone’s batteries.
The obvious solution is underrating - just like a 1 TB SSD actually has more than 1TB of "raw storage" available internally. What is a 100% battery today will be sold as an 80% capacity tomorrow, with 20% "overage" available for wear.
That’s fine as long as the battery ends up having 80% real capacity after 1000 cycles and maybe Apple is also transparent about how.
A bigger issue which I don’t know if the law covers is with the other battery specs. An 80% battery that can’t handle any spikes (low power mode) is useless.
The easiest is to just require it be replaced under warranty - if the battery has to be usable to 1000 cycles, and it is at 80% and 999 cycles but doesn't "work" it's a warranty replacement.
But that then brings in a "how many years" question.
I'm pretty the spec sheet claimed 1000 cycles when I bought my iPhone 17.
They do claim it at least for iPhone 15 "under ideal conditions": https://support.apple.com/en-us/101575
VW engine specs said some things about emissions. It’s fine to have unrealistic specs if there are no consequences. The f there’s a law about it they’re far more exposed to people catching a lie or at least an unrealistic estimate.
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> the lobbyists managed to get a loophole in the law - exempting Apple & Co
But Apple batteries are already user replaceable? I've replaced my own and batteries come with kits that have all the tools and disposable glue strips and seals.
That is not "user replaceable" by any reasonable definition.
“ If a battery can do 1000 cycles and remain above 80% capacity it is exempt”
I mean isn’t that an okay exemption? If the intent is to drive devices to be less disposable and more sustainable… if it incentivizes all mobile phone manufacturers to improve battery longevity, I’d say that’s a win.
I wouldn’t even call it a loophole. The entire purpose of the legislation could be that clause
No shot at all apple batteries can last 1000 cycles and remain above 80% capacity. Probably can’t even do 300 in my experience. Sounds like an easy lawsuit.
No doubt they will redefine maximum battery capacity to a figure that does achieve 80% over 1000 cycles. If you under-declare maximum capacity then there is a lot of headroom for actual degradation before you start to show degradation to the user.
iPhone 17 Pro launch specs:
> Video Playback: Up to 27* hours
> *: 25 hours in the EU
This is what they should have been doing all along. My Pixel tells me that charging above 80% is bad for battery longevity and I should set a charge limit. Well then maybe 80% should be the new 100% and the advertised capacity should be the 80%.
This balancing act is already happening. If you modify the battery controller, you can totally continue charging beyond the voltage that the phone considers to be 100%. It also increases the risk of damaging the battery (https://www.acebattery.com/blogs/what-will-happen-when-a-lit...). What they define as 100% is already some point on a damage probability curve, and charging to anything below that point will further decrease the amount of battery stress (for li-ion batteries and similar technologies)
Fwiw, based on tests I've seen recently such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj4LMlGr4og, I think limiting to 80% is overblown, but somewhere in the 90%s could be a sweet spot that gives you several hours' longer battery life than with 80% but still has a much reduced chance of significant degradation. I don't understand why they didn't make this configurable
A battery that can support 1000 cycles and remain above 80% capacity would be a literal brick. For an example the Vision Pro's battery has extreme over-provisioning and limit how long it would last. (note I know it is removable but that isn't the point).
I would wager that batteries that powered down at 20% and that halt charging at 80% would be significantly prolonged.
If Apple resorts to those tactics, then there is no limit in moving the goalposts.
In the meantime, my daily driver here in reality land: https://i.imgur.com/8yEEJVb.png
That has not been my experience, at least with Apple laptops. Even when rated for 1000 cycles, I'll get the warning that service is needed (AFAIK that means 80% capacity or lower) well before then. I've seen this on several, but the one I just checked is at just under 670 cycles and has had that warning up for some months already.
Maybe iPhones are better about this, though, I don't know. But I definitely don't have a lot of faith in the laptops maintaining 80% for 1000 cycles.
212 cycles, still 100% capacity (maybe 99.5 rounded up) "relative to when it was new". Doesn't that seem a bit dodgy to you?