> Companies like Samsung, Google, Apple, etc., don’t design devices specific to Europe.
I think they actually will do just that. Look at the Wikipedia page for any iPhone and you’ll see that each model has multiple regional SKUs. China has a SIM card tray while the US doesn’t.
I think smartphone makers will make the battery rectangular and put it in a convenient spot and then make a different rear case part just for Europe.
The rest of the world phones will have perhaps the exact same “removable” battery but it will be behind a case that has no door.
The waterproofing in particular makes me think this is likely. Many average consumers care way more about having a device that will survive being dropped in the sink now than they do about replacing an 80% capacity battery in two years.
Samsung S5 was waterproof while having replaceable battery. Technology is certainly there.
But I also question your premise, I don't think it's as clear. I've never dropped my phone in a sink, but had battery issues with basically every phone. Often the battery starts failing much earlier than 80% in two years.
What I've never understood is why all this waterproofing effort is going into making perfectly sealed little boxes when I imagine that a factory applied conformal coating would do a similar job. It seems like they're focused on making the box the electronics are in water proof instead of making the electronics themselves waterproof. Sure, the screen might be a bit harder and you'd need to pay special attention to any connector, maybe re-applying the coating if you remove a connector, but I just don't get it. Does conformal coating not work as well as I imagine it does? Is it too expensive to apply? Does it have some kind of heat dissipation drawback I'm not aware of?
To me it looks like water proofing is being used as an excuse to add built-in obsolescence to products, since I imagine that conformal coating would do the job better. What am I missing?
This is about replacing, and thus having access to, the battery and it's terminals. Water is a conductor. I imagine shorting the battery terminals with water will have disastrous consequences, regardless of if the RAM is encased in epoxy.
Why do people keep mentioning waterproofing? There is exactly nothing preventing a waterproof phone from having a replaceable battery. It's not even hard to do.
The main faucet to your house sits under 60psi water pressure all day, and the moving parts are removable. This is 100 year old technology.
It heavily depends on the usage pattern. If you charge in the evening to 100%, let it on the charger overnight and then during the day discharge to 0%, that might kill the battery completely within 2 years.
Keeping it within 20-80% most of the time might keep the battery healthier.
I bought my iPhone XS at launch and it just reached 80%, although on the latest version of iOS 80% doesn't get you as far as it once did. I'm not a super heavy smartphone user though.
> I think smartphone makers will make the battery rectangular
They are still rectangular. I actually thought they are more irregular, trying to use the available space more efficiently, but e.g. Samsung S23 Ultra battery looks like a normal rectangle.
Their casing is much thinner, though, since they don't have to assume rougher handling by an end consumer.
I wonder if perhaps there will be two batteries of the same shape - the non-replaceable will have a thinner casing, but with a somewhat higher capacity.
At the volumes of those manufacturers, if there's a design they consider somewhat suboptimal that's needed to meet EU requirements, they can pretty much trivially offer a variant for the EU that meets those requirements.
A problem with this idea is that batteries became removable to make thinner/smaller/waterproof phones.
Regardless of whether or not you think that's an important thing to design for, these smartphone designers' product orgs. do.
So realistically, given Europe is <10% of the global population (and an increasingly small share of Wealth/GDP), this will just result in EU SKUs that don't get updated very often and are thicker.
Will be interesting to see if this just causes a grey market in less eco-conscious markets, while other places that conform just get known for having bulky phones (a la Japan and faxes).
The EU is home to 447 million rich people who buy lots of smartphones. It's easily the biggest market for high-end smartphones in the world.
Also as a tangent GDP is pretty useless when talking about how much money individuals have to spend on smartphones.
Apple and Samsung each sold 16M devices in 2020 in the EU, and apparently even 40%-50% more in 2022. That's well over $5B. They're not going to walk away from such a market.
Plus, if I understood it properly, India is contemplating a similar law.
Apple is 45% of the US smartphone market, and something like 20% of Europe's. So Apple's sales will not be the best indicator of anything generalizable to all smartphones.
Apple is 33% of Europe's smartphone market, almost the exact same size as Samsung, the #1 player.
Knowing that almost all of Apple's phones are >$800, the fact that 41% of all sales in the EU were >$800 implies that Android isn't some hidden variable here.
I'd also like to point out that unit shipments have been in decline (on a y/y basis) for 10 the last 13 quarters. [0]
I think they actually will do just that. Look at the Wikipedia page for any iPhone and you’ll see that each model has multiple regional SKUs. China has a SIM card tray while the US doesn’t.
I think smartphone makers will make the battery rectangular and put it in a convenient spot and then make a different rear case part just for Europe.
The rest of the world phones will have perhaps the exact same “removable” battery but it will be behind a case that has no door.