The 'obscure' tools are like $5 on amazon/temu/alibaba and include exactly what you need to make the job easy for that specific model. Seems like this law is once again a step backwards.

No consideration at all of tradeoffs, IE how much dust/water proofing do we lose and how much bulk/weight it will add.

> The 'obscure' tools are like $5 on amazon/temu/alibaba and include exactly what you need to make the job easy for that specific model.

There are not enough reasons for every model to need a different specific set of tools. There's one common reason: to make service difficult.

> No consideration at all of tradeoffs, IE how much dust/water proofing do we lose and how much bulk/weight it will add.

Seems like it's all about tradeoffs. They're trading whatever hypothetical advances you're referring to here for less tech waste and lower consumer costs. They're deciding that it's an area in which manufacturers aren't allowed to innovate, because the innovations are trivial compared to the externalities that they impose.

> There are not enough reasons for every model to need a different specific set of tools. There's one common reason: to make service difficult.

Looking at the iPhone 14 iFixit kit, the tools are not particularly exotic... pentalobe/tripoint screwdrivers (kinda mandatory for super small screws) and just a bunch of things needed to work with small devices, spudger, tweezers, suction cup, clamp. Stuff that for the most part has been part of fixit kits going back many generations.

A generic toolkit for working w/ most Apple devices shouldn't have a particular high number of parts.

Why is pentalobe mandatory? Torx works at tiny scale just fine. And it's out of patent by now.

IME pentalobe is superior as far as wear to tooling without the sharp points.

I've stripped a handful of smaller torx heads due to worn bits over the years. Can't recall ever stripping a pentalobe.

I won't argue Apple came up with a new design for security purposes, at least initially. But that doesn't mean they didn't come up with a superior design for tiny bits at the same time.

Counter-hypotheses:

- Consumers optimize for what looks nicest in the store, and it's easy for the store to bury the nonreplacability of the battery under a thick layer of tech mumbojumbo.

- Most consumers (at least here in Germany) get their phones from their phone plans, so they are limited by what the phone companies offer with their contracts.

This is the wrong conclusion. Lack of products does not equal "the customer doesn't want it". The customer has no choice.

Consumers get to throw e waste in the bin and let somebody else deal with it. Governments need to look out for more interests than just consumers.

You think consumers won't just throw the old batteries in the bin and let somebody else deal with it?

If they throw just the battery instead of the whole device in the bin that'll still be an improvement.

Why wouldn't they throw both in the bin?

To keep using the device after replacing the battery. That is the point of these regulations after all. We'll see what the uptake is.

That's such a naive view of how capitalism works.

You could turn the argument around: clearly consumers do want this tradeoff, because they have decided to vote in governments to legislate for it to be a requirement.

If you think that's an overly simplistic argument, then I invite you to re-evaluate yours.

Yes because out of all of the issues people vote in the government for, replaceable batteries was the one they cared about the most

Regarding possible tradeoffs, I'm not buying it.

Samsung Galaxy S5 had:

- easy user removable/swapable battery 2800mah

- external port for microSDXC

- audiojack

- was still IP67 dust/water resistant (up to 1m for 30 min)

- 5.1 inches AMOLED screen

- just 145g weight

- just 8.1 mm thickness

- this was already mass produced in 2014

Yeah, I always wondered why Apple didn't achieve this at the time and had to remove headphone port and home button to make it water resistant.

But that nomenclature is void if you ask me. I got water on the upper front part of my iPhone XS which is IP whatever and Face ID died. Apple said they wouldn't give me a new one because water resistant doesn't mean they have to replace your phone when something happens.

> I always wondered why Apple didn't achieve this at the time and had to remove headphone port and home button to make it water resistant.

They didn't do this for water proof iPhones - that were lame excuses. They removed e.g. the headphone jack early to increase incentives to adopot (the then future) Airpods.

>had to remove headphone port and home button to make it water resistant.

This was an outright lie; some Android manufacturers (I believe it was Samsung and Sony, but maybe others as well) had waterproof phones with headphone jacks and it didn't seem to negatively affect the phone in other ways.

Except for that whole “requiring a rubber flap to be over the port to get water resistance” in the case of Samsung.

I feel you - I had actually the same issue with my iphone XS few months ago - I was hiking for few hours inside humid cave. Even though I had phone in waterproof bag my TrueDepth sensor stopped working.

And you conveniently skip the little part about “only if you had the little rubber flap closed covering the jacks and only if you put the battery back in just right”.

(replying from my S5..) The rubber flap is only on the charging port.

Also, I can't figure out how there could be more than one way to replace the battery. It's incredibly simple.

So you don’t think requiring the rubber flap to be closed to have water resistance is a problem?

Samsung even had a warning display on the phone when you turned it on to make sure the battery was secure.

And my galaxy s8 has usb-c and is waterproof, so a robust waterproof connector is a solved problem, they even have moisture detection by measuring resistance between a few pins.

I had to use special tools to remove the batter from the iPhone 6 I owned, but that was back before they started gluing the battery to the screen. It only took 15-20 minutes. The phones since then have chipsets that will mark as fraudulent batteries any OEM battery. If only I could go back to 2015

I had to use special tools to remove the batter from the iPhone 6 I owned, but that was back before they started gluing the battery to the screen. It only took 15-20 minutes.

Looking at the ifixit guide for iphone 6s[1], it doesn't look like you need any special tools (as defined by the regulation). Sure, they're not exactly tools that a typical person has in their toolbox, but they're all "commercially available". ifixit even offers them for sale in their guide.

[1] https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+6+Battery+Replacement/29...

iPhone 6 plus is as far as I can do repairs at home without much equipment. The newer ones seem like a nightmare to repair.

Didn't they redesign the interior of the iPhone 14 (normal) to be more easily repairable? Not end user repairable yet, but more than previous designs? I guess they make first steps in that direction.

How is specialized defined?

Probably will be up to the courts to decide, in which case companies can choose to gamble fines and rectification costs should they choose to define 'specialized tools' more strictly than the court they end up facing does.

I can tell you what today is a specialized tool. A machine that takes a phone apart with heat and glues it back together. And special screw heads.

Anything else like use of knives should be considered special if slots are not designated for them.

The comma placement makes the glue answer a bit strange, but I'm interpreting it to mean glues are no-go unless the manufacturer provides a solvent and re-gluing kit as well. Full text from [1] (emphasis mine):

> A portable battery should be considered to be removable by the end-user when it can be removed with the use of commercially available tools and without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless they are provided free of charge, or proprietary tools, thermal energy or solvents to disassemble it. Commercially available tools are considered to be tools available on the market to all end-users without the need for them to provide evidence of any proprietary rights and that can be used with no restriction, except health and safety-related restrictions.

Also answers the above question regarding "specialised" - that would be anything not fitting the "commercially available" definition.

[1] https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/PE-2-2023-INIT...

So I read this as:

1. tools must be commercially available. 2. Tools must not be specialized, unless provided free of charge. (Reminder, part of the idea that the idea is that throwing away batteries is gradually getting outlawed, so end users need to be able to extract the battery before they throw away/recycle/or provide to eWaste facilities the rest of the device.). 3. Tools must not be proprietary. 4. Use of thermal energy cannot be required. 5. Use of solvents cannot be required.

And finally a clarification about the definition of commercially available.

Number 2 seems like it is independent of commercially available. Otherwise the "free of charge" part would make no sense. Furthermore, replacement is actually a secondary motivation of this law. A slightly more primary motivation is to ensure users can remove the batteries before throwing away the device or handing the rest to an eWaste facicity as applicable. I'd assume anything that the average consumer cannot expect to find at a local tool shop would be considered specialized.

Glue is not a tool, since a tool is an object that serves a function and that is not consumed in its operation. Other things that are not tools: lubricants, (some) abrasives, pigments, reagents, solvents.