This is not correct. There is no exemption for Apple devices
You seem to referencing from a older exemption for self serviceability if your smartphone can do 1,000 cycles and retain 80% battery. Specifically - B 1.1 (1) (c) (ii) (b) . Here is the link - https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
Your link says otherwise. From the Article 11 link, ANNEX II, A.1.1.(5):
(a) From 20 June 2025, manufacturers, importers or authorised representatives shall ensure that the process for replacement of the display assembly and of parts referred to in point 1(a), with the exception of the battery or batteries, meets the following criteria: [...]
[...]
(c) From 20 June 2025, manufacturers, importers or authorised representatives shall ensure that the process for battery replacement:
(i) meets the following criteria:
— fasteners shall be resupplied or reusable;
- the process for replacement shall be feasible with no tool, a tool or set of tools that is supplied with the product or spare part, or basic tools;
— the process for replacement shall be able to be carried out in a use environment;
— the process for replacement shall be able to be carried out by a layman.
(ii) or, as an alternative to point (i), ensure that:
— the process for battery replacement meets the criteria set out in (a);
— after 500 full charge cycles the battery must, in addition, have in a fully charged state, a remaining capacity of at least 83 % of the rated capacity;
— the battery endurance in cycles achieves a minimum of 1 000 full charge cycles, and after 1 000 full charge cycles the battery must, in addition, have in a fully charged state, a remaining capacity of at least 80 % of the rated capacity;
— the device is at least dust tight and protected against immersion in water up to one meter depth for a minimum of 30 minutes.
---
So manufacturers must make the battery replaceable, or meet all the conditions from (a) for replacing non-battery components, and meet the 1000 cycle / 80% capacity requirement.
The special screwdriver isn't supplied with the product, and Apple doesn't sell spare parts. I guess "regular" isn't the right word, but it's easy and inexpensive to buy the right tools.
> covers exemptions but nothing to do with 1,000 cycles or Apple as far as i can see.
It appears what you're looking for is in B(5)(c)(ii).
> (c) From 20 June 2025, manufacturers, importers or authorised representatives shall ensure that the process for battery replacement:
> (i) meets the following criteria:
> — fasteners shall be resupplied or reusable;
> — the process for replacement shall be feasible with no tool, a tool or set of tools that is supplied with the product or spare part, or basic tools;
> — the process for replacement shall be able to be carried out in a use environment;
> — the process for replacement shall be able to be carried out by a layman.
> (ii) or, as an alternative to point (i), ensure that
> — the process for battery replacement meets the criteria set out in (a);
> — after 500 full charge cycles the battery must have in a fully charged state, a remaining capacity of at least 83 % of the rated capacity;
> — the battery endurance in cycles achieves a minimum of 1 000 full charge cycles, and after 1 000 full charge cycles the battery must, in addition, have in a fully charged state, a remaining capacity of at least 80 % of the rated capacity;
> — the device is at least dust tight and protected against immersion in water up to one meter depth for a minimum of 30 minutes.
It was not said explicitly but it was a straightforward implication. The replier then pointed out the exemption rule is outdated therefore the implied consequence is wrong and the original line of reasoning was misinformation, and thus would be the greater error. Humans
It really, really was. It's the most basic type of logical implication.
It said: IF BatteryCycles THEN Exempt. BatteryCycles(Apple).
By first order logic modus ponens this results in:
Exempt(Apple)
This is basic math literacy by now. The fact that you do not seem aware and are being confidently rude about it is worth pointing out. Don't do that on HN. This is still a tech forum so try to respect rational discussion as we all abide by these shared rules in this space.
Again, it really, really wasn't. You can do all the contorting you want. Even your "math" here disagrees with you and you don't even realize it!
The post stated "Apple devices", referring to currently produced Apple Devices. Not "Apple". Those are two separate things, you get that, right?
I don't know what level of "basic math literacy" is required to understand that a company and a smartphone are separate things, but you don't seem to have it. Anyways yeah. I don't really owe someone who is repeatedly confidently wrong any further of my time.
You seem determined to have the last word, so I will let you have it. Maybe lecture me about how you prove a Tim Cook is an iCloud with monads. Bye.
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.
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.
I suspect manufacturing has something to do with gluing too. Afaik screws are expensive compared with glue, and their assembly involves slow humans or expensive robots.
It's been a long time, but the gasket itself was probably a millimetre or two thick, squeezed extremely tightly by the screws in the battery cover. It ran on AA or AAA batteries, and they took about about half or a third of the depth.
Honestly I'd expect that to be SIGNIFICANTLY easier to waterproof than a laundry machine. Partly because laundry is sometimes done warm, and warm softens materials (like gaskets), but mostly because laundry has surfactants that considerably reduce surface tension, making it far easier to slip past gaps.
There is a good reason waterproofing claims are specific about the kind of liquid (usually just fresh or salt water, usually without significant movement (i.e. jets, like you get in a shower)).
Samsung still make the rugged Xcover range which has both replaceable batteries and waterproofing. And 3.5mm jacks too.
These devices are mostly sold in enterprise environments (eg field use, factories) and as such get a lot of wear and tear. But they hold up well. They're not ultra rugged but a good compromise. We use tons of them in our factories, we replaced DECT handheld phones with the Xcovers loaded with ms teams. Not an ideal setup (teams for mobile kinda sucks) but at least this way they can easily communicate with people in the offices.
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.
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.
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
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.
> 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.
I submerge my phone as a matter of normal use because I can. I take it into pools and hot tubs, and I clean it in the sink -- I personally wouldn't trade that for a battery door.
No, it doesn't require a battery door, even for phones that don't meet the exception you mentioned.
Over a decade ago, I replaced a phone screen over a few hours, involving a couple dozen screws. During that, I had to remove the battery. (Replacing only the battery would have been easier.) I'm a layman, and all the screws were Phillips. That's sufficient to be replaceable.
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.
It's not really the old kind of replace-ability, though. The only requirement is that you should be able to change it with commercially available tools.
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).
Those people are doing a very stupid thing. I don't think that the world should be ordered around "let's make it so people can do stupid things without consequence".
Those people are the public buying the phones. Companies make phones that more people will buy. Turns out your desire for a bulky phone with a replaceable battery is less common than their desire for a phone that does not get destroyed when dropped into a pool.
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.
I replaced my phone because of the battery life, and I would have replaced the battery if it would have been easy, to offer a counter anecdote.
I had to make the choice of getting another phone (used in great condition, as I do) or pay half the cost I paid to get the battery replaced but also knowing it would still be heaviy used and more likely to fail in other ways because of use.
If labor cost and decreased relaibility weren't factors, swapping the battery would have been the choice.
Now the question is: are there more people like me or more people who need a sealed, hard to repair phone? I don't know but if I did I'd accept keeping the current situation.
Spills and drops were traditionally most common causes of mobile device insurance claims. We've only seen that change for phones because of their IP ratings in recent years.
While manufacturers do have an incentive to get people to buy new phones, many of them with first party insurance do have an incentive not to pay out as many claims.
Japan only, but KDDI/Kyocera never stopped IP rated phones with removable battery. TORQUE G07(2026) is IP65/68/69 rated with a coin key locked removable back cover.
It also officially support submersion in seawater as well as cleaning with soapy water. Most glued phones support neither.
It's just a consumer phone sold through KDDI retail channels. Not a B2B thing. And it exists because enough consumers in Japan buy one.
The original claims in this tree is that waterproof phones with removable backs are somehow impossible and glued shut designs are somehow superior. That's a total BS, so I posted a counter example. Torque phones being rugged in addition to being waterproof, unlike iPhones that are just purified-water-proof, has nothing to do with feasibility of one-upping them with removable backs and rubber gaskets.
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...
I was wading through water with a 3310 in my pocket in 2006. Battery was fine and it worked after it was dried. There was a problem with the keyboard though but that was a cheap swap. And this was a phone without any water resistance.
I've seen rumors that Apple started waterproofing phones after Chinese criminal groups started farming parts on AppleCare by dumping the mainboard into buckets of Shenzhen seawater to deny electronic serial number readout. Your logic board can't be so dead from normal use that not even its PMIC respond to commands if it's waterproof.
I've also had iPhone dying from gasket leaks, the circumferential double sided tape seal dries out after a while.
My brand new Pixel phone several years back, I was so excited it was IP68. Took some photos splashing around in water, not more than a foot or two. It died in minutes.
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.
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.
Nice idea. I think the reason it's not communicated as such is that then companies would be expected to advertise time on battery when charged to 100%, not 125%.
The Samsung phone I use these days has a "Protect Battery" mode that can be toggled (both manually and with automatic user-defined routines). It limits maximum charge to 85%. For those who want it: That's the ~same thing, without the psychological trick.
It also has some other settings that relate to smart charging that I don't fully understand (mostly because it's kind of inscrutable).
But the idea, AFAICT, is that it works with a person who charges their phone on a fairly regular schedule (they sleep at about the same time every night with plugged in all night).
The battery meanders up to 85% or something and holds there. Shortly before the person normally wakes up, it starts coming the rest of the way up to 100%. And then they wake up, unplug the phone, and it begins to discharge.
This helps to minimize the duration of being at a high state-of-charge, which is also a big factor in long-term battery longevity.
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.
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 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.
Anecdata, but I did this on my iPhone, and it did absolutely nothing for battery longevity compared to charging to 100% with "optimized charging" (which keeps it at 80% for as long as possible when charging overnight).
Same for my s24, 80% battery limit and slow charging at night (most of my charging). It's been over 2 years and the battery seems to last just as long as day one
Battery capacity of smartphones seems to double every ~8 years. The design space is adding more battery capacity, reducing battery life, or using less power.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
This sounds like the exact opposite of real life. Every battery ages to the point of uselessness, not every phone gets to take a dive. It's not a stretch to say most phones never see more than some rain or a spilled drink. But the worst part of every discussion on this topic is this false (uninformed) dichotomy that water resistance and easily replaceable battery are mutually exclusive.
> 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.
Since when? Last time i read about the Apple "DIY" kit it was only a loan and only for ... doing it yourself.
But then I haven't broken a phone in a while so I haven't really talked to my friendly neighborhood repair shop. That only because my daughter finally grew up, they remembered me at the shop back when she was young :)
There is the DIY program, and the Independent Repair Program [0].
> That only because my daughter finally grew up, they remembered me at the shop back when she was young
Ha! This is so relatable right now. My daughter is 15 and recently has been learning to drive, and last week she taught herself what happens if you set your iPhone on top of the car and then drive off. That is the only reason I've got familiarity with my local friendly neighborhood repair shop, I've never broken one of my own phones in all these years. Fortunately this life lesson only cost her the $39 deductible. Glad I decided that a 15 year old getting her first phone needed an insurance plan.
> what happens if you set your iPhone on top of the car and then drive off
Mine once dropped hers without noticing in a parking lot. We called her number and some dude answered and said come back here, i'll wait for you, but unfortunately i found your phone by stepping on it (it was night). At least it was just a person and not a car.
But don't despair, they grow out of it eventually. You may have to wait until she's off to college and forced to be more responsable by living on her own though.
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.
Probably. I mean, I don't even remember what standard my home wifi is on. It works, it's fast enough. Sometimes I think about upgrading the AP but why bother?
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.
Finland has a VAT of ~25%. The price you are seeing includes that tax. Apple doesn’t control how much a country charges in tax. The price for a new battery is 70.9 up to 109 Euro without VAT
1 Cycle is discharging from 100-0 and charging from 0-100, regardless of how many times the phone is charged, so for a user that averages 50% battery drain each day, 1000 cycles would actually be ~6 years. I have no idea what the actual average is, but I'm betting that 1000 cycles is at least 4 years for the average user and possibly significantly longer.
As a VERY long-time Linux user, I agree. Multi-monitor setups, where you can unplug the monitor and have your windows gather back onto your laptop screen requires WAY too much configuration. Having your audio switch back to internal laptop speakers requires homebrewing a script. On my 2020 Dell XPS, I still haven't figured out how to enable the subwoofers - so I'm stuck with ThinkPad quality audio. I have 3 ThinkPads (one with straight ArchLinux, 2 with CachyOS) and there's always some little piece I'm annoyed with. The X1C has good battery life, the T480 and P14s are meh. I JUST bought my first HiDPI Lenovo laptop this weekend. Getting that to be a decent tradeoff between readable text and mongo-duplo-massive UI has been "fun". (Yoga 15.3" Aura edition - I really like it) But running apps in Wine is darn near impossible - the text is for ants!
All of these issues go away with Mac and Windows. I'm not giving up on Linux, I'm just a realist.
It feels that they’ve finally got understanding that Xbox is total mess and try? To reboot completely. Because “Xbox president” seemingly is booted too
> Alongside him, Xbox President Sarah Bond is also exiting the company, who many suspected would be Spencer's successor in leading Xbox.
Phil Spencer entered with Xbox in a total mess and he was never really able to get them out of the mess.
I like Phil as CEO of Microsoft. I think Microsoft's corporate strategy never really made sense for Microsoft and I think Microsoft has a massive and worsening culture problem. It seems like leadership fail upwards, which tells me that at the executive and junior executive level the job is internal politics.
I do not consider removing redundant sensors like lidar or infrared from the comprehensive Tesla sensor network and pretending that cameras can do FSD perfectly a good example of engineerring.
You can just ping your CPU usage to the menu bar and monitor that. I have CPU and total system wattage up there so I always know if something weird is going on.
Yeah! That's how I initially suspected that it was thermal throttling because I saw in iStat Menus that my wattage was going down for a constantly high CPU usage
Actual control over my computer? Apple might have less ads, but they really go out of their way to make you feel uncomfortable doing anything they deem not the happy path. And they're still plenty willing to push subscriptions and their software.
IMO Mac eco is good hardware plus meh software. Some built ins are really in bad shape — but I guess people have different opinions, although I think calling Finder a beta version is an insult to “beta”.
Low cost phones will be most affected.
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