TL;DR
- The European Council has ended its adoption procedure for rules related to phones with replaceable batteries.
- By 2027, all phones released in the EU must have a battery the user can easily replace with no tools or expertise.
- The regulation intends to introduce a circular economy for batteries.
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Companies would need some time to redesign their products.
Well some GDPR implementations did make it across the pond for the sake of simplicity so I imagine this might go the same way.
In the case of GDPR it is not just for simplicity. It’s because companies that operate in the EU need to provide those protections to all EU citizens, even those across the pond. You cannot check if someone is an EU citizen so if you operate in the EU you effectively need to treat everyone like an EU citizen.
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Not really as a design change as drastic as user exchangeable batteries means phone companies would probably rather adopt a unified design (removable batteries) than a region based design
2027 is actually pretty early for such a dramatic change, and somewhere I heard that it’s all phones sold, if that’s the case (i.e. you can’t sell old models if they don’t have easily replaceable batteries) than that is a really early date for such a law.