EU ban on non-removable laptop and smartphone(?) batteries

[jagdtigger]

21 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

At the end Shareholders are the only ones who matter in the relationship.

Thats what investors want to believe, but im afraid reality is a cruel teacher. Those idiots are so preoccupied chasing short term profits that they are pretty much forget about the origin of said profit. The consumers, they are just as much part of the equation as the investors. We are entering an era where longevity and repairability is going to be a high priority again. They either adapt or die......

[Donut417]

1 minute ago, jagdtigger said:

They either adapt or die......

If they die, then the company dies. Which means no products. Not jobs. And the economy dies. 

[jagdtigger]

2 hours ago, Donut417 said:

f they die, then the company dies. Which means no products. Not jobs. And the economy dies. 

That last sentence is about the company, BTW one or a few company collapsing wont do much to the economy. Especially if we talking about incumbents complacents which are pretty much a very bad thing for the economy....

Edited June 18, 2023 by jagdtigger

[hishnash]

6 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Even then they could provide schematics so that those who have the knowledge could potentially fix the boards rather than replace them. 

For most vendors proving raw schematics is impossible, the reason being the that component vendors they get parts form (intel cpus, wifi chipsets etc) share info with the laptop OEMs under strict NDA licenses.  That info includes things like what pins do what on the chips. 

 

 

8 hours ago, Supreme Calamitas said:

They could go a step further and force these manufacturers to make parts available. And limit the markup they put on them.

The difficulty here is having rules about parts availabliblty for a part that tends to need to be replaced 5 to 10 years after the device was produced means companies now need to stockpile large numbers of those parts never knowing if they can sell them, that storage space alone costs $$$ then consider that batteries should not be stored for to long (even un-used) so a good % might be thrown away.  Then the company needs to pay for the old production line to be re-creatd to just product sparse... the per unit cost of each one they sell 7 years after they stop making a given product line could well be higher than the total cost of the original laptop, and that is assuming they make 0 profit on it. 

What you could say is at the point were they are no longer able to provide first party parts they could document the battery interface so if there is enough demand in the market other small vendors can make batteries or adaptors for batrires.  But it is important to remember even if they do this only the most popular of batteries will be adapted and costs will still be high.

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, hishnash said:

For most vendors proving raw schematics is impossible, the reason being the that component vendors they get parts form (intel cpus, wifi chipsets etc) share info with the laptop OEMs under strict NDA licenses.  That info includes things like what pins do what on the chips. 

The government has the power to tell companies to take their NDA's and stick them up their ass. The point of providing schematics is to do board level repairs. Instead of throwing shit in the land fill. I mean Jesus Christ we have 3 land fills with in 5 miles of my house. Waste Management just opened the 3rd one after buying the golf course's property. And dont give me that BS about recycling because most of the time this stuff ends up in the land fill, even if you "recycle" it. As far as plastics go recycling largely is a myth. I dont think Waste Management does electronics recycling. While the county does offer hazardous waste disposal it's only a few times a year and most people dont want to store the stuff. 

[rrats]

YES YES FINALLY SOMETHING FUCKING GOOD, FOR US NON APPLE USERS AS WELL. I am very happy about this change. Now removing batteries on notebooks and ultrabooks isn't as hard as it is with phones and apple laptops, since, as @Blademaster91 has mentioned, it only consists of removing few standard Phillips screws, but I am so happy with this change. But phones, now that's something to look for.

[Belgarathian]

On 6/16/2023 at 9:41 PM, jboman1980 said:

Summary

EU will ban non-removable laptop batteries. Takes effect in 2027.

 

 

My thoughts

The obvious: what will Apple do?

 

Sources

https://www.newsendip.com/laptop-and-smartphone-batteries-sold-in-the-e-u-will-need-to-be-easily-removable-by-users/

Are Apple's batteries not replaceable? I thought they were...

[hishnash]

5 hours ago, Donut417 said:

The government has the power to tell companies to take their NDA's and stick them up their ass.

Maybe the EU could but would be hard, they do not have jurestication in other regions, so Intel could still sue an OEM who complies with the EU law in Europe since the contract with intel was signed in the US under US law...   it would also require someone very skilled (not a politician) to figure out how to write the law to describe what needs to be included and what can be kept secret.  

Requiring companies to put all trade secrets in the schematics would never fly and would make some things impossible, to ship in the EU. Ensuring the law describes correctly were you need to draw the line is not as easy as you might think, sure at a high level there is a clear definition but what do you do about chips that are on interposers or layered like 3d Zen or HBM with GPUs these are seperate components on an interposer but are the GPU and CPU vendors required to provide schematics of the internals of thier chips?  What about a CPU package, should intel be required to provide the schematics of the package or just for the socket?  

Or SSDs, are the NAND vendors required to provide not only schematics for how the NAND dies connect to the controler but also the firmware needed to reset the controler (so that you can replace just the dead NAND dies and are not required to throw away the working controler)

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, Belgarathian said:

Are Apple's batteries not replaceable? I thought they were...

You cant simply pull the back off the phone and replace the battery. Its glued in I think. Plus there is all the BS about disassembling the device. 

[hishnash]

1 hour ago, Belgarathian said:

Are Apple's batteries not replaceable? I thought they were...

They are, it all depends on what you call replaceable of cource.   Yes you need a screw driver and a plastic getar pick to detach the connector.  The batteries themselves are secured using the same pull strip ahsive as iPhone batteries. 

The main issue with Mac batteries for repair stores Is that they cant just buy 100 units and stock them on a shelf so they cant offer quick repairs using first party batteries. 

[Donut417]

Just now, hishnash said:

equiring companies to put all trade secrets in the schematics would never fly and would make some things impossible,

We are not providing them a blueprint to build the components. Just enough so they can test the board and replace the chips. Im not saying giving them the fucking x86 design. 

[hishnash]

17 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

We are not providing them a blueprint to build the components. Just enough so they can test the board and replace the chips. Im not saying giving them the fucking x86 design. 

While I agree vendors like Intel, AMD, NV etc like having these details under NDA as it gives them controler over how uses thier parts and the pricing for these.  They do not want there to be an open market for Intel chipsets or AMD gpu dies that you can just buy and build your own board with. 

Intel (and others) even make OEMs sign contracts that mean they cant re-sell non integrated parts, so if they buy 10k chips from intel and then cancel a production run and have 2k chips left on the side all they can do is sell them back to intel.  This is why any key component replacement is always a matter of a salvage job from another board. 

[Kisai]

On 6/16/2023 at 8:08 PM, leadeater said:

If the screw heads are damaged this won't damage the driver bits, and if they are damaged enough the bits won't even go in the head. But this seems incredibly unlikely to be real since everything is put in using torque spec tools and machines so like... 

 

In either case the bits in the screw driver I mentioned you'd never be able to damage, they are too strong. You'd sheer them off before rounding or bending them in any way, and if you can sheer them off then you aren't using your hands.

Please stop trying to gaslight me about several real experiences. I was there, you were not.

 

The good dell laptops were the Precision 7000's until they switched from "battery compartment" to "remove the entire back like the 5500's". The Precision 5500 and 7500's were the exact same internal hardware, except you had no additional M2's and only two memory modules. Dell then started soldering in the RAM on the XPS version of the 5530 (another thing a Dell tech told me.) 

 

Every time a Dell tech was dispatched it was for one of these reasons:

Cooling: Dell laptops always wear out their coolers within 9 months of use. The previous story about stripping/breaking screws came from one incident that took a laptop out of service for nearly two months.

Battery (warranty): The office would normally just get the (third party) battery from their office supply contract, and the only time I replaced it was when it was not under warranty. When a dell tech replaced one under warranty, they were the first ones to open the laptop.

PCB replacement: This has happened a few times. Replacing the 5500 board is easier than the 7500/7700 because the 7000's have to go through layers of plastic and metal to get to. The 5500 just straight up exposed to the back of the laptop. 

Keyboard/touchpad replacement: This was something I could do myself, but I would have to scrap an existing laptop to do, so lacking spare parts, always had to get the dell tech to do it. And this was another time where the dell tech had to be dispatched because the tools to replace the keyboard/mouse do not exist.

 

The only reason to even call the dell tech for something not under warranty was because I didn't have the tools available, which included Torx drivers. Opening the 55xx was "not as hard" as the 77xx, but the 55xx was easier to damage because the screws are all at the surface of the laptop where as the 77xx are recessed. Those ten torx screws not in the middle of the Precision are flat against whatever the laptop sits on when in operation. 

 

So who knows, maybe the intermediary that the laptops were being shipped from didn't handle the laptops nicely. They come in all their original plastic, but the plastic was clearly opened. I have no idea why other than imaging the laptop, they had no reason to open them. So that suggests that Dell shipped them that way with the occasional screw that would be over torqued to the point the screw would be seized. It was not a 1 in 10 type of problem, having handled like 100 laptops from Dell, but it was a problem that was exclusive to the 55xx laptops, where routinely there would be one screw that would be hard to remove, and because the screws are not deep, you risked breaking the tips off the bits/drivers. I didn't break any of my drivers. Again, these were stories from two separate Dell techs on the two incidents where they had to open the laptops to do something involving the PCB.

 

The screws holding in the battery on the Dell's are easy to remove and have never been an issue. There was at least ONE dell laptop that nearly caught fire and a small handful of 14" Latitude laptops where the batteries swelled. The problem is that when the batteries swell, it makes opening the  laptop difficult because there is now tension against the battery mounts AND the bottom of the chassis in the Latitudes. In the Precision 5500's which we didn't have any long enough to replace more than two batteries over that time, I never encountered a swollen battery. Only the Latitudes.

 

When I went to another client to do re-imaging jobs, I also noted, again, latitude laptops with swollen batteries, and again with issues opening the laptops because the battery pushed out the bottom of the laptop to increase tension on the screws. When I would eventually open one of these bloody inflated laptops, the damage would have already been done, the back of the laptop would be permanently bowed out.

 

This is what the back of a Precision 7000 series looks like:

The battery is easy to remove, and access to the SSD's and half the ram is easily replaced. If you have to replace the cooler? Absolute hell, but no Torx to be found. https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-ca/precision-17-7730-laptop/precision_7730_sm/screw-size-list?guid=guid-937f0965-6721-4886-b1f7-58e3a1d712aa&lang=en-us

 

This is what happens when your Precision 55xx or "New XPS" battery swells:"

 

The Precision 55xx's are significantly more damaged when the battery swells, and the "popped out touch pad/bowed keyboard" happened on more than one. Note the two Philips in the center hold in the battery to the laptop as well as several Philips screws in the laptop. There is no room for the battery to swell.

 

 

 

Here's a photo of two laptops side by side from client C (not the same as above) notice how bowed the keyboard and touchpad are on the laptop on the left. This client wasn't too interested in repairing them, they were just trying to get extra life out of these old units.

 

The point I've been trying to make is that the "ultrabook" design is needlessly more difficult to replace the battery due to needing a separate screw driver just to remove ten torx screws that had no reason to be a different kind. .

 

The Precision 7000's are the easiest to open and are the least damaged by battery issues. Or at least until they made them into ultrabook designs (7740 I believe) in which they started to take on the downsides of the 55xx's.

 

Those Latitudes, I hate the latitude's because they are mostly plastic, but also because they have the most frequent battery-swelling:damage ratios. The Precision 55xx's by comparison, usually the battery dies before it swells and you can replace it. But if you throw it in storage, or in the case of the pandemic, many users took the things home and didn't tell us when the battery died because they used them on the charger.

 

And those Precision 55xx's got extremely hot. Hot enough you'd burn your finger tips. Don't put these on your lap, you will burn yourself.

 

Now, to steer directly back to the topic. Are any of these hard to replace the battery? Not really. No glue, no gaskets. However the only laptop that is "easy" and "idiot-proof" as much as possible is the Precision 7720, because you can open just the battery compartment and replace it. The later models you have to take the entire back off, but otherwise is only slightly more time consuming. The Precision 55xx's require one special non-standard tool (Torx 5) that end users will never have, along with Philips #0 which people won't have unless they repair phones or replace SSD's in computers. The latitudes are all cheaply built, but they have the easiest to remove back's because the screws are all sitting in recessed captive holes, so at worst, you might have to pry some garbage out of the hole to open it. Where as the Precision 55xx might have the screws damaged because they are at surface with the laptop back.

 

The biggest error that can be made, is with the Latitude because dell makes like 500 different batteries for them, and if you order a third-party battery, you need to be extra careful to not damage the cable, because they don't come with them. The connector is different on all of these laptops, and so is the shape of the battery. The only reused battery shapes tend to be for the previous and next model in the precision series (eg 5520-5530-5540) not the latitudes, which seemingly are a crapshoot and you have to triple check that the battery you order is for your exact model, size and capacity. Because if you order a larger capacity, then you will be short one or two screws.

 

 

[leadeater]

12 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Please stop trying to gaslight me about several real experiences. I was there, you were not.

Don't post fud then? And no I'm not going to read all of that, why would you think anyone is going to?

 

I have a lot of experience with laptops, a lot, from every major brand across a very long time. That however doesn't change or factor against you saying T5 torx bits get so badly destroyed after only a few usages they need replacing. That would only ever be true if the drive bit were made of plastic.

 

You also said from out of the factory, which again they use torque set tools so no.

[Kisai]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Don't post fud then? And no I'm not going to read all of that, why would you think anyone is going to?

Oh, puhleez. I have proof, you do not.

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

I have a lot of experience with laptops, a lot, from every major brand across a very long time. That however doesn't change or factor against you saying T5 torx bits get so badly destroyed after only a few usages they need replacing. That would only ever be true if the drive bit were made of plastic.

Your experience is not going to be the same as mine, because we are different people with different clients. Maybe Kiwi laptop users are kinder to their systems. I doubt it.

 

[leadeater]

9 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Oh, puhleez. I have proof, you do not.

Proof of what. I see a tons of stuff about faults and battery problems and zero about drive bits getting damaged after a few usages which is what I was addressing. So if you want to double down on that then go ahead but you'll need to talk about that and not the novel about other stuff.

 

I have taken photos of my 30+ year old T5 drive bit if you really want to see it, I wouldn't ask if I were you since it's undamaged.

 

9 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Your experience is not going to be the same as mine, because we are different people with different clients. Maybe Kiwi laptop users are kinder to their systems. I doubt it.

Has nothing to do with what you said and I replied about. And since I've had people drive over their laptops or close pens inside their lids smashing the screens I doubt there is any meaningful difference that matters.

 

But again you even said these screws were damaged or over tightened out of the factory which just can't be true.

 

I don't feel the desire nor see the need to write down my entire history of working with laptops from all the vendors I have over all the generations/years. It's entirely unnecessary.

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

But again you even said these screws were damaged or over tightened out of the factory which just can't be true.

 

I don't feel the desire nor see the need to write down my entire history of working with laptops from all the vendors I have over all the generations/years. It's entirely unnecessary.

I find that a lot of times people end up grabbing the wrong sized bit that happens to fit well enough that they don't question if they could go one size up.

 

I know I've done that a few times when I needed to open a laptop and realized someone took like half my bits (so I had to in a pinch use an incorrect Philips).

 

Although I have seen a few laptops where the SSD screws were screwed in so tightly that I couldn't remove the screw (it was one batch of laptops that all had the same issue, no issues when I swapped the SSD's on the other same models).  So over tightening from the factory can happen from time to time.

 

 

Maybe it's just the users I've experienced in the environment I'm in...but I personally couldn't care less about replaceable batteries in laptops...I just want a laptop that's easier to swap the keyboard on and the USB ports.  So many laptops get returned to the department due to key caps being ripped off or damaged; and in most laptops I find it takes an abnormal amount of time to remove the keyboard

[Dracarris]

4 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Plus there is all the BS about disassembling the device. 

iPhones are among the more easy to disassemble phones out there with a consistent way since at least the 3G. Loosen two screws, soften screen adhesive, lift screen up with suction cup and you're in. Additionally there are easy-to-access pull tabs for the battery for a few generations now.

Apple has never produced a phone where you had to destroy or risk destruction when opening it up, in contrast to some Android manufacturers.

[jagdtigger]

59 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Loosen two screws, soften screen adhesive, lift screen up with suction cup and you're in.

Galaxy s5(and literally most of the android phones): pop off back cover and you are in.... Using glue to seal the phone is just plain stupid.

[Dracarris]

43 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Galaxy s5(and literally most of the android phones): pop off back cover and you are in.... Using glue to seal the phone is just plain stupid.

Yeah, because "glue" is only used to complicate manufacturing process and annoy users? Are you actually unable to think for a split second and realize that "glue" is used for good reason, such as providing better, more durable protection against water and dirt ingress? And please spare me the BS claims of so-called water-proof phones with clipped on back. They never reach the levels of actually sealed devices, period. Then, please spare me the BS claims of water/dirt-proof not being a desirable feature, which seems to be a hobby of some users in this forum.

 

If you are not totally ignorant, you also realize that what I'm talking about isn't glue, it's a freakin rubber gasket with some adhesive on both sides to enable a better seal. You know like the type of rubber gasket used in devices and parts that must actually be able to operate under water. I personally replaced three of those seals when replacing battery or screen on a respective phone, and guess what it's totally doable at home, maybe a bit finicky but doable.

 

And exactly why do I require a "pop off back cover and you are in" type of device when I need to open it up at most every 2-3 years for a battery swap? Outside of that there is literally no reason (for the phones I am using, at least) to open it up. So completely changing the design of the phone and accepting the linked trade-offs to ease a process that is required that seldomly is bonkers. The days where a phone required a battery change once or twice a day to keep running are long over (for properly designed and optimized phones, at least), and consequently the same applies to this type of battery access.

[jagdtigger]

48 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

"glue" is used for good reason

There is 0 good reason to use glue instead of proper seals and screws. Its just a tool for the manufacturer to make it hard to repair stuff.

[hishnash]

39 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

There is 0 good reason to use glue instead of proper seals and screws. Its just a tool for the manufacturer to make it hard to repair stuff.

Depends a lot on what you call glue, adhesive strips and adhesive gasskits have very good reasons for being there are are not at all there to make it harder to repair. 

For a device that you might need to replace the battery very 3 to 5 years needing to replace a small (cheap) gasskit is worth the effort for the waterproofing it provises and thus the longer device life you get. (without water ingress protection many more phones would die... the most common reason laptops go in for repair is water damage and that used to be the most common reason phones needed repair or were thrown away)..in the days of 30 second battery swaps a good % of phones died from water damage before the battery needed swapping anyway. 

[Dracarris]

58 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

There is 0 good reason to use glue instead of proper seals and screws. Its just a tool for the manufacturer to make it hard to repair stuff.

Nice tinfoil hat you got there.

And good job at ignoring all my explanations in regards to "glue". Why do I even waste my time with people like you.

[Blademaster91]

3 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Galaxy s5(and literally most of the android phones): pop off back cover and you are in.... Using glue to seal the phone is just plain stupid.

 The equivalent today would the Xcover 6 pro, IP68 and the back cover just comes right off, it also has a 4050mah battery, people are saying things with removeable batteries have less battery capacity but that just isn't true either.

I really don't see why phones need to be sealed with adhesives when phones do exist that are still water resistant and are more easily fixable than a fashion accessory brand gluing their phones shut so you have to take it to a store and they'll simply recommend you a new one instead.

[Dracarris]

38 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

it also has a 4050mah battery, people are saying things with removeable batteries have less battery capacity but that just isn't true either.

As I have explained to you for a dozen times already, they do have less capacity at a given physical size/volume of the battery. Period. You can always make the battery physically bigger to regain the same capacity, but that's not the point. It's energy density, Wh/cm^3. Maybe one day you will get it.

40 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

I really don't see why phones need to be sealed with adhesives when phones do exist that are still water resistant

The ones that are not glued are not water resistant to the same level, even if it says so on the box.

40 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

fashion accessory brand gluing their phones shut so you have to take it to a store and they'll simply recommend you a new one instead.

.. sth sth fashion accessory brand which designs the worlds fastest and most energy efficient SoCs sth sth ramble rant rant..

As I have explained to you a dozen times already, I carried out the outlined jobs at home. With a hair dryer and a guitar pick. Maybe one day you will remember.

Also, even if you get these jobs done by Apple, they cost a fraction of a new device (as is publicly visible on their website) and it's absolute BS that they'll recommend you a new phone instead.

 

This post may serve as a quarterly reminder to you how utterly, objectively wrong you are in your perception of (non)removable batteries.