New handheld game consoles will need replaceable batteries from 2027, EU says

As much as I like my thin devices, all batteries should be user replaceable without the need for disassembly of any kind.

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I mentioned this in another thread about the same thing. The Samsung Galaxy S3 was great for that. It was a 10 second job to pop off the back cover and swap out the battery. No risk of breaking the screen, no glue, no miniature cables to unplug and replug. That really should be the norm. It would be even better if we also didn't have to buy expensive branded batteries to replace them.

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- It also had an official extended battery, which came along with a special backplate. It made the phone a bit bulkier, but I didn't care. Battery went from 2100mah to 3000mah and it was great. I miss these types of accessories. I don't care about glass back or waterproof phones.
  
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- I loved my S3, I bought a few spare batteries for it with the battery wall charger, I'd just swap batteries instead of charging it
  
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I'm ok with having standard screws holding it together. But no glue!

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I’ll 100% prefer a thin but still repairable device that requires disassembly and common tools to replace the battery. Its not something that needs frequent changes any more, most devices can go 2 years plus and before the battery really needs changing, more if you take care of them.

For the Steamdeck it makes sense to have “old school” battery packs so people can choose. But for that same reason, it would be stupid to require by law for all devices to support hot swapping batteries.

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Why not both?

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If anyone had the sense to make a law forcing the modem processor and peripherals to be fully documented with all registers, protocols, API, architecture, and a reproducible toolchain for compiling the software, we might just have a sustainable future. Governments and large corporations already require this level of accountability for what they purchase and use. Anything less than this level of support and transparency is exploitive theft of ownership. Retaining any digital rights for any products sold is criminal theft.

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Lol, as if any of those people have an idea of what these words even mean.

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- Sure they do. "This is theft. We don't like theft. Stop theft by doing what we demand."
  
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- [This comment has been deleted by an automated system]
  
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- Sure they do. "This is theft. We don't like theft. Stop theft by doing what we demand."
  
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Dear Citizen, we will require all manufacturers to comply with non-essential guidelines, but all important stuff are subject to the fact that you are our bitch and need to vow to your benefactor, the "government" which is Groupon for corpos.

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- Pretty sure some of the stuff he's talking about are consumer issues too...fully documenting all the hardware lets people other than the original manufacturer provide support to the hardware without the use of reverse engineering.
  
  Plus there's a lot of non-essential stuff the government makes companies do already, because if they didn't the companies would just exploit people. Food and Drugs being two big ones.
  
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You realize 99% of legislators are tech illiterate boomers, right?

That's why shits so fucked now, they are too old to be making laws for these things.

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- Politicians will always be generalists that must look to experts to advise them. The problem is there are few experts doing the advising and most are corporate funded with corporate agendas. Unless you are super into politics where these choices change your voting in a significant way, the situation will continue to suck.
  
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As long as tools to unclip the shell aren't consider specialized, I think almost all existing handhelds are gonna meet the actual requirements here - they just have to be user replaceable, not use swappable, without the use of specialized tools or thermal energy. If you can unscrew it, disconnect the old battery and connect the new one, it complies. It's really only an issue in waterproof devices, where they have to glue everything to seal it.

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I read a lot of people claiming that waterproofing technology has come to a point where this isn't too much of an issue, but that's as far as my knowledge goes

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- It's true. If you put a little gasket around the edges and make sure it's held down tightly (clips, screws etc) it's fine. Glue is cheaper and faster to manufacture, that's why companies claim it's necessary
  
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- There are plenty of options for waterproofing removable batteries. They just tend to be large.
  
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What’s the difference between swappable and replaceable

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- Swappable as in “let’s just put a spare battery in so my phone is at 100% again and I can continue doing whatever” (like with cameras for example)
  
  Replaceable as in “my phone only lasts 2 hours instead of a day because after 3 years the battery has degraded, time to replace it with a new one”
  
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- Needing disassembly or not, at least colloquially
  
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I think the specialized tools thing leaves a lot of room for interpretation. For instance, Nintendo consoles likes to use triwing screws. A triwing screwdriver is a standard tool technically, but they aren't found at most hardware stores. I could see the argument that a triwing screw would not comply.

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with standard tools (not proprietary)🥳

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Goodbye tri-wing (and pentalobe) screws.

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Steam deck already supports this

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Phones used to have replaceable batteries until they didn't. And they still won't in the next couple of years, until the law is in effect.
Game consoles could go the same way, but this law can prevent it.

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=4T0RZ6ustKQ&feature=share8

ifixit: "Battery replacements definitely seem to be the steam deck's achilles heel"

Easy to open yes, but still very challenging to replace the battery. Doesn't seem to comply to the new rules to me.

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- Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=4T0RZ6ustKQ&feature=share8
  
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
  
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- I read it differently:
  
  Further documentation stated "a portable battery shall be considered readily removable by the end-user where it can be removed from a product with the use of commercially available tools, without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless provided free of charge with the product".
  
  I take specialized tool to mean for example, a screw than you can’t find a driver for at a hardware store. Since all you need to replace the battery are some Phillips heads and a blow dryer or heat gun, it seems fully possible for a consumer to replace the battery using commercially available tools. Difficult sure, but should comply as-is.
  
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- Valve has switched the adhesive they use on the battery since launch. > “We have rolled in a change to the geometry of the adhesive, making the battery easier to loosen,” says Yang. Hopefully, that new shape should make it easier to pry. Source
  
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Yes, but this legislation seems to be aimed at making them replaceable without having to take the device apart at all.

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- The requirement is simply that the battery is removable with commercially available tools, or if specialized tools are needed to have them provided with the product. So the SD would already be compliant.
  
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- I mean, what is the difference behind removing the entire back with a few screws and removing a battery cover with a few screws? The Deck battery is user-replaceable. That said, I wouldn't mind a battery compartment and for the battery not to be held down with adhesive (not sure if the Deck battery is or not, but lots of devices using flat cell batteries do).
  
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As I recall, valve said that they wanted the battery to be more easily replaceable. The issue was that the battery expands and shrinks during use, and they couldn't find a good way to secure it that both kept it easily replaceable and kept it from sliding around during use. Ultimately, they had to use glue to hold the battery in place.

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You can work around that, there’s plenty of designs that allow for slight thermal expansion while not using adhesive to hold down the battery. Take for example, old MacBook Air batteries, that had the cells with room for expansion but framed in hard plastic that screwed into the housing, allowing for quick and easily swapping the batteries.

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- Yeah, my understanding is that it's not an insurmountable issue, it's just one that the steam deck hardware team wasn't able to solve in a cost effective way.
  
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It seems to me the steam deck already meets this regulation, or would with very minimal change. It does not say you need to have an access door like gamboys had. It just says the battery needs to be easily replaceable with commonly available tools (or included tools). To replace the steam decks battery you just need a size 0 Phillips screwdriver and something to pop it open like a guitar pick or a credit card. You would easily be able to get all the tools you need at any hardware store.

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My understanding is the adhesive is quite strong. It's also pretty nerve wracking having to take what is ultimately a sharpish instrument and poke around on something which can be extremely dangerous if punctured.

If that's acceptable per this legislation, a lot of other products are already complaint as well. But I really, really hope this at least gets us something like screws instead of adhesive.

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Oh god, my heart skipped a beat because I thought they meant like AA batteries or something, whew

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what's wrong with AA batteries tho? easily swappable, hot spares, rechargable, interchangable with other devices

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- Only 1.5 volts.
  
  Steam deck would need 10 AA
  
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Honestly it is so dystopian that we even have to have laws to require this kind of thing. It only makes sense to be able to replace failed parts instead of throwing out entire units or being required to have the manufacturer handle it.

In reality what happens is that devices with difficult or impossible to replace batteries end up getting thrown in the trash more often than anyone does anything else with them.

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Add a counterpoint though, hasn’t the market pretty clearly indicated that this isn’t actually prioritized in a meaningful way, at least over other features, such as form factor or weight (likely the two features most impacted by more easily replaceable batteries). Other than the screen, the battery tends to be the largest and heaviest component of a handheld, so designing it to be swappable isn’t negligible.

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- Repairable doesn’t necessarily mean swapping though. Manufacturers make it artificially complex to repair batteries to boost sales, just because the market moved this way doesn’t mean thats what people want. I agree swapping might require tradeoffs a lot of people wouldn’t want, but there’s small changes that could help it be a reasonable fix with common tools.
  
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I wonder if Steam (and phone makers) would make the change a universal one so that people like me who live outside of EU can enjoy the same benefits too. Good job EU.

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Good. But next issue is availability of batteries. I can put new batteries into my old gameboy pretty easily, will you be able to get new batteries for a random handlheld in twenty years? (Something as popular as the steamdeck will probably be able.)

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