[mmis1000]

Most phones don't have battery that is removable. But they are indeed serviceable. The battery alone is generally about 10 to 20 usd. And depends on where you are, add the service fee. Your phone is again good for 2 or 3 years. It's really just a tiny portion of new phone consider high end phones today went up to 1000~1500 usd range.

The official vendor normally have an artificially high service fee because they want you to buy a new one instead which is much more profitable. But servicing it in third party vendors isn't that expensive.

[ggreer]

That's true, but it's also true that the inconvenience of paying $50-$100 and not having your phone for a day (and risking it being damaged) is enough to cause quite a few people to buy a new phone.

I've replaced the battery in most of my phones over the past decade, but that's because I don't like the larger form factor of new phones. Right now I'm on the iPhone 13 mini. Before that I had a 2nd gen iPhone SE (the same form factor as the iPhone 5). If I could get the form factor of an iPhone 4 and the specs of a modern phone, I'd probably be willing to pay $1,000. Unfortunately, like the headphone jack enthusiasts, people with my preferences are too small of a market segment to be worth going after.

[maeil]

> That's true, but it's also true that the inconvenience of paying $50-$100 and not having your phone for a day

Not sure about the US or Apple, but over here if you go to Samsung a battery replacement generally takes less than an hour.

[mmis1000]

> not having your phone for a day

It's generally about 2 or 3 hours here. Probably just watch a movie at theater or workout at gym for a while and it's finished.

[Qwertious]

If people will replace their phone over a one-day wait, then there should be lots of dirt-cheap refurbished options.

[zaroth]

That doesn’t mean the first phone is waste! There’s nothing wrong with wanting to buy a new phone.

The law won’t reduce smartphone ewaste. It will just satisfy the people who want removable batteries over sleaker design.

The battery is serviceable and it can be done quite easily and cheaply. In fact it’s done billions of times over.

Really just nanny state regulation, which as typical, will not bring any benefit and impose tremendous compliance costs and actually make some products worse.

[hulitu]

> Most phones don't have battery that is removable. But they are indeed serviceable

It depends on costs. When both service and a new phone cost 120 €, guess what will the user prefer ?