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by mg 125 days ago
I have been maintaining this chart of phones with replaceable batteries available in the USA for 10 years now:

https://www.productchart.com/smartphones/removable_battery

Man, is it empty these days. The chart used to be pretty full. Now it only has about 1% of all phones that are in the Product Chart database. As the other 99% have fixed batteries.

I'm looking forward to see if the EU decision will push some companies to do this for their US versions too and revive the chart.

3 comments

The EU directive doesn't even compel them to have those kinds of removable batteries in the EU, because being removable with commercially available tools is considered compliant [0]. The topic has been too obfuscated with hype pieces. Still, it would be nice to not have to break glass and melt glue to open up phones.

[0] https://repair.eu/news/making-batteries-removable-and-replac...

> The EU directive doesn't even compel them to have those kinds of removable batteries in the EU, because being removable with commercially available tools is considered compliant

This is a follow-up directive that goes further. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...:

“Any natural or legal person that places on the market products incorporating portable batteries shall ensure that those batteries are readily removable and replaceable by the end-user at any time during the lifetime of the product. That obligation shall only apply to entire batteries and not to individual cells or other parts included in such batteries.

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, proprietary tools, thermal energy, or solvents to disassemble the product.

Any natural or legal person that places on the market products incorporating portable batteries shall ensure that those products are accompanied with instructions and safety information on the use, removal and replacement of the batteries. Those instructions and that safety information shall be made available permanently online, on a publicly available website, in an easily understandable way for end-users.”

Why disallow requiring thermal energy? Electric hair dryers are common in Europe.
Yeah, thank god. As long as it’s easy to remove and replacement batteries can easily be purchased by individuals, I want my phone and battery glued, thank you very much.

I like apples approach to removable battery glue. Though it needs an extra tool. These days it should be easy to make a cheap USB-C PD powered thing that supplies a good DC voltage.

The electricity-controlled glue in Apple's iPhone is made by Tesa, a German Glue company
I don't see any Fairphone on the page, they are not sold in the US?
I'm not sure. I have not seen them on any large retailer in the USA like Amazon, Walmart, Newegg, BestBuy etc.

Maybe if someone here is in the USA and has bought one, they can chime in and tell where they got it from?

Yes, they are. The Fairphone 6 is available in the US through their official partner Murena.
You should add this phone to your list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5