[loeber]

I worry that this ends up, like other EU consumer-protection regulation, as an own goal.

- The cheapest phones available in the EU (and purchasable online) all have glued-in batteries, not swappable ones. Forcing consumers to use phones with swappable batteries may just mean that the bottom of the market disappears, and consumers will be left paying more for their phones. And would they rather pay less or have swappable batteries?

- This will cause some cascade of engineering changes, which will make phones thicker or less waterproof. Again, it's not clear to me that the tradeoff is being fairly reflected here.

[gf000]

It's replaceable with commercially available tools, it doesn't mean that you should be able to pop off the battery during the day at any point.

This doesn't restrict the design space that much at all.

[vrganj]

Not having cheap plastic junk that ends up as toxic landfill is a pro, not a con.

"Cheap" isn't enough, especially if it's cheap through externalizing cost.

[loeber]

Say that to the people who can't afford them!

[plst]

They then end up paying more by buying five awful low-range phones that each last a year instead of one mid-range that will last more. No, I would rather everyone paid more for a phone. I find it hard to believe that the difference in price will make it impossible for them to buy it, if so, that's a separate problem. This + mandated software support may finally make it viable to just buy a used phone, too.

[vrganj]

This is especially beneficial for poorer folks, who won't have to buy a whole new phone when a battery dies.

Plus, what you're talking about is a failure of socioeconomic policy, not one to be fixed by giving poor people junk.

[vincnetas]

... other EU consumer-protection regulation ...

like unified charging cable, free EU roaming or intercountry bank payments that are instant and almost free, air travel protections?

[juliusceasar]

- efficient vaccuums - efficient bulbs - no roaming costs if somebody leaves a message on your voicemail - insurance companies and banks can't charge you as they see fit - toxic free food - toxic free meat - farming without killing the rest of the living things - Best of all: China and USA can't dictate the rules everytime

[simplyluke]

Like the experience of opening any website for the last decade and being greeted with a cookie popup is more the direction the parent comment was intending I'm assuming.

Some regulations are good, some are bad, all have second and third order effects that need to be weighed against benefits.

[vincnetas]

and you comfortably ignore all the adds that get in your face when opening any news or commerce site. you would not need these popups with agree and list of third party data aggregators if you were not selling all that visitor information to anyone. alas eu requires you to notify visitors about it. its not like eu says "you must show annoying popups" its page authors choose to do so to be able to sell the data. even knowing that this will annoy the visitors. and then blame EU

[loeber]

> if you were not selling all that visitor information to anyone

Do you understand how rare it is for a company to actually sell its user data?

[vincnetas]

Visitor data. And i think these companies them selves do not fully understand what visitor data they pass on just to get that ad revenue.

Put this JS on your page, we'll give you some money.

[loeber]

Unified charging cable: what if the standard had been set much earlier? For example, in 2008? We'd all be on Micro-USB, far inferior to USB-C. Right now USB-C feels great, but do you really think this is the end-all, be-all? I think the cost of this mandatory standardization will become apparent a few years from now.

[vincnetas]

do you think that regulations can not be updated to improove?