So I filtered for “Battery user-replacable” and found 117 smartphones (out of ~500).
This is a straight up lie because all these phones are glued together (nearly all are IP68) meaning that you need some special tools.
It lacks a lot of phone models. I couldn’t find any Google Pixel or Fairphone.
The “Battery endurance in cycles” (number of charge/discharge cycles a battery can withstand until its usable electrical capacity has reached 80 % of its rated capacity) attribute is completely broken:
It never seems to exceed 15?
I had phones for years that withstood hundreds/thousands of battery cycles and the battery still nearly behaved like it’s new and you’re telling me the maximum number is 15??? Did you guys just stop testing after 15?
Also “with regard to energy labelling” what is this labelling about? Energy? Ok then why are there values about the phones “Repeated free fall reliability” or IP protection inside there?
The whole thing looks way to intransparent and useless for the average phone buyer and definetly needs some improvement…
General labelling about repairability/phone lifetime (e.g. receives updates for X years, replacement parts are avilable for X years, can install another OS, can replace battery without external tools, etc) without a overall score that merges all aspects would be a lot better and useful IMHO.
This is a straight up lie because all these phones are glued together (nearly all are IP68) meaning that you need some special tools.
You’ll also need a battery, which in these cases then will come with a spudger, a tube of suitable glue, and instructions. Bring your own hairdryer I think is reasonable.
The idea is not so much that everyone will be replacing their own battery but that they could, which on the flipside then also means that shops will readily do it because they have no issue getting at parts and you don’t need to be a specialist to do it. What won’t fly is pulling an Apple and crypto-locking batteries to phones and requiring activation and only doing that for swaps made by the Apple store and stuff. Tesla tried to pull the same kind of shit with their cars in the EU and they got completely obliterated by regulations, up to and including price controls for their diagnosis software because they wanted to price out independent repair shops.
If you want a list of phones with actually replacable batteries try this.
Did you guys just stop testing after 15?
Times hundred. The labels have the zeroes, the database doesn’t.
Also “with regard to energy labelling” what is this labelling about? Energy? Ok then why are there values about the phones “Repeated free fall reliability” or IP protection inside there?
That “energy” label is an old and well-known scheme that people are actively looking for when shopping for things, makes sense to tack other sustainability stuff onto it if you want people to see it. Does it make sense? No. Does it make sense? Yes.
Agreed that a lot of the phones’ batteries are not actually replaceable without serious disassembling most of the phone. The common names of the phones are not front and center either. It’s quite disappointing from an official governmental service.
Most users will only see the label when they are picking a new device (where the two extra zeros are present). I agree with your points on the database UI and hope they will be fixed soon, but describing the entire system as “utterly unusable” is not really fair.
The “battery endurance in cycles” is the weirdest thing to me. Even Li ion batteries from 20 years ago could achieve 100+ charge cycles before <80% capacity is hit. Fifteen (or lower) is suspect for the testing method or concerning for the engineering.
Whilst I get the idea the implementation is currently unusable:
So I filtered for “Battery user-replacable” and found 117 smartphones (out of ~500). This is a straight up lie because all these phones are glued together (nearly all are IP68) meaning that you need some special tools.
It lacks a lot of phone models. I couldn’t find any Google Pixel or Fairphone.
The “Battery endurance in cycles” (number of charge/discharge cycles a battery can withstand until its usable electrical capacity has reached 80 % of its rated capacity) attribute is completely broken: It never seems to exceed 15? I had phones for years that withstood hundreds/thousands of battery cycles and the battery still nearly behaved like it’s new and you’re telling me the maximum number is 15??? Did you guys just stop testing after 15?
Also “with regard to energy labelling” what is this labelling about? Energy? Ok then why are there values about the phones “Repeated free fall reliability” or IP protection inside there?
The whole thing looks way to intransparent and useless for the average phone buyer and definetly needs some improvement…
General labelling about repairability/phone lifetime (e.g. receives updates for X years, replacement parts are avilable for X years, can install another OS, can replace battery without external tools, etc) without a overall score that merges all aspects would be a lot better and useful IMHO.
You’ll also need a battery, which in these cases then will come with a spudger, a tube of suitable glue, and instructions. Bring your own hairdryer I think is reasonable.
The idea is not so much that everyone will be replacing their own battery but that they could, which on the flipside then also means that shops will readily do it because they have no issue getting at parts and you don’t need to be a specialist to do it. What won’t fly is pulling an Apple and crypto-locking batteries to phones and requiring activation and only doing that for swaps made by the Apple store and stuff. Tesla tried to pull the same kind of shit with their cars in the EU and they got completely obliterated by regulations, up to and including price controls for their diagnosis software because they wanted to price out independent repair shops.
If you want a list of phones with actually replacable batteries try this.
Times hundred. The labels have the zeroes, the database doesn’t.
That “energy” label is an old and well-known scheme that people are actively looking for when shopping for things, makes sense to tack other sustainability stuff onto it if you want people to see it. Does it make sense? No. Does it make sense? Yes.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 had a user-replaceable battery and a headphone jack, yet an IP67 rating. But yes, these are all glued in.
Agreed that a lot of the phones’ batteries are not actually replaceable without serious disassembling most of the phone. The common names of the phones are not front and center either. It’s quite disappointing from an official governmental service.
They have 5 models listed for Google
It’s hundreds of cycles. So 1500 cycles.
Touché. However this doesn’t change the fact that the interface is absolutely useless.
When I’m searching for Google I just get the model ids:
None of these phones have the word “Pixel” anywhere and I have to look the market name up on a 3rd party website.
Seriously? Maybe they should include the unit of measurement or just print two extra zeros.
Again these points just highlight that this utterly unusable for a normal user.
Most users will only see the label when they are picking a new device (where the two extra zeros are present). I agree with your points on the database UI and hope they will be fixed soon, but describing the entire system as “utterly unusable” is not really fair.
The “battery endurance in cycles” is the weirdest thing to me. Even Li ion batteries from 20 years ago could achieve 100+ charge cycles before <80% capacity is hit. Fifteen (or lower) is suspect for the testing method or concerning for the engineering.