Dutch newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad earlier this week reported that the European Union is currently drafting legislation that would legally require tech companies like Apple to make products like iPhone with removable batteries. This is a horrible idea for multiple reasons.
Michael Grothaus for Fast Company:
Contrary to what you commonly hear on online message boards, non-user-replaceable user batteries aren’t a conspiracy concocted by Samsung and Apple to pad their bottom lines through the supposedly lucrative battery-replacement market. Rather, non-user-replaceable batteries have a massive impact on creating devices that are much smaller and thinner than they otherwise would be with user-replaceable batteries… In other words, you can’t have today’s sleek designs and the same long battery life with user-replaceable batteries. You need to pick one or the other.
If you have a removable backplate so you can swap out a battery, it requires an opening almost as large as the device itself. Larger openings that take up more surface area are harder to protect against dust and water, so phones mandated to have user-replaceable batteries would likely see their dust- and water-resistance jettisoned.
The goal of user-replaceable batteries is to reduce e-waste, which is noble, [so] the EU could instead mandate that all major smartphone and device manufacturers offer free e-waste recycling initiatives to their customers — as Apple already does.
MacDailyNews Take: Again, as with the EU attempt to force Apple to dump iPhone’s Lightning port, this is more EU idiocy that — even if it does get unveiled, then passed, which it very likely won’t — Apple would never have to redesign iPhones as they already offer a removable battery: the Apple Smart Battery Case. Tack on 50 euros the the price of every iPhone and include one in every box sold in the EU. Done.