The European Parliament hasapproved new rulesgoverning the sustainability of batteries.
That includes phones but applies to all portable gadgets.
Does this mean we will return to the old days of thick handsets and pop-open battery doors?
Someone repairing a broken smartphone.Revendo / Unsplash
It does not, but it will still make a huge splash.
Cheap electronics will be the hardest, from a cost standpoint, as many currently are simply throw away.
No more Tiles with a single-use battery, for example."
A smartphone with the front cover removed to reveal the battery.Tyler Lastovich / Unsplash
But this is unlikely to make much of a change to the external appearance of our phones.
Instead, the changes will primarily take place on the inside.
We can already spot a loophole in that paragraph.
Can’t specialized tools also be commercially available?
What the EU wants, it seems, is not to stop the use of fixed, internal batteries.
It just wants to make it so that a standard human can swap one out without breaking their phone.
And it is also incredibly important both for users and for the world.
It’s the job of tech companies to develop solutions that comply with these rules.
