Once upon a time — by which we mean just a couple of decades ago — if you wanted to swap out your phone’s battery for a new one, all you had to do was slide the back casing open and pop the battery out. The rise of sleek but impenetrable smartphones largely saw an end to user-replaceable batteries. But now, in the mid-2020s, they could be poised for a comeback.
Two separate pieces of right-to-repair legislation working their way through the European Union institutions — one of which was passed by the European Parliament at the end of June — could force phone manufacturers to make significant changes to the way they design phones. Once they come into force (expected to be in 2025 and 2027, respectively) they will put in place regulations that compel makers of phones and other small devices, like portable game consoles, to allow people to replace the batteries themselves.
As a smartphone owner, you’ll likely be familiar with the specific frustrations batteries pose — namely the drop-off in maximum capacity over time and the inability to cheaply and easily do anything to fix it. If you were able to switch the battery out, you could well end up keeping your phone for a prolonged period.
“Battery degradation is a major reason for considering an upgrade,” said CCS Insight Chief Analyst Ben Wood over email.
Increasingly phone manufacturers such as Apple, Samsung and HMD, which makes Nokia phones, are trying to make their devices more easily repairable at home. Since the start of this year, HMD has introduced two phones in which the batteries can be quickly replaced by the owner, although it does require an iFixit toolkit to do so. Repairing smartphones has largely been a specialist job. But with more power to fix devices, the hope is that you’ll be less likely to discard them in favor of newer models, reducing the overall amount of electronic waste that comes from broken or aging products.
“By empowering consumers with the ability to replace a worn-out battery themselves, it means that they can keep hold of their device for longer,” said Lars Silberbauer, chief marketing officer at HMD, which welcomed the EU’s proposals on user-replaceable batteries. “It also makes repairing a smartphone more affordable.”
But abiding by the new rules is going to mean having to solve some tricky engineering challenges for companies aiming to comply. One phone-maker, Fairphone, has pioneered making phones with fully user-replaceable batteries and, as they told me, it’s no easy feat. More on that below.
Any rules that do end up coming into force around user-replaceable batteries will only apply to phones sold within the EU. But there’s precedent for European regulation spurring tech companies to make changes that affect their products wherever they’re sold. A prime example is the European mandate for universal chargers (chargers that can be used across an entire device category), which was finalized in October 2022 and will come into force next year. It’s expected to cause Apple to switch away from using Lightning connectors for the iPhone to the more common USB-C, found on almost all Android phones.
Apple and Samsung didn’t respond to requests for comment regarding the impending regulations.
But it’s reasonable to think that if Apple and other phone-makers are forced to make devices that include user-replaceable batteries for one market, they might also sell those devices elsewhere.
Rethinking the architecture of the phone
To understand the challenges, as well as the pros and cons, of making such a device, I asked Fairphone — a company that already makes a phone with an easily replaceable battery — what’s involved.
To Miquel Ballester, Fairphone’s head of product development and one of its founders, there’s nothing novel about being able to replace a phone’s battery. Instead it’s a choice that manufacturers have made as phones have trended thinner and thinner, he said. And while battery capacities have improved over the years, the basic chemistry that causes them to degrade over time has not.
“That’s a fact and that has not changed since we had the old Nokias that all had the replaceable batteries,” he said.