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How it started
In 2023, the European Union agreed on two landmark pieces of legislation mandating how portable tech products with batteries must be designed, aiming to improve longevity, repairability, and recyclability. Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/1670 came into force last year and applies specifically to smartphones and tablets, while Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 takes effect next year and covers almost every other piece of technology with a battery inside.
The wider rules, which kick in from February 18th, 2027, are simple: Users must be able to remove and replace batteries with basic tools, or specialized tools that are provided with the product for free, and compatible spare batteries must be sold for at least five years. The tool requirement means swapping the battery doesn’t need to be as simple as popping off a clip-on cover, but can’t be much more complicated than removing a few standard screws. The regulation applies to headphones, e-readers, portable game consoles, laptops, and more. If it’s got a battery, it’s probably covered.
There are a few exemptions. Smartphones and tablets are the big two, simply because they’re already covered by that other law, which requires manufacturers to make a variety of spare parts for phones available for at least seven years. Some of those parts need only be available to professional repairers, but others must be provided to end users, and must be designed to be replaceable by a layman with basic tools. Batteries are covered by that requirement, but with a specific, and important, exemption: If a battery still has 83 percent capacity after 500 charging cycles, 80 percent after 1,000 cycles, and the device has an IP67 rating, then battery replacement can be limited only to professionals. Essentially, if your phone is waterproof, and its battery will last at least three years with minimal capacity loss, then it doesn’t need to be user replaceable. For years there was ambiguity about how these two sets of regulations would interact, but in a notice published last year the EU confirmed that the existing smartphone and tablet rules “prevail over” the new, wider regulations.
Some other devices are entirely exempt from either set of rules, including certain medical devices and products that are designed for use in an environment “regularly subject to splashing water, water streams or water immersion,” for example. That’s not intended to catch any product with waterproofing, but would cover swimming and diving gadgets, or bathroom appliances like electric toothbrushes. The EU has just finished collecting feedback on a further set of proposed exemptions, which could include wearables like smartwatches, fitness trackers, and smart glasses, on the basis that their battery enclosures are often so small that there’d be a real risk of damaging the batteries during removal. Campaign group Right to Repair Europe is one of the voices opposing further exemptions, pointing to the example of the user-removable battery on the Pixel Watch 4 to prove that it’s possible.
How it’s going
We’re already seeing some manufacturers prepare for the change. Over-ear headphones with replaceable batteries are rare, but have existed for years, though launches this year suggest they’re about to become much more common. Fender was one of the first with its Mix headphones, which hide easy access to the battery under one of the ear cushions. Sennheiser just followed with the launch of its Momentum 5 headphones, which allow for battery-replacement using nothing more than a Phillips-head screwdriver.
And of course, Fairphone has been beating this drum for years. Its smartphones and headphones have long had user-replaceable batteries, including the latest Fairphone 6. Most impressively, it also managed to make earbuds with easily replaceable batteries, the Fairbuds. Despite the exemption for other wearables, as it stands wireless earbuds are included in next year’s incoming rules, giving the rest of the industry less than a year to figure out how to pull off the same trick.
“Our current products already match and even exceed these upcoming requirements because we have focused entirely on repairability and longevity since day one,” Fairphone’s public relations manager Alon Brandt told me. “We have actually been a driving force behind these new EU regulations, shaping them by actively partaking in discussions and meetings to show the rest of the industry what is possible when you prioritize longevity. We design our devices to walk the walk on the circular economy from the very start, which makes baseline legal compliance just a starting point for us rather than a difficult milestone to reach.”
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