Starting in 2027, smartphones, including the iPhone, will receive easily replaceable batteries
The European Council has finalized the procedure for adopting rules on phones with replaceable batteries. By 2027, all phones launched on the EU market must have a battery that can be easily replaced by the user without tools or expertise. The new regulation aims to introduce a circular economy for batteries.
The European Council has jurisdiction only over Europe. So this law will technically have no effect in any other part of the world. However, companies such as Samsung, Google, Apple, etc. do not develop devices specifically for Europe. Apple, for example, is not going to create a European iPhone with a replaceable battery and a separate version of the phone without such a feature for the United States.
The grace period from now until 2027 is intended to give equipment manufacturers enough time to recycle their products. This new law states, among other things, that users should be able to replace the battery in their phone without any special knowledge or tools. Since almost all smartphones today are designed as a “glass sandwich” based on the extensive use of adhesives, the very foundations of how companies design phones will have to change.
This law came about to force manufacturers to create a circular economy for batteries. This is a production model in which the resources invested in products are recycled or reused as far as possible. In an ideal world, the resources needed to build a smartphone would be 100% sourced from old smartphones, so there would never be a need to use anything new.
Below are some other rules for phones with replaceable batteries that this new law covers:
- Waste collection: by the end of 2027, manufacturers will need to collect 63% of portable batteries that are usually sent to landfill. By the end of 2030, this number should reach 73%.
- Waste recovery: by 2027, the level of lithium recovery from used batteries should be 50%. By the end of 2031, it should reach 80%, meaning that 80% of the lithium inside the battery can be recovered and used for new batteries.
- Minimum amount of recycled content: batteries must contain a certain percentage of recycled material. Initially, this will be 16% for cobalt, 85% for lead, 6% for lithium, and 6% for nickel.
- Early target recycling efficiency: Nickel-cadmium batteries should have a target recycling efficiency of 80% by the end of 2025. All other batteries must reach the target efficiency of 50% by 2025.
However, over the next few years, we will likely start to see smartphones with slightly different designs as manufacturers are forced to move towards compliance with this new law. It will take years before manufacturers have the designs, supply chains, and equipment needed to produce replaceable battery phones on a large scale.
