Remember the old spy movies where they would use a phone, then after the call was over they take out the battery and toss the phone and battery in the trash?
First off, why did they do this? They did this because even when you think your phone is off it is never fully off with a power source fully attached. For example you power off your phone all the way, someone who wants to or needs to access your phone without your knowledge can still do anything they want with it. Apple openly admits this to all their customers. When you hold down the power off the screen prompts with “iPhone Findable After Power Off”, This means your phone is technically still on just the screen is not. With the full ability to track your phone through ‘Find My” Without a power source you can’t do any of this.
There is a reason all phone companies have gone away with the removable battery and the point I just made is why they don’t even want you having access to your own phone battery. Their public reasoning is a blanket statement of “safety reasons” and “better designs”.
If you ever want to test this download Wireshark.
Wireshark is tracks every package that is being sent over your internet. So if you know what your phone IP address is then you can turn off your phone and see if their is any connections being sent over the internet without your knowledge. More than likely there are.
So what does this all have to do with the EU’s New Battery Regulation?
Privacy
If you have not heard then, EU’s new battery regulation calls for more sustainability when producing mobile devices. This laws objective is to make it easier for batteries to be recycled and removed from a product rather than dumping a whole product into E-Waste. Targeting batteries make sense because pollution from batteries or lithium can wreak havoc on a the soil and water ways from runoff. They also hope this makes manufactures build more affordable and efficient batteries.
The explanation I gave for their reasoning above is all well and good but the secondary impact for users is huge for privacy.
These mobile devices manufactures being forced to have removable battery allows people to:
- Decide when their phone is on
- Know when they are being tracked
- Mitigate against eavesdropping
- Minimize Power consumption
- Prevent data wiping
- Counteracting remote control
Can Apple Stop Them?
Apple is known for getting their way or leading the industry in a new design for a phone. They also are known for not changing very much. This comes in the form of keeping the lighting charger even when their are better connections available like usb c. They keep the lightning cable because apple made it in house and they can license the design out to every small company that sell it. Making them money on every single purchase of a charging cable.
This in a way is the same for the battery of the iPhone they don’t make money on a battery that can be easily replaceable, they make money on it having to be brought to an apple store to be replaced and sell the battery to you at an up-charge. So you could say they are pretty upset about this change. It could be a loss of millions maybe even billions worth of revenue.
Apple will undoubtedly spend lots of money on fighting these types of laws but it seems like the EU has always had a disdain for Apple like this tax fight.
In short apple cannot win against the EU’s Battery Regulation. Once Apple falls other companies like Samsung and LG follow when it comes with what kind of product is being made.
This is a huge win for privacy and the Right to Repair.
If you like Privacy check out our Post how to become Anonymous online.
