I think this is probably the first and only good thing the EU has done in something like 5 years - since GDPR (which unfortunately has resulted in me being unable to access many local American sites because they don't want to comply with GDPR, so I always get a message saying "we value our European visitors").
I do recall that there were many liquid-proof devices that had replacable batteries back in the day. It seems obvious to me that these money-grubbing corporations just want you to pay through the nose for replacement of the batteries. Same reason they have eliminated the microSD slots. Pay us 300 euros for 512 GB extra instead of 40 euros for a microSD card, damnit!
GDPR was shit from the very beginning. They cloaked in grand language about privacy, but it has been ignorable from the get go. The whole point was to justify another huge bureaucracy in a continent already plagued by huge wasteful bureaucracies. Over-regulation is how Brussels controls and punishes the countries with smaller economies which cannot handle the ever increasing demands this stupid Merchant-republic puts on their yearly budget with this that the other committee for this moronic, that stupid the other idiotic form of government interference.
I had a phone that was water resistant and had a replaceable battery and regular headphone jack a decade ago and it worked just fine (and still charges and turns on today, it's just underpowered for today's software). Permanently sealed batteries are just there to make your phone disposable.
I think this is probably the first and only good thing the EU has done in something like 5 years - since GDPR (which unfortunately has resulted in me being unable to access many local American sites because they don't want to comply with GDPR, so I always get a message saying "we value our European visitors").
I do recall that there were many liquid-proof devices that had replacable batteries back in the day. It seems obvious to me that these money-grubbing corporations just want you to pay through the nose for replacement of the batteries. Same reason they have eliminated the microSD slots. Pay us 300 euros for 512 GB extra instead of 40 euros for a microSD card, damnit!
GDPR was a total shitfest and did nothing but create bureaucratic nightmares for everyone from hobby clubs to volunteer groups to small businesses.
Big corporations have ways around it and governments ignore it, if it even applies to them.
Worse even, it was their foot in the door to start demanding that they get to supersede all other nation's laws and control the whole damn internet.
GDPR was shit from the very beginning. They cloaked in grand language about privacy, but it has been ignorable from the get go. The whole point was to justify another huge bureaucracy in a continent already plagued by huge wasteful bureaucracies. Over-regulation is how Brussels controls and punishes the countries with smaller economies which cannot handle the ever increasing demands this stupid Merchant-republic puts on their yearly budget with this that the other committee for this moronic, that stupid the other idiotic form of government interference.
I had a phone that was water resistant and had a replaceable battery and regular headphone jack a decade ago and it worked just fine (and still charges and turns on today, it's just underpowered for today's software). Permanently sealed batteries are just there to make your phone disposable.
Yup. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
It's the EU. There's always something up. I don't see what it is right now, but I bet we'll find out in time.