TL;DR
- The European Council has ended its adoption procedure for rules related to phones with replaceable batteries.
- By 2027, all phones released in the EU must have a battery the user can easily replace with no tools or expertise.
- The regulation intends to introduce a circular economy for batteries.
Can’t say I ever had that problem. I had several phones with slide-off battery covers, and none of them ever broke. Besides phones, numerous AA-battery-powered devices over the decades (Game Boy, etc) had slide-off or clip-on battery covers that, for the most part, worked fine.
So yeah, bring back the slide-off battery covers. They were great.