New EU regulation will force handheld consoles to have replaceable batteries
Future handheld video game consoles like the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck, as well as smartphones, tablets, and other portable devices, will be required to have user replaceable batteries, thanks to a new regulation enacted by the European Council.
The new regulation is scheduled to come into effect in 2027, which the European Council expects is sufficient time for product makers to adapt their designs to meet the specifications. The documents surrounding the regulation are, predictably, very dry and very dense, but the basic gist of it is that if something is portable and contains a battery, that battery has to be replaceable by the owner of the product.
The regulation applies to “all categories of batteries placed onto the market or put into service within the [European] Union,” regardless of where that product was manufactured. The aim of the regulation is to create market conditions for batteries to be recycled and disposed of properly, and to cut down on electronic waste for devices that have failing batteries.
The hope is that if batteries are replaceable, consumers will only toss out (or recycle) the battery, rather than the device as a whole. This is likely to be a bigger problem for smartphones, since many of them rely on the fact that users can’t open them up to provide waterproofing, but handheld game devices, controllers, and more will be affected too.
So what constitutes a replaceable battery? It’s actually pretty simple. Per the regulation’s text:
“A portable battery should be considered to be removable by the end-user when it can be removed with the use of commercially available tools and without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless they are provided free of charge, or proprietary tools, thermal energy or solvents to disassemble it.”
By this standard, it seems like most games devices on the market already should probably meet these requirements. Both the Steam Deck and the Nintendo Switch can be taken apart and have their batteries replaced using tools readily available in hardware stores and online. Controllers, too, are probably in the clear, as most of them can be taken apart with standard tools, though some like the Dualsense Edge can be a challenge.
There are arguments to be made that the tri-wing screws used on the Switch may be specialized tools, and the Switch’s battery is held in place with a little bit of adhesive, but both of those are remedied by simply including a small screwdriver and a plastic leverage tool in the box.
Notably, the regulation doesn’t seem to make the complexity of replacement a factor, so even if the process for replacing a battery is long and arduous, devices that comply with other restrictions should probably be fine. Either way, it’s something that manufacturers will have to take into account when designing future products.
