News Microsoft, Sony commit to reduced environmental impact

Smartphone manufacturers: you're up. Sort it out.

I recently wrote a small article on FB about this exact problem: the single biggest obstacle to reducing environmental imact and materials waste in the tech sector now is the practise of making devices with non-replaceable batteries. The sheer number of smartphones, tablets and laptops being scrapped whole, every year, because their sealed-in Lithium cells have degraded, is beyond imagining. I'm specifically restricting myself to devices with replaceable batteries (hence have just ordered the last smartphone to feature that option, the 2016 LG V20) and I really, really hope smartphone and tablet models start to present the option again.

(To the waterproofing concern: nobody cares that your phone is waterproof. It was always a tosser's pipedream: the waterproofing degrades over time anyway, and is ruined the first time you have to get the phone repaired. We need to just give up on the idea of waterproof gadgets if the only way to achieve it is sealed-in batteries as standard - it isn't worth what that design choice will cost us in the long-term.)