India, April 20 -- Social media tends to be a mostly doozy place defined by opaque algorithms dictating what you see and 'trends' based on metrics that we best not try to decode. The result is an echo chamber. Through this weekend, random accounts on X kept populating my timeline, all equally loudly proclaiming that the European Union (EU) will "require all mobile phones to be sold with user-replaceable batteries" by 2027. It is a harbinger for doomsday, or the best thing to happen to tech in years, depending on which ChatGPT generated thread X decided to paste on the timeline. Let me be straight-this is absolutely not what the EU has mandated.

What the EU has mandated, applicable from February 2027, are "easily replaceable batteries". T...