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It is interesting that the EU only wants to regulate markets that they are not participating in. They don't make smartphone anymore so any regulations isn't hur
by systemtest 3y ago
It is interesting that the EU only wants to regulate markets that they are not participating in. They don't make smartphone anymore so any regulations isn't hurting them. It would be admirable if they held the same standard for vehicles, including brands from the EU.
- hef19898 3y agoYou don't hear about them, but they do exist...
- systemtest 3y agoNokia has been sold, I don't know about any EU smartphone brands outside of Fairphone. The market is so small that adding regulation isn't hurting the EU, which is why its an easy target compared to the automotive industry.
- jacquesm 3y ago> I don't know about any EU smartphone brands outside of Fairphone. That's your problem then, don't you think? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_phone_brands_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_phone_brands_by... Now, whether all of these are actually manufactured locally or not is another matter, but the EU definitely is regulating its own market. As they have been empowered to do so. I'm all for it. And I would love to see standardized battery packs for electric vehicles as well because I think that will be a much bigger issue in the longer term.
- systemtest 3y ago> That's your problem then, don't you think? No need to play the man or be belittling. Point still stands that the EU smartphone market is so little that any regulation isn't hurting them. Regulation on car repairability definitely would, hence why you stil need to visit the BMW dealer if you want to change the 12-volt battery or activate your heated seats. The EU will not likely do anything about that.
- jacquesm 3y agoIt is their market to regulate. And right to repair is very much a part of EU regulations. Without those regulations you'd be in a far worse situation. https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/sectors/automotive-industry/technical-harmonisation/access-vehicle-repair-and-maintenance-information_en https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/sectors/automotiv... If BMW idiocy gets you upset: don't drive BMW. My car is 25 and I can do just about anything I want on it. Your beef is first and foremost with BMW, and I'm fairly sure that if the EU deems this kind of behavior anti competitive it will be smacked down, even if the participants are all EU based. You seem to want regulation to be perfect, but in light of manufacturer abuses it's a catch-up game. https://www.automotiveworld.com/articles/how-far-will-the-industry-take-subscription-features/ https://www.automotiveworld.com/articles/how-far-will-the-in... Is a good article on the subject, it also helps to see that there is a fine line between what has to be made available and be subscription free and where manufacturers may have some leeway. I agree with you that changing out a battery (which is a pretty common affair) should never require a trip to the stealer.
- systemtest 3y agoIt is their market but they don't have any significant participation in it, which is why regulation is easy. There isn't any significant downside to it for them. I don't have beef with BMW, that was just an example. "Don't drive a BMW" is the equivalent of "Don't buy an iPhone" if you care about repairability. It shouldn't be like that.
- jacquesm 3y agoYou see correlation and infer causation but maybe the better way to see this is to realize that the EU is large, has a ton of work on their plate already and relatively limited budget to work with whereas manufacturers will always just see how far they can stretch it. The number of EU companies affected by EU regulations is far larger than the number of companies from abroad. Your example fails because the same amount of regulation that applies to EU car manufacturers also applies to manufacturers from abroad. The EU is in that sense one of the fairest players. According to your philosophy no amount of regulation on mobile phones would be acceptable because the EU has no big name phone manufacturer any more. But as others have already pointed out this legislation affects far more than just mobile phones so your argument simply fails.
- poetaster 3y agoThe wp article does mention gigaset and https://www.shiftphones.com/ https://www.shiftphones.com/ but not Fairphone nor https://www.carbonmobile.com/ https://www.carbonmobile.com/ who as with shift and gigaset are building manufacturing in Germany (mostly north east). Shift has a plant in China and just does finishing in Germany. But that's a given, I believe. Can't source all things in one country. Or?
- hef19898 3y agoThere are regulations around repairability of cars for example. You just don't hear about those on HN. Plus all the safety regulations around aircraft, cars and aon on. Markets in which EU-based companies very much operate in.
- poetaster 3y agoGigaset is a German company who manufactures and assembles in Germany. https://www.gigaset.com/hq_en/smartphones/ https://www.gigaset.com/hq_en/smartphones/ A German remarkting firm Volla sells them with their own Android. The swiss company Rephone also rebrands with upgrads the GS5 (6GB RAM instead of 4). All the recent Gigaset phones have replaceable Batteries. I use a GS5 and a Rephone with SailfishOs.
- Semaphor 3y agoOh wow, I remember them from ISDN wireless phone times. All a bit large for me, but cool that they exist and do this :)
- poetaster 3y agoIt's also perhaps of interest that one of the few alternative OS efforts is still being led by ex-nokia folk out of Tampere, Finland. Jolla. Much of the Plasma development for mobile is spear headed by devs in Germany (KDE folk). Point being, the heritage of Nokia is not quite dead yet.
- jacquesm 3y agoI have one and it is a pretty good and solid phone. Not quite a smartphone (it runs Linux) and I very much like it. Absolutely indestructible, cheap and unbelievable battery life (so long I sometimes forget I have to charge it at all).
- hyperdimension 3y agoWhat model are you talking about? I'd like a portable Linux device. I was born too early for the N900, and it wouldn't get cellular coverage in this day and age even if I were to buy one...
- jacquesm 3y agoN800 tough. They are pretty serious about the 'tough' bit, I'm fairly sure you could use it in hand-to-hand combat and at least the phone would survive.
- hyperdimension 3y agoThanks, that looks like a pretty nice phone. Even has a microSD card slot and a 3.5mm jack. Also, I didn't know KaiOS was based on Linux. Is it exposed anywhere? Can you get a terminal on it or ssh into it?
- jacquesm 3y agoYes, you can, but I haven't actually used that. The camera is pretty crappy and there are some (minor) UI/UX issues, but overall it is very solid, it's essentially a repackaged 8110 with a focus on battery life and robustness. It has dual SIM capability but if you use that you lose the SD slot. There is also GerdaOS (instead of KaiOS) and you can run Debian on it. When I get my next phone (which could well be years, this one is now 4 years old and still going strong) I plan on running stock linux on it to see what else you can do with it. I paid about 80 euros for it.
- jacquesm 3y ago> It is interesting that the EU only wants to regulate markets that they are not participating in. The EU only regulates markets they are participating in. The only country that regulates markets that they do not participate in is the United States, and for the most part they seem to be doing so for fairly good reasons (such as with the anti money laundering and anti terrorism financing laws). Though of course you are free to disagree with whether or not you think those are good reasons.
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- nonethewiser 3y agoWhy are you ignoring what he means for an alternate interpretation of that particular sentence? He explicitly clarified that he’s talking about the EU not making smartphones. Your reply is more like hijacking his comment than actually conversing.
- shkkmo 3y ago> It would be admirable if they held the same standard for vehicles, including brands from the EU This regulation does cover vehicles. It also covers a wide range of devices, including ones that are indeed made by the EU. Beyond that, I think "only regulate things you make" is a silly standard. The point of regulations are (or should be) to protect consumers, not to disadvantage companies. The EU has lots of consumers who buy smartphones and thus has a very legitimate reason to want to regulate them to protect their consumers.
- sroussey 3y agoOne EV is like thousands or hundreds of thousands of headsets. So redesigning Tesla cars will get a bigger result than apple AirPods. And there is a Gigafactory in Germany that will be first up to make clunky Teslas. So they are definitely regulating themselves.
- XorNot 3y agoI mean if this is too onerous a regulation, the smartphone makers are free to pull out of the world's third largest market...
- cbg0 3y ago> the EU only wants to regulate markets that they are not participating in This is incredibly inaccurate, there's tons of regulations in the EU for just about anything produced or imported here. One big example: cars, which the EU produces quite a lot of, see EURO emission standards for a specific example.
- crote 3y agoThe EU doesn't make smartphones anymore in the same way that the USA doesn't make smartphones anymore. There's still plenty of design going on, but the manufacturing is outsourced to Asia.
- forty 3y agoI'd consider the being the buying side of a market as "participating" in that market. Vehicles are definitely regulated in Europe (see that story with Volkswagen, an EU brand, cheating the regulation as an example [1]) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal EDIT: I realize this started in the US but EU countries also went after VW and other EU brands after that
- jeroenhd 3y agoWhile car companies obviously need to follow regulations, those regulations are quite lax compared to the USA. We didn't have as big an emissions scandal in Europe because the European Commission knew about the manipulation as early as in 2010 but didn't act on it. When it comes to regulation in the car industry, I can't help but feel like the car manufacturers are the ones writing the law. They'll gladly make the safety technology they're already building into every car mandatory to get rid of foreign competition, but when emissions come up, progress slows down all of the sudden. This stuff happens everywhere regulation applies, though. I distinctly remember an absurd article shared here on HN that detailed how over in the USA there was a conspiracy by Big Pasta to alter regulations in such a way that would prevent European brands from competing, for example.
- forty 3y agoI think it can go both ways: heavily regulate stuff built abroad to reduce their profit, heavily regulate stuff made locally so that standard is too high for foreign competition to join the market.
- jq-r 3y agoOh yeah, EU regulators huffed and puffed when it was discovered that they are not doing their jobs and actually are in cahoots with the industry. Great example there. If EU, or maybe just Germany was even concerned about ecology they would heavily tax those heavy monsters of "crossover" cars and similar garbage and transfer that money to EVs, but they don't. Nobody touches EU car industry where it actually hurts.
- jeroenhd 3y agoAs a European citizen I agree that the way car manufacturers are given the satin glove treatment is despicable. That said, the EU does regulate every market it participates in. If you can find it on a store shelf, you'll find EU regulation about it. One of the major driving forces behind the Brexit vote was to "get rid of all of the EU paperwork". Of course they still have to get their paperwork in order if they want to export to the EU now, but for their internal market they're free to ignore all the EU regulations if they want to. As it turns out, most of those regulations were quite reasonable so a lot of the old regulations remained unchanged, but they were definitely there.
- refurb 3y agoThis is a good observation. It's easy to pass onerous regulations when you won't take an economic hit for it.
- yodsanklai 3y agoI would think the ban on petrol cars (2035?) does affect europeans manufacturers.
- bluescrn 3y agoEVs should absolutely be required to use standardised and replaceable battery modules. (Replaceable by any competent mechanic, at least). Although theft would become a concern, when the battery pack makes up over half of the value of any EV. But it's amazing how many people are so quick to essentially say 'F the planet, I don't mind buying a new phone every 2 years, and I really don't want my next iPhone to be 2mm fatter!'.
- benhurmarcel 3y agoIs there a significant amount of electric vehicles that get discarded because it's too hard to change the battery?
- pornel 3y agoLeaf is the one that needs most replacements so far, and there are swaps and upgrades available. The fact that you can upgrade a 24kWh 2011 Leaf to a 40kWh battery makes me optimistic for the current-gen cars: by the time they need a battery replacement, we'll have better and/or cheaper batteries available for them.
- pelorat 3y agoWe're just pissed that the rest of the world is not taking environmental issues more serious.