6 ms·

EU Energy labelling will apply to phones and tablets from June 2025

90 points by sohkamyung 2y ago

havaloc 2y ago
It's too bad the label won't have the number of charge cycles the battery is good for.
- IanCal 2y ago
  That's in the list. > Battery endurance in cycles.
sofixa 2y ago
Key quote: > The regulations focus on measures to extend product lifetime (reparability, upgradability, battery life). The increase in average lifetime, e.g. from 3.0 to 4.1 years for a mid-range smartphone
- myrmidon 2y ago
  I (unironically) love how the charts are basically "this is gonna save you money by you buying less shit/year, you're welcome".
  - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
    If only the EU was like "you can save money and our environment by buying Chinese EVs instead of smokey German, Italian & French diesels" in the same spirit. Oh well. It's pretty easy to regulate things that aren't made by your domestic companies.
    - pjc50 2y ago
      The tariffs on Chinese EVs are very unserious at the same time as subsidies are being withdrawn while the alleged deadline for phaseout of ICE is still in place. VW showed which side they were going to bet on with Dieselgate and should get no further sympathy.
      - nottorp 2y ago
        I wonder how much charging infrastructure China has built inside their borders for their cheap EVs. In the EU, everyone who could afford an EV probably already has one. The rest will buy what they can afford and can charge.
        myrmidon 2y ago
        A lot of people also just keep their cars for a decade or more, and buy cheaper used cars mainly-- you can not expect such a market to completely switch in a fraction of product lifetime (especially while new tech is still rapidly improving).
        nottorp 2y ago
        Not even China will switch overnight. I'm asking if China is better at EV incentives. I'm driving a 15 year old car :) I want to replace it some time in the next 2-3 years. Right now I wouldn't consider an EV or PHEV because I don't think I can charge one regularly and the price premium is not worth it to me, especially compared to the hassle.
        benjymo 2y ago
        When I last bought a car 5 years ago, the used car marked for EVs was very small and EVs were very expensive. Since then, they became much cheaper, there are a lot of new models and a lot of used cars on the market. I'm not planning to buy a new car though, as mine is only 8 years old and still working fine. I'll check again when repairs start to get more expensive, maybe in a few years.
        pjc50 2y ago
        > everyone who could afford an EV probably already has one Obviously not: this depends on the price of EVs, which is a constantly moving target and is determined by .. the import tariffs I just mentioned. Not to mention that cars have a long product lifecycle. I could afford an electric car, I have a space to park it, but for the time being I'm using my elderly petrol car because my annual mileage is low. https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/362910/average-uk-car-now-9-years-old-drivers-delay-replacements https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/362910/average-uk-car-now... : average UK car is 9 years old. EV tech has changed a lot in that time. This looks like a comprehensive, long list of Chinese incentives; https://www.csis.org/blogs/trustee-china-hand/chinese-ev-dilemma-subsidized-yet-striking https://www.csis.org/blogs/trustee-china-hand/chinese-ev-dil... ; each EU country has its own schemes.
    - myrmidon 2y ago
      This is oversimplifying; European EV tariffs are company specific and (formally) aim to counteract state subsidies. From a an average voter perspective, "sacrificing" local industry for a (temporary?) 20% discount on EVs is not too popular anyway, and neither is it gonna meaningfully save the planet IMO. Tariff levels are basically the same as US import tariffs on pickup trucks, so not especially high, either.
      - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
        >and neither is it gonna meaningfully save the planet IMO The EU's tethered bottle caps also aren't gonna save the planet yet we have to live with them because that was the selling point.
        myrmidon 2y ago
        I personally think tethered caps are fine, pretty sure they objectively reduce wild trash/lead to less cleanup requirements behind tourists and the like. Do you think that the cost/benefit tradeoff in untariffed Chinese cars would be significantly better than tethered caps or deposits on bottles, or banning throwaway plastic straws? Because this is far from clear to me; sure, introducing more, cheaper electric cars would help much more than reducing plastic waste, but the cost/risk to local industry is also MUCH higher, and a situation like the one with agriculture (a whole industry sector running basically on subsidies, in every industrialized country) is worth trying to avoid, too.
    - sofixa 2y ago
      The choice isn't between a Chinese EV and an Italian diesel car. There are plenty of EVs by EU based manufacturers, including affordable ones from e.g. Renault/Dacia. Sacrificing the European automakers for a temporary discount would be very foolish.
myrmidon 2y ago
Nice page! I'm extremely happy about efforts like this. You might argue that the EU is a sprawling, wasteful bureaucracy and you would not be wrong, per se, but they made a lot of useful laws that just simply make the world a better place. Having standardized chargers for phones and laptops is SUPER nice and would never have happened without intervention IMO. The only equivalent for US "useful, average-citizen friendly legislation" that I recently heard about was the standardization of powertool batteries pursued by doge-- which turned out to be an april hoax when I just looked it up :(
- nntwozz 2y ago
  Sad! Thankfully there are adapters that let you combine different brands, not ideal but hopefully this will be regulated in the future.
- zophiana 2y ago
  Yeah, to me its crazy how anti-consumer the US is compared to the EU, just because of laws
  - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
    This law has more to do with the environment/Energy usage than with the consumer. And the US consumer cares a lot less about energy usage since they're much more energy and monetarily rich than the EU. If they paid German gas and electricity prices for example while having European wages, they'd care a lot more about energy consumption, believe that.
    - amarcheschi 2y ago
      The article talks about ecodesign requirements as well, such as spare parts needing to be available for some years after the product isn't sold, the freedom to have 3rd parties repair devices and so on. It's not only a matter of energy but consumer protection as well
    - myrmidon 2y ago
      I think regulation like this is just strictly good (even from US perspective/priorities), because you can not realistically "vote with your wallet" for environment-friendly products when relevant info is obfuscated, falsified or not available at all. Just ignoring energy efficiency/repairability labelling is always an option for consumers on the other hand. > If they paid German gas and electricity prices for example while having European wages, they'd care a lot more. I'm not so sure on this; I think environmental concerns are mainly culture driven I think, because even after all the price increases over the last decade, especially electricity is still dirt cheap compared to e.g. rent, basically everywhere.
code-blooded 2y ago
I really like it. It makes being a more conscious customer easier and you can make your own trade-offs by looking at a product and price. Hopefully online stores will add ability to filter by these criteria.
wiz21c 2y ago
In the shop in my town, they sell televisions. Led ones, oled ones, big screen, the usual stuff. They have about 50 models. All have energy labels C or worse. No A, no A+, no B... Once there was an A one but the picture quality was horrible. I'm happy to be more conscious, but someone is working against the scheme: I don't have a real choice...
- bzzzt 2y ago
  There's the law of conservation of energy. If you want a nice bright big screen there's no way around consuming a lot of electricity. If your baseline is a 32 inch LED screen it's not surprising a 65" OLED will have a worse energy label. Seems most people want that nice TV more than a small, dim picture that uses less energy.
  - palata 2y ago
    I don't think anyone says that a big TV should require the same energy as a paper sheet. But if someone can manufacture a big TV with a third of the energy used for the average big TV, surely there is something that can be improved.
- mtoner23 2y ago
  How much TV does one have to watch to impact your energy bill? Does anyone care about it's energy usage?
  - nottorp 2y ago
    Modern HDR blinding devices can go up to hundreds of watts. All in the name of not having to place your TV in a shaded corner, and maybe acheiving a higher contrast ratio on paper.
- makomk 2y ago
  In addition to the laws of physics and the engineering required to build TVs working against this, the EU deliberately changed the energy efficiency scale for things like TVs a few years back to specifically make an A hard to get and something that wouldn't be achieved by products currently on the market. They were probably too optimistic about future improvements too - a lot of TVs had to add special eco modes that aren't really designed to be used to meet the minimum efficiency now required by EU rules.
greatgib 2y ago
I have mixed feeling about this. On one side, it is good to have consumer friendly regulation like manufacturers to be forced to support right to repair. But on the opposite side, lots of bullshit requirements again like the energy labelling, that will do that we have less products, mostly from big actors only, and more expensive due the then useless regulation barrier. And the mixed feeling is stronger for things like manufacturers that needs to provide support for the os for 5 years and more. Sure, I'm happy that it applies to big tech like apple, Google and Samsung, when it is what I'm expecting. But, I, as a consumer, I would like some times to be able to buy other products, cheaper, crappier (for a burner or test devices for example), and to have small actors being able the try innovation without needing a 500 millions backing to be able to see in Europe. What I would have preferred is a law more oriented on consumer rights than manufacturing regulation: Forbidding more clearly explicit monopolistic behaviors like what is done with app store; and for right to repair and co, not needing the company to provide support for repair for 5 years but that if they don't, or after 5 years, that they have to release in open source the software, blueprints or tools that are needed to be able to support your own device yourself.
- pjc50 2y ago
  > to have small actors being able the try innovation Yes. While I'm generally in favor of the EU regulatory approach they need to learn about and understand the concept of "small business", including the fact that you can't get a new large EU business without it going through the small business stage. There should be a lot more de minimis exemptions from the whole CE marking system.
  - nottorp 2y ago
    > There should be a lot more de minimis exemptions from the whole CE marking system. There are a lot of EU wide requirements that create barriers to entry. Before Altman's scareware campaign to "regulate" "AI", there was: Exhibit 1: https://pcengines.ch/recycle.htm https://pcengines.ch/recycle.htm See the blurb about not being able to sell direct to customers in the EU. [Think the company has shut down or is shutting down, possibly because of that too.]
microtonal 2y ago
availability of operating system upgrades for longer periods (at least 5 years from the date of the end of placement on the market of the last unit of a product model) This is so great! A lot of manufacturers were counting from the date of introduction. A lot of phones only had a 3 year support period. If they are on the market for two years, the people buying last would only get one year of support. This swaps to the last date of sale, which is much more consumer-friendly. I still have to read up on what operating system upgrades entails. rules on disassembly and repair, including obligations for producers to make critical spare parts available within 5-10 working days, and for 7 years after the end of sales of the product model on the EU market Awesome!
- pornel 2y ago
  I wonder if we get some malicious workarounds for this, like re-releasing the same phone under different SKUs to pretend they were different models on sale for a short time.
  - Y-bar 2y ago
    Maybe, but the regulation tries to prevent this by separating "models" from "batches" from "individual items" and defaults to "model" when determining compatibility. Worth noting is that each new model requires a separate filing for both EcoDesign and other certifications like CE which could help reduce workarounds like model number inflation.
djoldman 2y ago
I was curious so I dug into what's involved for placing a product in a particular "efficiency class." Here's the section on "electronic displays": https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?toc=OJ%3AL%3A2019%3A315%3ATOC&uri=uriserv%3AOJ.L_.2019.315.01.0001.01.ENG#L_2019315EN.01001201 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?toc=OJ%3AL%3...
lifeline82 2y ago
[dead]
MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
What is the point of even thinking about energy efficiency of smartphones and tablets? As if they aren't already extremely efficient. They're not even using a lot of power on an absolute level.
ltbarcly3 2y ago
This is just me thinking this through and is not a claim to be authoritative whatsoever. The average power draw of a cell phone is what, 4 watts? 6 watts? Lets say 10W, which is silly high (most can only charge at around 20W for an hour and a charge lasts at least 12 hours, but lets just take a high number.) At 10W constant draw it would consume 87,600Wh per year. Lets round up for inefficiencies and call it 100kWh. (That's about $11/yr of electricity where I live, about 3 cents per day but this isn't my point.) (For reference, my Pixel 8 Pro gets 16+ hours on average if I don't put it on my wireless charger, and it's battery is only 5000mAh, which my calculations say is around 1W of average draw. This matches what I see on the display on my charging cord.) An average person in Norway consumes 24000kWh per year (according to wikipedia. Someone in Spain would be about 5000kWh). This regulation will cut their cell phone power usage by about 1/3 (based on the quoted estimated savings and the # of people in the EU, but I don't believe these numbers), so maybe about 33kWh per year (and remember this is using absurdly over estimated numbers). That is approximately a 1/1000 reduction in power usage (or 1/200 in spain). Using realistic numbers I don't see how it's possible to anticipate any reduction in energy usage, in fact it would be a huge increase if all phones only met the minimum required in this regulation. I will wager that the cost of compliance will slightly increase, however. This is a benefit to established manufacturers as their cost per device for compliance is low, and they already have mechanisms to ensure compliance and testing, and relationships with regulators. It's a nontrivial increase in the already significant barrier to entry to everyone else, even if their devices easily comply. Cell phones and other mobile devices already compete on energy efficiency being one of the primary factors driving purchasing decisions (in fact it's more potent competition than that, since it's battery life). There is no meaningful initial price/efficiency tradeoff like some other products, such as mini splits or other HVAC where people might be 'cheap' up front but then it costs them more over time due to less efficiency, in fact the more efficient a phone is the cheaper it can be to manufacture because you can install a smaller battery. This compounds the benefit of being efficient. Based just on my own intuition, I would predict that the anti-competitive barriers to entry this sets up will lead to a slight reduction in competition in the market, which will actually let manufacturers invest less in energy efficiency (and every other aspect of their phones) while maintaining their market share. I predict that this regulation actually causes phones to become slightly less energy efficient than they would otherwise. Worse, if there were no regulation phones and other devices would likely become significantly more efficient than this regulation requires regardless, so the regulation just imposes a cost. Worse, there isn't a problem here to begin with, the energy usage of these devices does not show up in the data of total energy use unless you scroll all the way to the bottom, these devices are already using less power than a single LED light bulb turned on for 4 hours a day. If they just redirected the costs of compliance with this stupid regulation to something effective, such as adding to the subsidy on hyper-efficient mini split systems, it could save substantial amount of energy and push forwards electrification goals.
jeffbee 2y ago
Quick reminder that when alarmists talk about "data center energy use" they are almost always quoting aggregate statistics that encompass mobile networks. The mobile networks are actually using half of the aggregate power[1]. So how do these regulations address that aspect of the problem. This press release claims to save 2.2TWh/a by 2030 which is less than one percent of the energy used by transmission networks today. 1: https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings/data-centres-and-data-transmission-networks#:~:text=Global%20trends%20in%20digital%20and%20energy%20indicators%2C%202015%2D2022 https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings/data-centres-and...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
drooopy 2y ago
I'm not sure about energy efficiency and energy class, but information such as battery endurance, repairability class, waterproof rating, structural durability and update support should absolutely be clearly stated on the packaging.
gizmo 2y ago
Phones and tablets are already among the most energy efficient devices. A tablet sips power compared to a desktop PC. Isn't energy use totally dominated by lights, cooling and heating of the spaces we inhabit? Repairability rules I like. Rules about OS updates are good too. But the energy claims look like BS to me: > In 1990, the annual electricity consumption for (networked) standby of the base stations and charging cradles of cordless landline phones was 37.1 kWh. In 2020, without measures, this would have been 24.5 kWh. Due to the Ecodesign standby regulation, this was reduced to 16.1 kWh in 2020, a 34% saving. Due to the addition of the 2023 Ecodesign regulation on phones, this is expected to further reduce to 8.0 kWh in 2030, a 63% saving versus no measures.

90 points by sohkamyung 2y ago

havaloc 2y ago

It's too bad the label won't have the number of charge cycles the battery is good for.

IanCal 2y ago
That's in the list. > Battery endurance in cycles.

sofixa 2y ago

Key quote: > The regulations focus on measures to extend product lifetime (reparability, upgradability, battery life). The increase in average lifetime, e.g. from 3.0 to 4.1 years for a mid-range smartphone

myrmidon 2y ago
I (unironically) love how the charts are basically "this is gonna save you money by you buying less shit/year, you're welcome".
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  If only the EU was like "you can save money and our environment by buying Chinese EVs instead of smokey German, Italian & French diesels" in the same spirit. Oh well. It's pretty easy to regulate things that aren't made by your domestic companies.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    The tariffs on Chinese EVs are very unserious at the same time as subsidies are being withdrawn while the alleged deadline for phaseout of ICE is still in place. VW showed which side they were going to bet on with Dieselgate and should get no further sympathy.
    - nottorp 2y ago
      I wonder how much charging infrastructure China has built inside their borders for their cheap EVs. In the EU, everyone who could afford an EV probably already has one. The rest will buy what they can afford and can charge.
      - myrmidon 2y ago
        A lot of people also just keep their cars for a decade or more, and buy cheaper used cars mainly-- you can not expect such a market to completely switch in a fraction of product lifetime (especially while new tech is still rapidly improving).
        nottorp 2y ago
        Not even China will switch overnight. I'm asking if China is better at EV incentives. I'm driving a 15 year old car :) I want to replace it some time in the next 2-3 years. Right now I wouldn't consider an EV or PHEV because I don't think I can charge one regularly and the price premium is not worth it to me, especially compared to the hassle.
      - benjymo 2y ago
        When I last bought a car 5 years ago, the used car marked for EVs was very small and EVs were very expensive. Since then, they became much cheaper, there are a lot of new models and a lot of used cars on the market. I'm not planning to buy a new car though, as mine is only 8 years old and still working fine. I'll check again when repairs start to get more expensive, maybe in a few years.
      - pjc50 2y ago
        > everyone who could afford an EV probably already has one Obviously not: this depends on the price of EVs, which is a constantly moving target and is determined by .. the import tariffs I just mentioned. Not to mention that cars have a long product lifecycle. I could afford an electric car, I have a space to park it, but for the time being I'm using my elderly petrol car because my annual mileage is low. https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/362910/average-uk-car-now-9-years-old-drivers-delay-replacements https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/362910/average-uk-car-now... : average UK car is 9 years old. EV tech has changed a lot in that time. This looks like a comprehensive, long list of Chinese incentives; https://www.csis.org/blogs/trustee-china-hand/chinese-ev-dilemma-subsidized-yet-striking https://www.csis.org/blogs/trustee-china-hand/chinese-ev-dil... ; each EU country has its own schemes.
  - myrmidon 2y ago
    This is oversimplifying; European EV tariffs are company specific and (formally) aim to counteract state subsidies. From a an average voter perspective, "sacrificing" local industry for a (temporary?) 20% discount on EVs is not too popular anyway, and neither is it gonna meaningfully save the planet IMO. Tariff levels are basically the same as US import tariffs on pickup trucks, so not especially high, either.
    - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
      >and neither is it gonna meaningfully save the planet IMO The EU's tethered bottle caps also aren't gonna save the planet yet we have to live with them because that was the selling point.
      - myrmidon 2y ago
        I personally think tethered caps are fine, pretty sure they objectively reduce wild trash/lead to less cleanup requirements behind tourists and the like. Do you think that the cost/benefit tradeoff in untariffed Chinese cars would be significantly better than tethered caps or deposits on bottles, or banning throwaway plastic straws? Because this is far from clear to me; sure, introducing more, cheaper electric cars would help much more than reducing plastic waste, but the cost/risk to local industry is also MUCH higher, and a situation like the one with agriculture (a whole industry sector running basically on subsidies, in every industrialized country) is worth trying to avoid, too.
  - sofixa 2y ago
    The choice isn't between a Chinese EV and an Italian diesel car. There are plenty of EVs by EU based manufacturers, including affordable ones from e.g. Renault/Dacia. Sacrificing the European automakers for a temporary discount would be very foolish.

myrmidon 2y ago

Nice page! I'm extremely happy about efforts like this. You might argue that the EU is a sprawling, wasteful bureaucracy and you would not be wrong, per se, but they made a lot of useful laws that just simply make the world a better place. Having standardized chargers for phones and laptops is SUPER nice and would never have happened without intervention IMO. The only equivalent for US "useful, average-citizen friendly legislation" that I recently heard about was the standardization of powertool batteries pursued by doge-- which turned out to be an april hoax when I just looked it up :(

nntwozz 2y ago
Sad! Thankfully there are adapters that let you combine different brands, not ideal but hopefully this will be regulated in the future.
zophiana 2y ago
Yeah, to me its crazy how anti-consumer the US is compared to the EU, just because of laws
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  This law has more to do with the environment/Energy usage than with the consumer. And the US consumer cares a lot less about energy usage since they're much more energy and monetarily rich than the EU. If they paid German gas and electricity prices for example while having European wages, they'd care a lot more about energy consumption, believe that.
  - amarcheschi 2y ago
    The article talks about ecodesign requirements as well, such as spare parts needing to be available for some years after the product isn't sold, the freedom to have 3rd parties repair devices and so on. It's not only a matter of energy but consumer protection as well
  - myrmidon 2y ago
    I think regulation like this is just strictly good (even from US perspective/priorities), because you can not realistically "vote with your wallet" for environment-friendly products when relevant info is obfuscated, falsified or not available at all. Just ignoring energy efficiency/repairability labelling is always an option for consumers on the other hand. > If they paid German gas and electricity prices for example while having European wages, they'd care a lot more. I'm not so sure on this; I think environmental concerns are mainly culture driven I think, because even after all the price increases over the last decade, especially electricity is still dirt cheap compared to e.g. rent, basically everywhere.

code-blooded 2y ago

I really like it. It makes being a more conscious customer easier and you can make your own trade-offs by looking at a product and price. Hopefully online stores will add ability to filter by these criteria.

wiz21c 2y ago

In the shop in my town, they sell televisions. Led ones, oled ones, big screen, the usual stuff. They have about 50 models. All have energy labels C or worse. No A, no A+, no B... Once there was an A one but the picture quality was horrible. I'm happy to be more conscious, but someone is working against the scheme: I don't have a real choice...

bzzzt 2y ago
There's the law of conservation of energy. If you want a nice bright big screen there's no way around consuming a lot of electricity. If your baseline is a 32 inch LED screen it's not surprising a 65" OLED will have a worse energy label. Seems most people want that nice TV more than a small, dim picture that uses less energy.
- palata 2y ago
  I don't think anyone says that a big TV should require the same energy as a paper sheet. But if someone can manufacture a big TV with a third of the energy used for the average big TV, surely there is something that can be improved.
mtoner23 2y ago
How much TV does one have to watch to impact your energy bill? Does anyone care about it's energy usage?
- nottorp 2y ago
  Modern HDR blinding devices can go up to hundreds of watts. All in the name of not having to place your TV in a shaded corner, and maybe acheiving a higher contrast ratio on paper.
makomk 2y ago
In addition to the laws of physics and the engineering required to build TVs working against this, the EU deliberately changed the energy efficiency scale for things like TVs a few years back to specifically make an A hard to get and something that wouldn't be achieved by products currently on the market. They were probably too optimistic about future improvements too - a lot of TVs had to add special eco modes that aren't really designed to be used to meet the minimum efficiency now required by EU rules.

greatgib 2y ago

I have mixed feeling about this. On one side, it is good to have consumer friendly regulation like manufacturers to be forced to support right to repair. But on the opposite side, lots of bullshit requirements again like the energy labelling, that will do that we have less products, mostly from big actors only, and more expensive due the then useless regulation barrier. And the mixed feeling is stronger for things like manufacturers that needs to provide support for the os for 5 years and more. Sure, I'm happy that it applies to big tech like apple, Google and Samsung, when it is what I'm expecting. But, I, as a consumer, I would like some times to be able to buy other products, cheaper, crappier (for a burner or test devices for example), and to have small actors being able the try innovation without needing a 500 millions backing to be able to see in Europe. What I would have preferred is a law more oriented on consumer rights than manufacturing regulation: Forbidding more clearly explicit monopolistic behaviors like what is done with app store; and for right to repair and co, not needing the company to provide support for repair for 5 years but that if they don't, or after 5 years, that they have to release in open source the software, blueprints or tools that are needed to be able to support your own device yourself.

pjc50 2y ago
> to have small actors being able the try innovation Yes. While I'm generally in favor of the EU regulatory approach they need to learn about and understand the concept of "small business", including the fact that you can't get a new large EU business without it going through the small business stage. There should be a lot more de minimis exemptions from the whole CE marking system.
- nottorp 2y ago
  > There should be a lot more de minimis exemptions from the whole CE marking system. There are a lot of EU wide requirements that create barriers to entry. Before Altman's scareware campaign to "regulate" "AI", there was: Exhibit 1: https://pcengines.ch/recycle.htm https://pcengines.ch/recycle.htm See the blurb about not being able to sell direct to customers in the EU. [Think the company has shut down or is shutting down, possibly because of that too.]

microtonal 2y ago

availability of operating system upgrades for longer periods (at least 5 years from the date of the end of placement on the market of the last unit of a product model) This is so great! A lot of manufacturers were counting from the date of introduction. A lot of phones only had a 3 year support period. If they are on the market for two years, the people buying last would only get one year of support. This swaps to the last date of sale, which is much more consumer-friendly. I still have to read up on what operating system upgrades entails. rules on disassembly and repair, including obligations for producers to make critical spare parts available within 5-10 working days, and for 7 years after the end of sales of the product model on the EU market Awesome!

pornel 2y ago
I wonder if we get some malicious workarounds for this, like re-releasing the same phone under different SKUs to pretend they were different models on sale for a short time.
- Y-bar 2y ago
  Maybe, but the regulation tries to prevent this by separating "models" from "batches" from "individual items" and defaults to "model" when determining compatibility. Worth noting is that each new model requires a separate filing for both EcoDesign and other certifications like CE which could help reduce workarounds like model number inflation.

djoldman 2y ago

I was curious so I dug into what's involved for placing a product in a particular "efficiency class." Here's the section on "electronic displays": https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?toc=OJ%3AL%3A2019%3A315%3ATOC&uri=uriserv%3AOJ.L_.2019.315.01.0001.01.ENG#L_2019315EN.01001201 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?toc=OJ%3AL%3...

lifeline82 2y ago

[dead]

MrBuddyCasino 2y ago

What is the point of even thinking about energy efficiency of smartphones and tablets? As if they aren't already extremely efficient. They're not even using a lot of power on an absolute level.

ltbarcly3 2y ago

This is just me thinking this through and is not a claim to be authoritative whatsoever. The average power draw of a cell phone is what, 4 watts? 6 watts? Lets say 10W, which is silly high (most can only charge at around 20W for an hour and a charge lasts at least 12 hours, but lets just take a high number.) At 10W constant draw it would consume 87,600Wh per year. Lets round up for inefficiencies and call it 100kWh. (That's about $11/yr of electricity where I live, about 3 cents per day but this isn't my point.) (For reference, my Pixel 8 Pro gets 16+ hours on average if I don't put it on my wireless charger, and it's battery is only 5000mAh, which my calculations say is around 1W of average draw. This matches what I see on the display on my charging cord.) An average person in Norway consumes 24000kWh per year (according to wikipedia. Someone in Spain would be about 5000kWh). This regulation will cut their cell phone power usage by about 1/3 (based on the quoted estimated savings and the # of people in the EU, but I don't believe these numbers), so maybe about 33kWh per year (and remember this is using absurdly over estimated numbers). That is approximately a 1/1000 reduction in power usage (or 1/200 in spain). Using realistic numbers I don't see how it's possible to anticipate any reduction in energy usage, in fact it would be a huge increase if all phones only met the minimum required in this regulation. I will wager that the cost of compliance will slightly increase, however. This is a benefit to established manufacturers as their cost per device for compliance is low, and they already have mechanisms to ensure compliance and testing, and relationships with regulators. It's a nontrivial increase in the already significant barrier to entry to everyone else, even if their devices easily comply. Cell phones and other mobile devices already compete on energy efficiency being one of the primary factors driving purchasing decisions (in fact it's more potent competition than that, since it's battery life). There is no meaningful initial price/efficiency tradeoff like some other products, such as mini splits or other HVAC where people might be 'cheap' up front but then it costs them more over time due to less efficiency, in fact the more efficient a phone is the cheaper it can be to manufacture because you can install a smaller battery. This compounds the benefit of being efficient. Based just on my own intuition, I would predict that the anti-competitive barriers to entry this sets up will lead to a slight reduction in competition in the market, which will actually let manufacturers invest less in energy efficiency (and every other aspect of their phones) while maintaining their market share. I predict that this regulation actually causes phones to become slightly less energy efficient than they would otherwise. Worse, if there were no regulation phones and other devices would likely become significantly more efficient than this regulation requires regardless, so the regulation just imposes a cost. Worse, there isn't a problem here to begin with, the energy usage of these devices does not show up in the data of total energy use unless you scroll all the way to the bottom, these devices are already using less power than a single LED light bulb turned on for 4 hours a day. If they just redirected the costs of compliance with this stupid regulation to something effective, such as adding to the subsidy on hyper-efficient mini split systems, it could save substantial amount of energy and push forwards electrification goals.

jeffbee 2y ago

Quick reminder that when alarmists talk about "data center energy use" they are almost always quoting aggregate statistics that encompass mobile networks. The mobile networks are actually using half of the aggregate power[1]. So how do these regulations address that aspect of the problem. This press release claims to save 2.2TWh/a by 2030 which is less than one percent of the energy used by transmission networks today. 1: https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings/data-centres-and-data-transmission-networks#:~:text=Global%20trends%20in%20digital%20and%20energy%20indicators%2C%202015%2D2022 https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings/data-centres-and...

deleted 2y ago

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drooopy 2y ago

I'm not sure about energy efficiency and energy class, but information such as battery endurance, repairability class, waterproof rating, structural durability and update support should absolutely be clearly stated on the packaging.

gizmo 2y ago

Phones and tablets are already among the most energy efficient devices. A tablet sips power compared to a desktop PC. Isn't energy use totally dominated by lights, cooling and heating of the spaces we inhabit? Repairability rules I like. Rules about OS updates are good too. But the energy claims look like BS to me: > In 1990, the annual electricity consumption for (networked) standby of the base stations and charging cradles of cordless landline phones was 37.1 kWh. In 2020, without measures, this would have been 24.5 kWh. Due to the Ecodesign standby regulation, this was reduced to 16.1 kWh in 2020, a 34% saving. Due to the addition of the 2023 Ecodesign regulation on phones, this is expected to further reduce to 8.0 kWh in 2030, a 63% saving versus no measures.