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EU rules for durable, energy-efficient and repairable smartphones and tablets

• bmacho 1y ago
  What about updates? The hardware might function for decades (basically forever), but that means nothing if you can't/are not allowed to update the SSL library.
• mytailorisrich 1y ago
  People change smartphones every few years because they want the new shiny ones. I think it would be more effective and pragmatic to work in depth on recycling of smartphones and all electronics rather than mandating things that add cost and resources without necessarily making a difference in the end. To me this is typical political handwaving, aiming at surpeficial "solutions" that will get easy support (because "obviously" it makes sense, even if, really, not so much...) while not addressing the deep, more complex but more beneficial to solve, issues.
  • AndrewDucker 1y ago
    I want my current phone, but with a new battery.
    • pndy 1y ago
      I miss times when we could easily open backplates and replace batteries, swap sim cards at ease and these devices lasted.
  • fainpul 1y ago
    > because they want the new shiny ones I don't believe that. I think the desire for a new phone is mostly triggered by some unhappiness with the current one. For example because the battery doesn't last a full day anymore, the screen is cracked, it doesn't get security updates anymore or performance feels sluggish (because new OS and apps are more demanding or wasteful). If replacing the battery or screen is expensive, buying a new phone becomes more attractive, since you might also get a better camera, more performance, larger display or other benefits. On the other hand, if I can order a new battery for cheap and swap it out in five minutes, I might just do that and keep my old phone for a few years longer.
    • mytailorisrich 1y ago
      It is already perfectly doable and easy to have the screen or battery replaced. It is not really expensive but there are parts and labour involved. Recycling improvements would yield much more sustainable benefits but this is not as easy or PR-friendly as decreeing "just make then repairable" and then pat yourself on the back for saving the environment...
      • IsTom 1y ago
        > It is not really expensive but there are parts and labour involved. My SO's phone battery was busted after 3 years of use and replacing it would cost half of a new phone. Replacements battery itself is cheap, but amount of labor it takes to take apart current smartphones is just unreasonable.
        • NekkoDroid 1y ago
          I recently had my phone (Galaxy S21) stop charging and the SIM not be recognized anymore. I wasn't able to figure out why for a while until I opened the phone (it is relatively easy as the back is plastic and it bulges out if you blow into the SIM slot, making it easier to remove by hand). Ended up being that an internal cable came loose that connected the bottom board to the main components after I dropped it. It just made me personally very happy that I was able to repair such a minor problem in the grand scheme of things. It really was just "detach the plastic back from the adhesive, unscrew some (~13) screws, reattach the cable, put everything back together". While I'd still love if it weren't that difficult it was all-in-all a very easy fix compared to other things I've done. And yes, while the back still somewhat sticks to the case, is somewhat loose. I probably should replace the adhesive but I use a case anyway so it isn't really a problem. So, it doesn't HAVE to be difficult to disassemble a phone, unless incentivised to do so, it is another revenue stream for manufacturers if they make it so that only they can repair it (pairing components cryptographically, to which they only have the keys to... just give the owner the fucking keys and let them decide...)
      • ta1243 1y ago
        Reduce Reuse Recycle In that order. Recylcing is a last resort.
  • dkjaudyeqooe 1y ago
    This is not true for most people. They get comfortable with their phones and they don't see any reason to change something that works. My friend has had her phone for 7 years and she's being pushed off it because apps are refusing to run on it now. No other reason than that.
    • mytailorisrich 1y ago
      And this would not change anything about that.
      • Kbelicius 1y ago
        Yes it would. > longer availability of operating system updates, at least 5 years from the date the last unit model is sold
        • mytailorisrich 1y ago
          Availability of OS updates does not imply "ideal" user experience...
          • williamdclt 1y ago
            Well the person you're replying to didn't say anything about "ideal" user experience, they're talking about the phone being usable. There's a whole spectrum between these two points
        • bmacho 1y ago
          5 years is a joke.
      • yoavm 1y ago
        The article mentions "longer availability of operating system updates, at least 5 years from the date the last unit model is sold". So it would absolutely change everything about that.
      • reycharles 1y ago
  • wallaBBB 1y ago
    Wanting the latest and greatest was a thing back in 2010s, when there was a lot of progress and a lot of experiments by the phone manufacturers. Today, me and most of my friends are pushing our phones as long as we can (4+ years). My parents hate when they have to change phones, because they then have to adjust to a new UI. If battery and screen could be easily replaceable + security updates, many people would not be changing their phones for 5+ years.
  • Lutger 1y ago
    Maybe teenagers still do that, but I feel there are no real shiny new features anymore. I've upgraded my broken 5 year old phone and sure enough, the photos it takes are better and its a bit smoother overall, but otherwise I don't see a truly major improvement. Major innovations (from the user pov) are happening mostly in software these days, not in hardware. So I don't see how a little bit of regulation keeping hardware alive a little longer is political handwaving at all. It doesn't matter if any 'deep and complex issues' are not addressed, whatever they are, its still a valid improvement over the status quo, however small. Yes, mandating 5 years of security updates isn't going to solve climate change or fix the economy, but it would extend the safe lifetime of most mid range phone by around two years and for the vast majority of users, that will be just fine. I know it is not that interesting to talk about small improvements, but a lot of politics is exactly about that: improving society with many thousands of very marginal steps. They are not a distraction, they are the work. I'm not a conservative, but this kind of pragmatism is what I feel used to be the true value of old school conservative politics, and it is deeply lacking its current form. Conservatism needs to be boring again.
  • Sayrus 1y ago
    Not everyone has the financial capability to change their phone to follow trends, some people only buy second-hand, some people fall back on cheaper phones but change less often, some people rely on charity because their situation just doesn't allow them to fork the expense. Some people just want to keep their phone for long periods, I kept my last one 6 years and I only changed it because it died. I think all these people deserve to have a phone platform that doesn't abandon them because they can't or won't buy a flagship every year of two.
  • pjmlp 1y ago
    In most European countries we tend to use pre-paid phones, not contracts that including replacing the phone every three years. Those do exist, but I doubt they much adopted in Southern Europe, outside the packages that include mobile phones, Internet and cable TV together, and not everyone is into them either.
• FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  When will the EU do the same for cars? There's no need for individual low cost parts to be integrated fused together as modules super expensive to replace. Not just German ICE cars, but I follow what EV Clinic is doing and it's making my blood boil on how poorly designed against cheap and easy repairability EVs are. Feels like this is the bigger environmental and societal issue than phones and tablets.
  • zejn 1y ago
    This is not the same issue you are talking about. Cars are repairable, phones are not, this is why this regulation is coming about. There are modules that need replacement in whole, but same is true for this regulation regarding to phones: display and touchscreen modules are replaced as whole, not per component. Not great, but not too shabby, given the only other choice was to toss it. The bigger part is manufacturers have to provide OS support for 5 years after the last phone was sold.
    • 627467 1y ago
      > This is not the same issue you are talking about. > Cars are repairable, phones are not, this is why this regulation is coming about Anything is repairable given enough resources. It's very obvious electronics are targeted but not cars as protection for local manufacturers biz models.
    • FirmwareBurner 1y ago
      >This is not the same issue you are talking about. You're right, car repairability is an even bigger issue than phones. >Cars are repairable, phones are not New cars are repairable only by the authorized dealer, with authorize parts and tools, and those parts are maliciously engineered as modules where for a 2$ defective connector the dealer will replace a 1000$ module and electrical harness because they don't sell the 2$ connector separately, they sell the whole thing as a module/kit. How is that not anti consumer and anti environment? If my phone breaks and can't easily fix it, I can buy a new one for 200$, or keep my old one as a backup until I figure out something. Meanwhile if my car breaks, I can't buy a new car on a whim, and most people also can't afford to keep a backup car around. This is a WAY bigger issues than non repairable phones. A defective car is a much bigger household expense than a broken smartphone.
• zejn 1y ago
  I have a few phones that I am afraid to use. They're not that old, but the manufacturers have stopped shipping updates for them. This is a much needed regulatory innovation, since there was very little hope any company wanted to provide OS updates for longer than a few years. Shipping OS updates to 5 years after the sale of last phone is going to make the phones work longer and lower the amount of stupid and fixable security issues present in all the outdated phones now in the wild. I hope.
  • Avamander 1y ago
    At the same time I can run the latest OS on my 10-year-old ThinkPad brick. It's slow and ugly, but it works for the purposes I want to use it for. It's absolutely crazy how we're basically forced to accept that mobile devices just expire when the OEM decides so. Unless you go into extreme lengths to build your own custom ROM, which might not even be properly doable (when the device becomes EOL).
    • ClumsyPilot 1y ago
      > Unless you go into extreme lengths to build your own custom ROM, which might not even be properly doable Also the process is prone to unexpected issues, bugs, etc.
    • Sayrus 1y ago
      > Unless you go into extreme lengths to build your own custom ROM And even then, while you get software updates on that custom ROM the firmware usually just isn't updated anymore so security is still an issue.
    • ta1243 1y ago
      I run ubuntu 2404 on my 2017 thinkpad fine, although I have replaced the battery (and about to again), upgraded the ram etc, not expecting to replace it for some more years yet. My iphone 12 mini is from 2020 and is fine, so 5 years. Next ios release still supports 2019 iphone 11s, dropping the 2018 era, so apple seems to give 7 years for a phone, which doesn't seem terrible for closed source software.
    • 1y ago
• nirui 1y ago
  > Under the Energy Labelling Regulation, smartphones and tablets must display information on energy efficiency, battery lifespan and resistance to dust, water and accidental drops. Just my two cents and a bit of reckoning: You guys know the types of batteries? Like AAA, etc? There are a whole list of them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battery_sizes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battery_sizes) and it's standardized, allowing different vendor to corporate with each other automatically. But it comes to the smartphones and laptops etc, their batteries comes in with all shapes and forms, aka non-standarded. I think if EU really wants to make electronic more durable, maybe try standardize the not-so-durable parts of the device. For example, battery, data drives, charger etc. This enables other vendors to create replacement parts without breaking copyright and other laws.
  • AndrewDucker 1y ago
    If they have to supply them for 5 years after they sell them, it will make more sense for them to use standard sizes. So hopefully this will naturally move in that direction.
  • msgodel 1y ago
    Laptop battery packs used to use standardized metric battery cells (tool batteries often still do.) Those aren't very space efficient though. Still. The cells they do use are all going to be the same voltage since the chemistry is the same. In theory you could swap them out with a set of same size or smaller lithium cells.
  • Tade0 1y ago
    I've bought smartphone replacement batteries in the past, so it's not really an issue. Most popular models have alternative vendors unless the manufacturer goes out of their way to prevent it. Also the battery in my previous phone was at 83% of its nominal capacity 5.5 years after purchase, so I think this part is already durable enough. The way I'm cycling the battery in my current phone it could last 8 years before it reaches that level.
• ommz 1y ago
  Perhaps manufacturers unlock bootloaders & whatnot after the 7 years so tinkerers et al can load 3rd party software to give the devices even longer lifelines?
  • rekoil 1y ago
    I think they should have a larger responsibility than that, but yeah I absolutely agree that once devices are no longer "supported", the manufacturer should be required to relinquish control to owners in a safe manner (e.g. Android unlockable and relockable bootloaders). Same goes with multiplayer game developers. If they wanna stop hosting servers, they should be required to release the server software in a manner that makes it possible for me to set it up for myself to keep playing the game.
  • chaz6 1y ago
    They should be required to place the keys and the initial software build into escrow, so either when a fixed time has elapsed, or they have been found cupable for a breach of an applicable law (e.g. if they stop providing software updates).