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Smartphone makers don't bother to comply with EU repairability requirements
- m00dy 1mo agoI don't want to get down-voted but I like this regulation, good job EU!
- shermantanktop 1mo agoBeing in favor of right-to-repair is generally popular on HN, for obvious reasons.
- GJim 1mo agoWhereas, given a large part of the HN demographic works in the AdTech industry..... Being in favour of the GDPR will bring out downvotes and FUD from the people whose very salaries are dependent on invading your privacy.
- Ekaros 1mo agoI really don't get the big deal with GDRP. Consider what you are storing and why you are storing. Decide if those things align. If they do not, well don't implement that in first place. And I suppose LLMs are perfect for the boiler plate documentation so not big effort there either. Somethings are big more challenging like getting the data for customer when asking or deleting it when reasonable. But as user I also like at least having that option. It is least any business can do.
- graemep 1mo agoGDPR is reasonable, maybe too weak regulation of big businesses with lots of data. The problem is that it applies to small organisations, even non-profits, that do not trade that information which is proportionately a much bigger burden. Real examples of organisations I have come across who have to comply with GDPR include a local community theatre, a parish church etc. They are keep fairly simple information, and not exchanging it with anyone, but they still have to put effort into ensuring compliance. They are pretty good and ethical anyway - the theatre recently impressed me when I found out that if you give them medical information in case of emergency they put it in a sealed envelope and no one opens it unless there is an actually emergency that requires it (i.e. you keel over there!).
- mschuster91 1mo ago> Real examples of organisations I have come across who have to comply with GDPR include a local community theatre, a parish church etc. They are keep fairly simple information, and not exchanging it with anyone, but they still have to put effort into ensuring compliance. Yeah, and that is precisely where you want something like the GDPR to be as well! Large corporations are one thing, they have compliance departments, but so, so many local organizations have gotten hacked or data exfiltrated because "why do software and hardware updates when everything is working" or due to incompetence ("cc all"). GDPR finally gave the younger crowd some leverage to get the old guard to do things at least somewhat decently.
- gmueckl 1mo agoWell, wait until you are at the receiving end. It can get nasty pretty quickly. What does each one of your systems store exactly? Do they allow configuration of reasonable data retention policies for PII? What do your systems log? How do you make sure that only the minimum amount of PII (including user IP addresses) is logged and that the covered logs are destroyed at the end of a reasonable retention period? How do you handle Data Subject Access Requests? Can you compile all the data related to that person in a reasonable time to send it to them? How do you handle deletion requests? Can you name all the data storage that is affected if a deletion request comes in? Are your systems technically capable of deleting the data? What data is exempt (e.g. billing addresses can't just be deleted before the mandated archival period is over)? Do you maintain backups? Then how do you make sure that data covered by a deletion request is destroyed and stays gone even in the event of a backup recovery? Nobody who wants to bootstrap a business wants to deal with any of this. It's an enormous time sink.
- mschuster91 1mo ago> Nobody who wants to bootstrap a business wants to deal with any of this. It's an enormous time sink. Indeed but it forces you to answer these questions and to think about them during the development process as well, maybe even enough to write decent unit and regression tests for anything authentication/authorization related before some security "researcher" siccs Claude Code or whatever on your API and pwns it.
- mitxela 1mo agoThe thing is American businesses try to read the entire thing in excruciating detail and proactively comply with every possibility they can think of while European businesses just make a good faith effort to comply with the spirit, and if an authority tells them they can't do something, they stop doing it. Based on this behavior I'd have to infer American courts are punitive oriented (so you must never slip up) while European courts are resolution oriented (so good faith is enough and stop worrying so much). My inference also explains why American businesses don't listen to European courts until the fines get big. They get some small penalty on their first violation and think "that's all?" and continue the violation, then four or five cases later the penalty gets big enough to make them comply. See Apple with the interop rulings.
- graemep 1mo agoDo you like the intent, or the implementation and enforcement? Politicians have a tendency to think that passing legislation fixes problems, where is its only the start of the process.
- cdmckay 1mo agoI suspect it’s something similar to the GDPR where the EU passes a law but has very few resources on how to check if you’re actually compliant.
- microtonal 1mo agoI think with many of the recent regulations, they could verify and find many of the egregious cases to be violating today. The EU is just extremely worried about US tariffs and retracting support to Ukraine. IMO they should just bite the bullet and do what they need to do. In a world of bullies those that are willing to show their teeth win. But instead we have a lot of politicians without a spine.
- SpicyLemonZest 1mo agoI'm extremely confident it isn't US companies that "refer customers to Temu or AliExpress for spare parts". Apple and Google, the only two American smartphone makers AFAIK, both have compliant listings with detailed repair portals.
- crote 1mo agoA huge part of that was fearmongering by people selling compliance consultancy services and people trying to find loopholes allowing them to keep abusing their users' data. For a lot of companies it really wasn't that big of a deal in practice.
- KaiserPro 1mo agoAs its the EU and regulation, its time to trott out your hobby horse. So let me trot out mine: regulation is good so long as it is backed up by even handed, robust, transparent, quick and effective sanctions. the Online safety act is a good example of a bad law, which is enforced badly. The first big test (X producing industrial quantities of minors engaging in sexual activity) was failed. Had a small company produced a service that did they same thing, they would have been fined, servers ceased and owners thrown in jail. X got a letter saying they should stop. An example of good enforcement is the UK's scores on the doors, where the public can see what the standard is, and if they fall below a certain level, the food place is fined/shutdown/other until it improves. Another good example is NCAP ratings.
- nekusar 1mo ago[flagged]
- flir 1mo agoAnd both are illegal. (Depending on your local jurisdiction. But GP said "Online Safety Act" so I'm making an assumption).
- throwawayqqq11 1mo agoYou dont want to allow a market, which is why in many countries even imaginary CSAM is illegal.
- edelbitter 1mo agoI guess when discussing the reasons for the law failing to bring about the intended changes, we only need to agree on that the law did not intend to make this distinction (though it definitely could have made them, even before LLM this was a deliberate choice) - not whether doing so would have been advisable.
- jdiff 1mo agoMinors were involved. People were responding to pictures of minors and prompting Grok to sexualize them. People were uploading their own photos of real minors and asking Grok to make modifications to them.
- dude250711 1mo agoThey need to start fining.
- p-e-w 1mo agoWhy would they? The worst thing that can realistically happen is a $1-$5 billion fine a few years from now, which they only need to pay a few years after that when they have exhausted their legal remedies. That’s easy to calculate with, and almost certainly cheaper than compliance.
- crote 1mo agoContrary to popular belief, the EU is not very fast when it comes to enforcement on requirements like these. We already saw this with the ePrivacy Directive and GDPR: those scary hundreds-of-millions-of-euros fines are only handed out after ongoing and deliberate violation, where you've already received plenty of warnings and smaller fines. 18% compliance after one year with zero enforcement is not great, but it's already a massive increase over the near-zero repairable products we had only a few years ago. On top of that it is 18% of models, so there's a decent chance that a huge chunk of the noncompliant ones are obscure brands with near-zero sales: a handful of models by Apple and Samsung already add up to over 60% market share. And the report was literally written by iFixit, so there's a rather clear commercial incentive to underrepresent it and push for the strongest enforcement possible.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- robin_reala 1mo agoYou can see the GDPR stats on https://www.enforcementtracker.com/statistics https://www.enforcementtracker.com/statistics (scroll to “Enforcement over time” and click on “Total €”). 2018–2020 was effectively nothing compared to later.
- jatora 1mo ago[flagged]
- Parodper 1mo ago> EU anti-AI laws God I wish.
- alsetmusic 1mo agoI appreciate the intent to hold large corporations accountable, but I've lost faith in the EU being competent at doing so. Not as if I see anyone doing it better, but at least others aren't doing it so poorly.
- herbst 1mo agoDoes it really matter this early? What I expect from this is rather that at least a few producers get more repair friendly so I as consumer have the choice again. (Writing this on my first phone without easily changeable battery, I've tried for very long) So I as my families tech guru can give the right signals to my family and in a few years we see the actual change happen. Slowly but steadily
- jgilias 1mo agoIt does matter, yes. Because it won’t lead to the outcome you want until someone actually gets a painful fine.
- herbst 1mo agoThey will get fined, but it doesn't happen within just a few weeks.
- edelbitter 1mo agoIf it does not happen quickly, then the result might end up similar to data privacy topics. If you can afford to keep fines in litigation/appeals/formal-defect limbo for a sufficient number of years, you can grow out of even once-threatening fines and delay compliance until the law that you finally bow down to is so old that its signs of old age will in the meantime become popular arguments for undermining or retracting it.
- epihelix 1mo agoCompanies don't really care about rules per se. They care about their risk appetite, and whether the consequences of their actions create risk above that appetite level. The simple calculus is: will it cost me more to comply, or more to ignore? If a company chooses the more costly option, they are betraying their shareholders and being managed poorly. If you do not fine early and often, you are almost mandating that companies ignore the legislation. If this continues for several years, then you almost make it impossible to turn around later and fine, as businesses will want to know what's changed now. You will create an impression of uncertainty and instability, which is the last thing businesses want, and the last thing you want to do to encourage investment. If you just set and enforce the rules from the start, then everyone can relax, do the right thing and be happy about it. It's funny how rarely this actually seems to happen.
- pluc 1mo agoCheat until caught then lie.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- aidio 1mo ago[flagged]
- library8848 1mo agoIt's going to be cool to get user-replaceable batteries back in new phone releases. Depending how it goes I can see myself keeping a spare instead of a powerbank
- streetfighter64 1mo agoPowerbank: Works with all phones, Doesn't require you to shut down and take your phone apart, Can be charged with a regular phone charger. Spare battery: ???
- eloisant 1mo agoI don't need to be able to swap a spare battery like we did 15 years ago. However when your battery is old, and drains fast, it's really nice to be able to order a new one and easily change it by removing 4 screws. Not having to perform surgery on your phone, heating it to remove glue, etc.
- streetfighter64 1mo agoSure, but so far I've replaced my phone screen once and the battery never, I suppose both would be equally easy though. Why is heating a big issue but removing screws not? Shouldn't we mandate user-replaceable screens too? Soon you'll end up regulating all phones to be modular.
- disgruntledphd2 1mo ago> Soon you'll end up regulating all phones to be modular. That would be great, obviously there would be tradeoffs (not as thin, potentially less waterproof) but that seems like the right direction to go in.
- streetfighter64 1mo agoI don't really see the value of regulation requiring a certain preference, given that there are tradeoffs. I owned a modular phone previously, and it was, as you say, not as thin and not waterproof, and not dustproof either. Given that it takes like 30 minutes to change the screen or battery on my current phone (which is not modular), I don't see why my preference should be disallowed by EU regulation?
- 999900000999 1mo agoAll you really need are easy to replace batteries. That’s the only part that will wear out within a reasonable lifecycle. Aside from FairPhone no one offers that
- SoftTalker 1mo agoAnd the only part that an average user can hope to replace. I tried to replace a cracked sceen once, and ruined the phone. And I consider myself pretty handy, I do all my own car repairs, household plumbing, etc.
- mentalgear 1mo agoNope, shiftphone's display can be replaced in a minute, without any tools. And it's as waterproof as the iPhone or similar device.
- StrLght 1mo ago> All you really need are easy to replace batteries. They are easy _enough_ to replace already. Is it as easy as 20 years ago? Surely not. It also seems reasonable that something you're going to be realistically doing once per 3-4 years would require 1 or 2 hours. Moreover, the regulation doesn't affect this process, apart from "no proprietary tools". > That’s the only part that will wear out within a reasonable lifecycle. Millions of broken screens and back glass/plastic panels beg to differ.
- chrisjj 1mo ago> All you really need are easy to replace batteries. That’s the only part that will wear out within a reasonable lifecycle. This is far from true. Power connectors.
- MBCook 1mo agoScreens too
- 1mo ago
- CorvusCrypto 1mo agoEnforcement can be better, but I'm gonna give grace given how recently it was imposed. It's easy to point at extreme levels of enforcement being a key part of any regulation, but I have seen the breadth of the EU's scope and what needs to be balanced. Quite often I find that nonaction against compliance violations falls into the following: - Lack of resources - Lack of real consumer impact - Awaiting legislation meant to clarify or strengthen impact of enforcement. The article to me doesn't offer enough to justify any shout of doing anything different at the moment, rather it's just that they failed an audit. If they failed an audit and coupled this to swaths of consumer complaints, sure, but every EU member has a clear agency for consumer complaint, and I don't buy it that it is hard for consumers to report violations, it is far more likely in this case that they just don't care for the violations this particular group cares more about (like the links to Temu. I suspect a consumer doesn't care if it actually works still in practice, but we'd need surveys to confirm). Consumer-replaceable batteries will be one area that WILL be a hot issue for consumers, so I would bet we will see much stronger reaction once that rule comes into effect.
- maccard 1mo ago> but every EU member has a clear agency for consumer complaint, and I don't buy it that it is hard for consumers to report violations, The problem is the response is toothless. I reported Amazon for a violation to ICO in February 2019, received an automated email a month later asking for a swathe of information, replied to that, and 3 months later got an update that it would be assigned a Case Officer. That was the last time I heard from them on that matter. Meanwhile, my local council will respond to pretty much _everything_ within 24-48 hours. I’ve reported all sorts of “small” things and when it comes up naturally friends are surprised that the council did anything. They’ve never actually tried reporting the issues, and assume it’s all fruitless.
- zelphirkalt 1mo agoIf the severity of punishment for violations was high enough, we would only need very few example cases, before it stops.
- heisenbit 1mo agoI'm wondering whether it is now time for regulators to pressure mobile phone companies to install longer life batteries. There is not really an incentive to prolong device life for manufacturers and when I look at recent progress on the car industry and utility battery side there is imho. potential.
- ajsnigrutin 1mo agoBatteries always have a limited lifetime. "back in the day" we had waterproof phones with user replacable batteries, you could just buy another battery and replace it yourself. I have no idea why we can't do this now.
- plussed_reader 1mo agoPlain old, madagascar vanilla artificial obsolescence.
- ohhhigetit 1mo agoOhhh Elon is from South Africa and made electric cars because he’s mad at gas cars Ok byeeee
- maccard 1mo agoWere they waterproof? I certainly don’t remember my Nokia 3210 being even splash resistant. > I have no idea why we can’t do this now For better worse I think the answer is quite simple - a combo of ease of manufacturing, a long term trend of slimmer devices that is broadly supported by customer behaviour, and an extra place to suggest a device upgrade instead of a repair. You’re more than able to get pretty much any smartphone battery replaced with a manufacturer similar spec these days, and people still choose not to do so.
- jeroenhd 1mo agoWaterproof phones with replaceable batteries existed, but they used more rubber and other tricks to pull it off. This had the advantage of making it a lot easier to close the phone again and still keep the water resistant properties. Having replaced the battery in my old phone, I sure understand why people don't "choose" to do so. The battery itself is worth maybe 20 bucks but the labour and tools required to replace it cost much, much more. Compared to spending 30 bucks on a secondary battery back in the day, things sure have gone downhill since the days of user-replaceable batteries.
- herbst 1mo agoThere seems to be a strong sentiment in a specific direction, with everyone saying more or less the same weird arguments. Maybe non EU people shouldn't judge this much? Its generally Very welcomed around here
- nicman23 1mo agochill out it has not been a month.
- Danox 1mo agoWith the thru the roof cost of smartphones and many other computer hardware products because of the current memory crisis I believe the EU should concentrate on making sure customers get satisfaction when something goes wrong from the seller. I’m not interested in fixing the device myself. I’m taking it back to the company Apple, Sony, Nvidia or Audio-Engine and have them fix it, a third-party chop shop or me involved trying to fix it myself is unacceptable. Most of the items sold today-simply cost too much to try a tinker with it myself. That’s utterly ridiculous. I hope the EU or any country for that matter concentrate on making sure companies with strong laws, honor/standby and fix the problem with their product. I have little faith that they will.
- rickdeckard 1mo agoThe notable weak spot for this regulation (like some others) is that the member countries agreed to execute it NATIONALLY, so EU member states had to turn the directive into national law and begin enforcement in 2026. Now the EU is already quite challenged to stand up against US, China (and Korea) when it comes to enforcing such regulation and dealing with accusations from US/China/Korea of "sanctioning sales of their products"... ...so how would one expect the government of an individual country to fare in this, in times of Russia/Ukraine war, energy crisis, Strait-of-Hormuz-crisis...?
- mitxela 1mo agoThat's how all EU regulations work, the EU is not sovereign, it's more like a localised UN
- rickdeckard 1mo agoSorry, I phrased it incorrectly. - Regulations are binding acts for all member-countries. - Directives are goals the union should achieve, but actual execution including laws is up to the local countries. The handicap comes when important actions like this repairability target are defined as a DIRECTIVE, leaving it up to the local country (and all its lobbying influences) to set up the corresponding laws and governance. This inevitably leads to delays and fragmentation, tainting the result
- Garlef 1mo agoisn't it often like this: the fines escalate if ignored? - new requirements - ignored => small fine - still ignored => large fine - not ignored anymore
- waiwai933 1mo ago> Some records even refer customers to Temu or AliExpress for spare parts and repair instructions. And if we go to Footnote 5 of the campaign's press release (https://repair.eu/news/one-year-into-eu-ecodesign-rules-80-of-smartphones-still-lack-required-repair-information/#c1d4689f-3120-479a-aa85-d90ce3f55e09-link https://repair.eu/news/one-year-into-eu-ecodesign-rules-80-o...): > Sometimes, this situation is slyly camouflaged: Ulefone information sheets list a link that looks genuine (https://www.ulefone.com/pages/support-centers https://www.ulefone.com/pages/support-centers), but if you click the ‘parts store button’ on that page, it takes you to Aliexpress. When ordering parts from non-EU web stores, you as a consumer would be the importer and as such, responsible for paying import duties as well as ensuring compliance with all regulations. But if you actually click through to that page, it is very specifically _their_ AliExpress store, not just any old random page on AliExpress. It's not clear to me that that's actually non-compliant with the Ecodesign regulation, even if it's not ideal that the consumer is the importer of record. EDIT: Actually, on reflection, the importer thing might be more meaningful than I first thought. While the Regulation doesn't say so explicitly, it must mean that the spare parts be available for sale in the Union, and if the consumer is acting as the importer, then the parts are potentially not on sale in the Union. But the fact it is the manufacturer's store on a marketplace and not the manufacturer's branded subdomain is as far as I can see, neither here nor there.
- mitxela 1mo agoThey don't comply with open source licenses, either.
- Wobbles42 1mo agoSurely consumers can easily obtain these rights by simply sticking to smartphones manufactured in the EU, right?