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New EU law requires devices to be repairable - Every phone, television or washing machine you buy in Europe must be easier to repair starting tomorrow. That’s when the European Right to Repair Act takes effect (www.nporadio1.nl)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
252 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The products covered by the obligation to repair currently include:

  • washing machines and washer-dryers
  • dishwashers
  • refrigerators
  • electronic displays
  • welding equipment
  • servers and data storage products
  • mobile phones, cordless phones and tablets
  • tumble dryers 
  • e-bikes and e-scooters batteries (from 18 February 2027)
  • local space heaters
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[–] 194 points 3 months ago (73 children)

Hopefully this will benefit other countries indirectly, instead of designing one repairable phone and one not repairable, should be easier to just design one.

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  • [–] 148 points 3 months ago (33 children)

    "Hold my beer" - Nintendo, releasing an EU centric revision. Meanwhile Apple and Samsung are digging up every legal loophole to prevent the law applying to their devices.

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  • [–] 60 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Apple and Samsung be like: "It's not a mobile phone or a tablet, it's a phablet so it does not fall in to any category of the devices that need to be repairable."

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  • [–] 23 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 child)

    The loophole in the directive is smaller phones. Smartphones go from 10.16 cm (4 inches) diagonal to 17. 78cm (7 inches) and everything bigger (up to 44.2 cm) is a tablet.

    Samsung and Apple's flagship smartphones are very close to be considered tablets but that wouldn't save them from the requirements.

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  • [–] 82 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Are we talking about the same apple that invented a new type of screw to keep people from taking their phones apart? The same apple that once people could get a trilobe driver, then made it so that generic replacement screens would not work because of some protection from non-apple hardware? Then went on to make sure that you can't use non-apple parts in a laptop?

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  • [–] 32 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Super easy to repair by certified repair shops or easy to repair by people at home with minimal tool requirements?

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Not bad by the standards of modern phones, but hopefully not good enough for the new EU standards. Imo adhesives should only be used if they're replaceable or reusable and the screws should be limited to philips and flatheads.

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  • [–] 54 points 3 months ago (12 children)

    the same apple that locks individual parts of devices to user accounts so that they can't be used for repair?

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  • [–] 16 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    ...but only if you buy the parts new.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    From Apple's side, this situation is indistinguishable from the phone having been stolen.

    P.S. Although maybe there's a way to learn to what account a part is locked, and write to them 'hey bro, could you please unlock this phone you threw away'. Then again, the repair shop also can't know that the phone wasn't stolen.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    I have to admit that I haven't checked ifix scores for a hot minute and am surprised that since the iphone 15 Apple consistently beats all other big brands in reparability score. Before that of course they were bad, which is probably why people remember them that way. I like that trend, hopefully Samsung and Google also hop on that bandwaggon any time soon.

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  • [–] 37 points 3 months ago (22 children)

    The past two phones I bought were not because they broke, but because they stopped being supported on apps that I need to use.

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  • [–] 26 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    That's also included in the directive. Manufactures will be required to provide OS updates for at least 5 years "from the date of end of placement on the market" (which means the date the brand shipped the last device of a model).

    They also have 4 months to release security updates and 6 months for functionality updates see ANNEX II for all device categories.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    That is actually fairly reasonable. I use a 5 yr old Xiaomi which a has 8Gb (as much as an entry level Surface or MacBook. Fuck AI) an octacore CPU, great camera, ultra fast charge, great battery etc. But I realize most people change phones every 2-3 years regardless of how well their phone works, because of "shiny new thing"

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Androids

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Huh...I'm guessing banking apps? Those are the only ones that have ever given me problems on old Android devices

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    Been starting to see more randomly picky apps. Based on vintage and rooted device.

    Uninstalled the FedEx app, since every time I tapped on a tracking number, it would divert to the app which would promptly shame me for having a rooted device and refuse to run.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (8 children)

    Source?

    As far as I know, nearly all flagship phones, Apple or otherwise, get about 7 years of update support (except Pixel phones with GrapheneOS which get 14 ignore; I remembered this incorrectly).

    The difference is, even my old phone running Android 8 (a 9yo OS) can still browse the web, run all apps, and perform fine as a phone. An even older phone running Android 4.4 can still run 3rd party apps. iPhones seem to stop working about a year after they stop receiving updates, and they don't support sideloading (also know as running the software you want to run on the device you own).

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  • [–] 13 points 3 months ago

    The oldest iPhone that can run the latest iOS is the 11 from 2019. Apple is still providing security fixes all the way back to iOS 15, which goes back to the 6s released in 2015. So, somewhere between 7 and 11 years for Apple depending on what you are counting as support. As a personal experience, my partners iPad from 2017 still runs fine, though it is stuck on iOS 16 and only gets security updates.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Are you sure about 14 years of support? I think Graphene basically supports things as long as Google does, due to reliance on their source code releases. Double that would be impressive.

    https://grapheneos.org/faq

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (3 children)
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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Oh trust me, I'm no fan of Samsung, but I tend to value control of my devices over...whatever it is Apple does. I had an iPhone until I discovered replacing the home button myself artificially bricked the device due to DRM forcing customers to go to an Apple store for repairs. Never again

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Control over your devices is on the way out regardless of the major manufacturer.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    Unfortunately, this is very true.

    For what it's worth, I still try to maintain as much control as possible by using OSes like Graphene or Linux. I also have just started refusing to pay for things I can't own. That includes gaming consoles, cloud services, smart home devices, Samsung/Apple phones, leased cars, etc. If Google keeps killing and locking down AOSP, it may soon include all Android phones too.

    I'm hoping we can get some regulations pushed through before that point.

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  • [–] 20 points 3 months ago (9 children)

    So I saw that my car offered up all sorts of useful diagnostic information for self diagnosing stuff. Was very excited and went to look at it for a generic fault without having to get software to tell me what the fault is. I thought "it's stupid it has fully functional computer display yet tells me basically "contact a dealer, but it's safe to drive" instead of what the problem is. Then I find out that because I'm in the USA, the company keeps it to themselves...

    So if they see value in treating regions differently, they will absolutely go out of their way to screw over the regions that will let them.

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  • [–] 16 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    Car manufacturers screwed over consumers the last 10-15 years big time! Cars used to be the big thing many could fix a lot on by themselves and were proud to do so. Then they basically just said incrementally to the DIY'ers "it's all computers now, not your cup of tea", purposely made cars less and less self repairable and got away with it! It's infuriating.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Do you seriously think they computerized cars to make them less repairable? That's some tin foil hat stuff there.

    They started computerizing cars to make them more efficient, reliable (ironically), safer, etc. The problem is that beyond OBDII there is no standard for diagnostics, and makers keep these proprietary.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago*

    They didn't have to keep it proprietary, and I think in many "computer problems" the certified dealers will just replace 1 circuitboard by a new one, but it's a part which private customers are not able to order and replace themselves

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    I think they are making their vehicles much more computerized and much more software-driven, and at the same time supplying their technicians with tools to deal with that, but not customers. And they are constantly flirting with ideas for subscriptions and advertising and tracking. So maybe not all that to purposely make them less repairable, but it's more of an ecosystem that they control and the end user doesn't.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    Okay, but the economics of doing that are different between software and hardware. It's much more expensive to have a full second hardware design compared to just turning a software feature off in certain markets.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Just like the USB-c on the iphone

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Even then, Apple maliciously complied. They put shit speed usb-c, (maybe 2.0?) on all but the highest most expensive model.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    Tbf they also did that when they were on lightning.

    And they are not the only one to do that. I have a flagship android phone one step before the super flagship but It only got usb 2. It is really annoying to transfer media at such a low speed.

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