Sunday, September 4th 2022
The EU Proposes New Mobile Device Regulation to Extend Product Life Time
Around 20 years ago, most people replaced their phones on a yearly basis in some countries, largely due to the fact that if you signed the right mobile service contract, you got a free phone. These days, it's not nearly as common to get a free device with your service, but then again, mobile service contracts also tend to cost much less these days in many countries. As such, people retain their devices longer, which has put the device upgrade cycle somewhere around the two or three year mark. Now the EU is proposing new regulations that will force the mobile device makers to re-think the current status quo, as the European Commission regulators are considering asking mobile device makers to offer not just better battery life, but also spare part availability for as long as five years after a device was launched.
When it comes to battery life, the EU Commission is intending to offer the device manufacturers two options. The first is that they'll have to offer batteries that can deliver 83 percent of their rated capacity after 500 charging cycles, followed by 80 percent capacity after 1000 charging cycles. Alternatively, they can offer replacement batteries and phone back covers to its end-user customers, so they can replace their batteries once the batteries no longer hold charge that meets the owners expectations.
The spare parts program is tied to "professional repairers" which suggests that third party repair shops will be on the table. The manufacturers will have to provide key parts, such as batteries, displays, cameras, charging ports, mechanical buttons, microphones, speakers and hinge assemblies for a period of at least five years. End consumers should also be given access to replacement displays, as well as SIM and memory card trays, microphones, charging ports and hinge mechanisms, for a time period of at least seven years from the last marketing day of the device. This suggests that phone parts could be available for some eight to nine years after a new model has been introduced.
Furthermore, the EU Commission is proposing at least five years of security updates and three years of "functionality updates". However, these updates should be seen as an extension to the current OS updates and security patches, which should see most phone makers having to offer updates well beyond the two or three years we're seeing from most Android device makers today. The EU is currently collecting feedback on its proposal and anyone can submit comments until the 28th of September. If the EU Commission decides to go ahead with the proposal, it's not expected to be approved until sometime in the fourth quarter of this year and it's unlikely to be written into law until the end of 2023.
Sources:
the EU Commission, via Arstechnica
When it comes to battery life, the EU Commission is intending to offer the device manufacturers two options. The first is that they'll have to offer batteries that can deliver 83 percent of their rated capacity after 500 charging cycles, followed by 80 percent capacity after 1000 charging cycles. Alternatively, they can offer replacement batteries and phone back covers to its end-user customers, so they can replace their batteries once the batteries no longer hold charge that meets the owners expectations.
Furthermore, the EU Commission is proposing at least five years of security updates and three years of "functionality updates". However, these updates should be seen as an extension to the current OS updates and security patches, which should see most phone makers having to offer updates well beyond the two or three years we're seeing from most Android device makers today. The EU is currently collecting feedback on its proposal and anyone can submit comments until the 28th of September. If the EU Commission decides to go ahead with the proposal, it's not expected to be approved until sometime in the fourth quarter of this year and it's unlikely to be written into law until the end of 2023.
82 Comments on The EU Proposes New Mobile Device Regulation to Extend Product Life Time
Is it beyond you to understand some see these things as tools, and personally I don't carry a hammer around or use one continuously.
The pernitous bit is the data, that's keeping us glued to tech beyond sense at times.
Take away the net as I did in Newquay and see how fast these things become tools or toy's.
Tech doesn't control anything, data perhaps might try.
Other than that, I wholeheartedly agree that manufacturers forcing obsolescence by withholding access to replacement parts for users and third party repair shops have to be forced into submission. Personally I don't care for software updates but getting a new, good quality battery from a reasonable source, something that should be simple and obvious, takes much more effort and money than it ought to.
its the same as automotive. The profit on selling cars is really within selling parts for repair.
Hardware efficiency -measured for individual components- may have increased, but overall platform efficiency is more or less the same.
So one might argue, if recharge-to-recharge duration is the objective function, that strapping a new (read: bigger, more efficient to pack/manufacturer) battery to an old device would actually be better than shipping it in a new one.
If we look at mature manufacturers their battery cycle time is around 1000 already.
The thing that differs is google core apps itself. Over the years google basic services grow and consume much more CPU cycles as they did and naturally storage as they did when you bought the device. Basically even if you flash your first ROM after google updates to ensure all security and bling compatibility they will explode and make the phone crawl again. Some feature phones gimp on system storage partition and after updates there ain't much even left rendering the unit a ewaste. When a customer asks for battery exchange in 90% cases it ain't the battery. Just app usage or water damage, just a silly person, that expects much more with few hour onscreen time surfing Tiktok, YT etc bullshit.
There is already stock for parts for most 10+ year phones, no problem. Just pay. But no one does as simply the bill costs more than the unit itself? Exception is insurance and extended warranty that many people do these days.
What kind idiot made the proposal that already is freely obtainable already . There are few spare part exceptions that ended up because of accidents like main warehouse fire etc or simply all those parts rot away, like memory/CPU plagued units.
From environmental point of view, forcing to handle milions excessive sparts would induce such a spike of plastics usage for packaging that never would justify the savings from prolonging life of one random user.
Solution? Enforce buyback program that already works.
So technically speaking, we are already there if you buy right and make sure your model will be supported by ifxit with official kits... although I admit, Samsung really needs to expand its model avaiablity to ifxit in a more broad way, and not force bundle the screen and battery together on ifixit together. www.ifixit.com/collaborations/samsung
Once ifixit and samsung allow for battery only kits for many models, and those models now do support 4 years OS and 5 years security... I mean yeah EU doesn't even need to ask, we are already there. why would I give my money to anyone else when I know this is already a thing.
As I said... those upgrade cycles are useless also, because google expands itself, you cannot hold progress. What's the point of releasing a fresh OS on a hardware that lacks needed HW features and you have to do it brute force. It will work slower. People actually tend to stick to older releases because of performance reasons.
Or you are saying OK, lets push them to compile the shit code on any arch without thinking. We made our promise, who cares how. That's not how it works. Security updates are another thing. But it should be already solved if we look at Google GSI images.
Or did I wake up in another universe today?