RetroFed
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
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inariThe 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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Hopefully this will benefit other countries indirectly, instead of designing one repairable phone and one not repairable, should be easier to just design one.
“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.
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.”
iPhones are already super easy to repair. Apple have been at the forefront of this for years.
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?
Super easy to repair by certified repair shops or easy to repair by people at home with minimal tool requirements?
the same apple that locks individual parts of devices to user accounts so that they can’t be used for repair?
/s?
The past two phones I bought were not because they broke, but because they stopped being supported on apps that I need to use.
Let me guess, iPhone?
Androids
Huh…I’m guessing banking apps? Those are the only ones that have ever given me problems on old Android devices
yes
Doubtful. iPhones have the longest support of any phones out there.
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).
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).
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
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.
This is a step in the right direction love it. Although I got a reality check recently when I bought a washing machine and had a chat with the guy selling them new and used. He said that from 201X onwards basically the manufacturers constructed the insides of them in a single piece which is 350€ and with that it’s not economical to fix them. So yea technically they are repairable. But I have not much hope that this will actually change something for consumers or the environment.
This is good.
The RIGHT to repair does you no good if the thing itself is not DESIGNED to be repaired.
This is excellent news, but I really wish this same logic will spill into the recent “stop killing video games” movement as well.
That whole fight was really about consumer protection as well, not just about video games IMO.
I want to be able to be easily repair and support products that are past their manufacture supported end of life. This goes for both physical products and digital products!
I wonder why the US doesn’t have this law.
Hmmmm. 🤔
I hold out the thin hope that manufacturers will not want to split their product lines any more than they have to and will make these devices available globally.
It’s possible that they want to hang on to the revenue streams that making irreparable garbage generates, but it would have to be greater than the cost of designing and manufacturing a second product line for most of their stuff.
Kind of how like when dumbass apple was forced into USB-C in the EU and they finally gave up on their own charge cables globally.
That’s a good example. You’ve sold me on the hope!
Interesting things that are not on the list: * Farming equipment * Motor and electric vehicles * Computers (including laptops) * Video game consoles * HVAC systems and equipment
Not sure if smart TVs fall under “electronic displays”, or if they just mean commercial displays when they say that.
not yet ! we hope !
John deer tractor lost a case that became famous in my rural area (and elsewhere). It now have to let repair shop acces the tools and allow repair on its tractors.
I take the win ! And we continue to push forward in talks, petitions, actions and repairs (autorised or else) Support and/or use open source.
Good, now let’s increase the list and also add vacuum cleaners to it! I thought that they already were but seemingly not :(
So what exactly does this entail? Is Bosch going to make their dishwashers less awful to repair? Or are they going to say “well it’s possible to repair it, and it’s not glued shut like a phone, so we’re good.”
Yeah, feels like devil is in the details. Lots of gray area in “repairable”.
wake me up when German cars are on the list. Until then I’ll regard this as purely performative and will be overturned in some months.
Also: making repairable the very cell phones on which they require constant monitoring of private communications reeks of hypocrisy.
Yes I’m skeptical about all this.
Don’t worry, the phones don’t have to be repairable as long as they are waterproof.
This is purely performative, but won’t be overturned.
it’s unlikely that spurious/generic parts will work unless they want them to, and even then they’ll be less effective.
Their official parts will likely be more expensive, so they’ll be easier to repair, but cost a lot more, instead of paying the repair shop.
The devices or machines will no longer become waste as much, but the parts will. Warranties will be voided etc.
What would’ve been a better law to introduce would be introducing a minimum time limit on planned obsolescence with the right to repair.
Also, in the EU many countries have law that supercedes EU warranty.
If your device has an inherent defect (was always going to break no matter what you did with it) and sometimes may need to be proven in a court of law, The warranty can be extended to 7 years (some countries are shorter).
For example if you buy a TV, and after 4 years it develops a fault outside the normal warranty, and you find out that, that model has a known fault that happens to a few of them, don’t try to repair it and void the warranty.
It may be still protected by that warranty in your country.
F.cking Great News! Next: forcing every product to be open source, and durable. 100 years for a product is not a dream. We already have products, used for more than 50 years.
Libertarians in shambles.
Good start I guess but missing plenty of things that others have already pointed out. This list only covers like half of devices in a household. Also, what is stopping companies from pricing replacement parts way out of proportion because of this? Even more than they already do now to prevent repairs