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EU Proposes Tough Regulations on Smartphone Spare Part Availability (ft.com) 44

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
Smartphone manufacturers supplying the EU will face stringent requirements to provide spare parts and ensure longer battery life, according to draft proposals published by Brussels on Wednesday. Financial Times: The European Commission said that at least 15 different component parts should be made available for at least five years from the date of a smartphone's introduction to the market and that batteries should survive at least 500 full charges without deteriorating to below 83 per cent of their capacity. Phones would also have to display an energy efficiency label, similar to those used for washing machines and dishwashers, which will show battery endurance and other characteristics such as resistance to drops.

The scheme is Brussels' latest directive targeting electronics manufacturers after introducing in June a requirement to use a standardised charger by 2024, despite years of industry opposition, in particular from Apple. Extending the life cycle of all the smartphones sold in the EU by five years would save emissions equivalent to around 10mn tonnes of Co2 -- roughly the same as taking 5mn cars off the road, according to a study by the European Environmental Bureau, a non-governmental organisation. The draft regulations, which also cover tablets and standard mobile phones, suggest that if hardware is made more repairable and recyclable it would cut the energy consumption involved in its production and use by a third.
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EU Proposes Tough Regulations on Smartphone Spare Part Availability More

EU Proposes Tough Regulations on Smartphone Spare Part Availability

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  • Phones cost as much as most appliances and those have a pretty robust parts economy and are expected to be able to be repaired to some degree.

    I think this would be most effective with the reasonable stance of moving the phone release cycle to at least 2 years. It made a bit more sense when smartphone tech was advancing quickly but now things have levelled out. Screens, cameras, features are all pretty much in a very incremental stage now. The Pixel 7 is due out soon but by Google's own admission it's a pre

    • Dishwashers, clothes washers, and clothes dryers are all built by a very small number of white label manufactures, all share most of the same parts (regardless of brand) and use the same parts for years. Comparing phones to appliances and expecting the same ecosystem is nonsense.

      • The market consolidation among appliance makers is fairly recent development in their history but even today even amongst the megabrands you still have Whirlpool, Samsung, LG, Haier, Bosch and Electrolux which comprise probably like 90% of the residential market. All distinct manufacturers with hundreds of models and thousands of part and generally pretty ok part availability. 90% of the cell phone market is made up of Apple, Samsung, Google, LG, Huawei, Xiaomi, Vivo. Two of those companies are in both i

        • The parts of your fridge are rather different from the parts of your phone though, no? One is also several thousand times larger than the other and does not have most of it's core components soldered onto the same circuit board or packed into the same chip. The parts of one become obsolete every fiver years or so, and the parts of the other don't change for decades.

          Besides, if you're having the phone makers produce as many spare parts as the legislation requires, are they not really just making far mo

          • Sure they are different but does that really matter? Any modern appliance will have one or multiple control boards with hundreds of discrete components on them and that's an older model to say nothing of the newer IoT enabled appliances or appliances with displays, modern LED lighting, etc etc.

            I recently had to replace the drive screw on my ice machine. I ordered a replacement on amazon for like $30. It is a pretty large injection molded part with several fasteneners, stamped metal plate parts, gearing, e

  • Make it user replaceable. Done. Wear items should be required to be user replaceable.

    • Make it user replaceable. Done. Wear items should be required to be user replaceable.

      You sure? Adding connectors to make the battery replaceable might take volume away from the battery itself (reducing it's charge and lifetime), or make the phone bulkier and heavier. It's not obvious to me that's a win.

      I recently traded in my Samsung S6. It's battery didn't last very long any more and it was increasingly unable to run apps at a reasonable speed (oh, and I'd cracked the screen). I think Samsung pretty much hit the sweet spot, with everything failing all at once. Replacing the battery would h

      • Re:Just Standardize the Battery. (Score:4)

        by sjames ( 1099 ) on Thursday September 01, 2022 @12:55PM (#62843675) Homepage Journal

        I don't need to chop onions with my phone. If it's a whole 0.5mm thicker, I'm fine with that. Most people who buy the super thin phones immediately put them in a thick protective box so they don't accidentally snap them in half when they sit down.

        • I don't need to chop onions with my phone. If it's a whole 0.5mm thicker, I'm fine with that. Most people who buy the super thin phones immediately put them in a thick protective box so they don't accidentally snap them in half when they sit down.

          If you're fine with a thicker phone, knock yer socks off. You do you. Just recognize that other people have different preferences including things which don't seem to make sense (like buying a thin phone only to smother it with an Weasel Box). And thickness might not be the only tradeoff: there's also weight, cost, heat, reliability, battery life, recharge cycles, and probably a dozen things I can't imagine.

          (I'll also note that making a phone a half millimeter thicker is probably an enormous deal with dozen

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Mike Zilva ( 785109 )
            It's a bit dumb that all phones want to be super thin but everybody wants a super camera no mater whats the thickness, so you end up with phones that have a bump on one of the corners, unbalancing when laying on a table and it's a missed opportunity to have a larger battery, better heat dissipation and keep a flush back with camera glass.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by sjames ( 1099 )

            (I'll also note that making a phone a half millimeter thicker is probably an enormous deal with dozens of meetings going up to a gaggle of VPs before getting approved. I bet even a tenth of a mm requires signoff by the VP of industrial design.)

            Corporate dane brammage at it's finest. Meanwhile, I challenge you to notice a 0.5mm difference without a caliper or similar size gauge.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mjwx ( 966435 )

          I don't need to chop onions with my phone. If it's a whole 0.5mm thicker, I'm fine with that. Most people who buy the super thin phones immediately put them in a thick protective box so they don't accidentally snap them in half when they sit down.

          This, and I blame Apple for making our phones so damn fragile.

          Give me a little bit of a bezel and maybe the screen wouldn't shatter when you drop it.

          My main issue at the moment is how big phones have gotten, I bought a new Nokia X10 (jury is still out on if I like it) but at 6.6" it's getting to the point where it's too damn big for my pockets. I wouldn't mind a 6" or even a 5.5" even if it were a little thicker.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by wierd_w ( 1375923 )

      Its not really the battery that is the fault. (per se.)

      They already follow an industry standard. They are 3.6 volts, with an SPI data bus that shares the ground with the cell. The communication messages over that SPI bus are also already standardized. EG, all the cellphone battery packs out there are electronically compatible with each other ALREADY.

      The REAL problems, are form factor, and the choice of the charge state/health controller baked inside.

      Since not every device has the same use case in mind, ma

    • EVERYTHING is "user-replaceable".

      The effort required to do so may vary.

    • Yeap, all portable gadgets should be using replaceable li-ion batteries by now, even TV remotes. We need a few standard battery formats and laws to make them usable between brands and devices and force smartphones makers to have easy replaceable batteries.

  • It's already the case that some phones last longer than the software support. My Pixel 3A is a good example. So either that gets fixed or more and more phones will run without security updates

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      That's phase 2. The manufacturer may EITHER continue supporting the phone OR release full drivers and specs so it can be loaded with a generic OS.

    • That's far more of an issue than the availability of replacement parts to be sure. And beyond security updates, applications (including websites) and OSs generally become more demanding as time goes on. Who cares if a seven year old phone still holds a charge if it can't render your favorite websites and takes five minutes to load your email?

      I have a feeling that they just assumed that repairability was as important to consumers when it comes to phones as it is for cars and major appliances. End result

  • Yeah, because phone makers having excess parts isn't a not-since-2019 problem.

    Here in reality, if we are LUCKY, Apple is to stay on a repairability roadmap (similar to their old one) going forward. And I mean lucky in the sense that phones can be repaired at all.

    There is STILL a major problem with non-support of functional phones for firmware and software on the mid and low-end handset market.

    For much of the mobile phone's life, it was treated as un-upgradable (software) and the industry LIKED that lack of

    • It will take time and money for the cell phone industry to transform from what it is into the equivalent of making washing machines or automobiles. Warranty agreements, contracts with third parties for warehousing of parts and distribution, and much more have to be done. In the short term it will probably make the devices more expensive for people. In the long term it will probably save people money as they can repair and use their devices longer, sell used devices to refurbishers, and by inexpensive used d

      • one of the reasons I check for lineage os support before buying.

        AOSP support is another.

        Locked boot loader because the carrier is so afraid that it feels it needs to weld the hood shut? Won't buy.

        what is needed there, is something akin to secureboot for smartphones, so that a secure enclave with user managed signing keys (and the actually crypto secured 3rd party support being possible without a completely wide open boot loader) can be set up and used.

        Getting the carriers to agree to that is like pulling h

        • One way is to let consumers decide, as you imply with refusing to buy. I'd argue that locked devices don't even deserve access to the market. Yeah, I know government regulation isn't going to make me very popular on /. but that's one of the mechanisms we have to quickly redirect industry towards making a profit in a way that doesn't abuse consumers or fill landfills with artificially obsolete consumer electronics.

      • It will take time and money for the cell phone industry to transform from what it is into the equivalent of making washing machines or automobiles. Warranty agreements, contracts with third parties for warehousing of parts and distribution, and much more have to be done. In the short term it will probably make the devices more expensive for people. In the long term it will probably save people money as they can repair and use their devices longer, sell used devices to refurbishers, and by inexpensive used devices.

        Being able to replace the battery and screen is nice. But dammit I want to install software and use an uncompromised browser on a 3 year old device. A dead battery or cracked screen isn't much of a safety issue. Exposing your bank account to hackers is an extremely serious issue. Security trumps all in my opinion, no point in using a smart phone, no matter how nicely the hardware is working, if there is no path to firmware updates.

        I agree - but it would be nice to AVOID being like washing machines (much less repairable as the years have went on) or automobiles (actively try to prevent generic parts or self-repair).

        I was pretty impressed to find out that the 'unsupported' iPhone 5s and 6 were going to get a vulnerability update.

        Apple isn't the shining example of what everyone should be in this respect, it should be the bare minimum that any self-respecting company does out of basic decency for products they made money on.

        They've got a

      • And how fast do you expect that old phone to run the updated software/firmware? When does it cease to be worth keeping the damn thing?

  • Extending the life cycle of all the smartphones sold in the EU by five years would save emissions equivalent to around 10mn tonnes of Co2 -- roughly the same as taking 5mn cars off the road

    Great...fix the phones and let me keep my ICE cars!!

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Extending the life cycle of all the smartphones sold in the EU by five years would save emissions equivalent to around 10mn tonnes of Co2 -- roughly the same as taking 5mn cars off the road

      Great...fix the phones and let me keep my ICE cars!!

      Untwist your panties, everybody else is just going to move on to more modern tech. Nobody is going to take away your wheeled gas guzzling museum pieces because nobody outside of your branch of International Luddite Society wants them.

      • Untwist your panties, everybody else is just going to move on to more modern tech. Nobody is going to take away your wheeled gas guzzling museum pieces because nobody outside of your branch of International Luddite Society wants them.

        You're missing the GP's point, and you assume that the GP is referring to a 'gas guzzler', rather than a fuel efficient sedan or something else that gets 40-50mpg.

        In many regions, the push to abolish ICE cars is being done well before there is infrastructure to support them. The folks in government aren't saying "we're going to make it a point to ensure our constituents are able to viably own an EV by 2035", they're saying, "car manufacturers, you've got until 2035 to manufacture ICE cars".

        Power grids in va

  • Nooooooooo! (Score:3)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Thursday September 01, 2022 @01:20PM (#62843771)

    But if they do this then how well we keep selling people the same damn phone every couple years or have a costly repair service?!

    THINK OF THE LOST PROFITS!

    • Businesses don't replace computers every four or five years because someone tricked them, they do it because "the same damn" computers aren't fast enough anymore.

  • The politicians in the EU seem quite concerned about the emissions of CO2 but appear to be looking in the wrong place. Why not look at the source of the energy producing the CO2 than try to force people into using old cell phones?

    The EU didn't consider nuclear fission a low CO2 emitting energy source until a few weeks ago. Did they suddenly discover that nuclear fission existed? No. They discovered that without cheap natural gas out of Russia that it will be difficult to both keep energy prices low and

    • The EU didn't consider nuclear fission a low CO2 emitting energy source until a few weeks ago. [...] They discovered that without cheap natural gas out of Russia that it will be difficult to both keep energy prices

      It's not about Russia this time. The EC added nuclear energy to the "EU taxonomy for sustainable activities" on February 2nd 2022, after the draft recommendation was sent to the national governments on Dec. 31, 2021, and a public consultation until January 21 [1]. The decision pissed off a lot of people in Europe. Most EU countries have very strong internal opposition to nuclear, in particular Germany. But it is considered a strategic industry in France and it maintains high support in its public opinion. S

  • The limit should be based on last produced (Score:3)

    by ewibble ( 1655195 ) on Thursday September 01, 2022 @03:45PM (#62844251)

    If you buy a phone new, especially an expensive one you should expect it to last at X years after you bought it. X = 5 seems reasonable to me, but is debatable.

  • EU numbers are so reliable (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A couple of days ago they were saying cars produce 4.6 tons of CO2/year, now it's 2. Come on EU, which is it?

  • 10mn tonnes of Co2

    10 minutes . tonnes ? Come on, metric system is not that hard!

  • How many people replace their silicon because there aren't enough spare parts? How many do it because old silicon isn't fast enough to run new software?

    The EU is making bad assumptions that will only lead to higher costs, more waste and more pollution.

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