Smartphone makers don't bother to comply with EU repairability requirements

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• Hacker News
• All 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

  by 999900000999
• I don't want to get down-voted but I like this regulation, good job EU!
  by m00dy
• It'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
  by library8848
• Contrary 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.

  by crote
• Does 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

  by herbst
• > 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-o...):

  > Sometimes, this situation is slyly camouflaged: Ulefone information sheets list a link that looks genuine (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.

  by waiwai933
• Enforcement 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.

  by CorvusCrypto
• As 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.

  by KaiserPro