Starting June 20th, any cordless phone, smartphone, or feature phone, as well as tablets (7 – 17.4″ screens) have to meet Ecodesign requirements. In addition there is now mandatory registration with the European Product Registry for Energy Labelling (EPREL). The only exception are phones and tablets with a flexible (rollable) main display, and tablets that do not use a mobile OS, i.e. not Android, iPadOS, etc. These requirements include resistance to drops, scratches and water, as well as batteries that last at least 800 cycles.
What is perhaps most exciting are the requirements that operating system updates must be made available for at least five years from when the product is last on the market, along with spare parts being made available within 5-10 working days for seven years after the product stops being sold. The only big niggle here is that this access only applies to ‘professional repairers’, but at least this should provide independent repair shops with full access to parts and any software tools required.
On the ENERGY label that is generated with the registration, customers can see the rating for each category, including energy efficiency, battery endurance, repairability and IP (water/dust ingress) rating, making comparing devices much easier than before. All of this comes before smartphones and many other devices sold in the EU will have to feature easily removable batteries by 2027, something which may make manufacturers unhappy, but should be a boon to us consumers and tinkerers.
In other words – there goes innovation because everything will have to be decided by EU bureaucrats while you still won’t get repairability.
They can innovate on letting us remove the batteries again.
Don’t want to.
I like a very waterproof phone, which doesn’t have the battery pack fall out when you drop it, and isn’t an inch thick.
This removes choice. If you value a removable battery you can buy a phone with one – there’s companies who make such phones, or you can just make your own as android is open source.
But thanks to the EU my choice to buy a well sealed phone will be gone.
I’ll take that you’ve never heard of the word “gaskets” and the concept it represents.
Because that’s how smartphones were made watertight before the gluepocalypse happened.
Additionally, almost all phones on the market currently relies on glue and often also removing the screen and the phone PCB itself to get to the damn battery so it can be replaced.
Those with tool-less battery replacement are also almost a needle in a haystack, and often also misses features/functionality that’s often user desired and actually used.
Unlike waterproofing, which is equal parts marketing and excuse to glue the shit out of it, so end user is encouraged to replace the phone instead of just replacing the battery or screen when one of them goes FUBAR.
They still are – I have a Samsung phone with an IP67/68 rating and a user-replaceable battery, with gaskets on the lid.
And I can tell you the IP rating is bunk. It only applies to a new phone that hasn’t been dropped or used, so the seal is still intact and there isn’t anything like lint between the gasket that would compromise it. After a couple years of use, if I now drop it in a puddle, the battery compartment will be flooded. Whether that can still save the phone from total destruction is unknown.
you will still be able to buy waterproof phones. 3-4 electrical contacts can easily be made through the waterproof barrier (phone and battery as two independent isles). It’s just the questions if they want to build some (guess what, they probably won’t because you need to buy more phones if they’re not waterproof…).
the batter falling out when you drop you phone is actually a good thing. Part of the impact energy gets converted/distributed away and the phone is in less danger.
I think your scull is a few inches too thick or something (metaphorically, probably not physically).
The same is true in reverse. There will be waterproof phones with stapled together batteries that may or may not be sold (officially) in the EU.
There is no stronger motivator for engineers than established restrictions. You can see that on highly regulated fields, like motorsports.
No removable batteries for instance is only good for the companies, not the consumers.
What Innovation? My phone model was released 5 years ago, and the only difference between mine and the newest model are marginal improvements on existing tech, or gimmicky features that aren’t ever used. The biggest innovations recently have been in limiting repairability and planned obsolescence. Even if this doesn’t yield genuine repairability, it’s not like it’ll get much worse.
What innovation? Phones have been flat rectangles for 20 years.
Earth: Final Conflict’s Global would be an interesting change.
we need spherical phones
They should have exactly the same size as the lenses of a gas mask! For … reasons!
VR headsets for everyone!
Just wait for the integration of virtual smell devices!
;-)
limroh, do you know what you have done?
Now I have to find the right gas mask and fitting spherical displays. Hrmpf.
The latest and greatest innovation is some of them fold now!
Wait, didn’t they used to fold?
Yes, yes… it’s the bureaucrats that are the problem here, definitely.
Thank god we’re getting removable batteries back. That’s like a dream come true.
My Pixels screen stopped working and it just needed the battery removed and reinserted to fix it, but Google wanted me to send it in. I ended up opening it myself, which was a pain in the arse, but at least it fixed it. The amount of screws to get at the battery.
Wonder if running the battery dead would have worked. But that might be hard to do without an external screen to run the battery down quickly with some apps.
I just paid one of the cell repair places $70 to fix mine. Well worth it to not have to deal with potentially breaking it. I’m doing this reply on it now with 78% battery and it hasn’t been charged in 9 hours or so.
Where did you read tthat we’re “getting removeable batteries back”?
I only read that it should have durable batteries and available parts.
It is quite clearly stated in the last three lines of the article.
You think you will get something better and more hackable, and maybe a small amount of people will, and a much smaller amount of people will actually do it. But in reality it will be another GDPR and do very little except increase enshitification and make things more annoying and broken
Go back to the time where any model of phone had a different charging cable.
I do not see how :) only enforced think here is registration, you can always develop $H|t and send is as it was before, you will just to have state that it is $H|t on that label, so customer will know before taking cash out of pocket
A bit cynical but a smart phone isnt really like a GP computer
for example my 1012 mac mini runs like a freaking champ, its almost 30C out here hours after the sun went down, when I got it, it ran like a dog, I upgraded its storage to SSD and upgraded its ram and as long as I keep in mind its a mobile intel soultion doing the best it can I can’t be mad with it when it kind of jitters along in 3d cad
meanwhile my 2015 LG-G6 phone still has great battery life (I use it as a camera mostly now) allowing software upgrades isnt going to help all that much, at its latest update it was a swap zombie and cause of that it fell out of favor
so what’s the solution? swap the battery? Install an even heavier OS? no I cant double its memory capacity or speed up its limited storage with some parts off eBay … but as a daily driver phone its crap, its been crap for quite a while now
2012 mac mini…
My 2012 Mac mini runs pretty well too – I’m using it for this. I upgraded it to 512GB SSD and 16GB RAM when it seemed to slow down a lot running Catalina.
… then watch telocos designing phones in such a way that repair is so darn expensive …
Well, these devices will score very low on the repairability rating mentioned in the article.
building a device with a fixed life part that can’t be easily replaced – ie a battery – is insane. It’s only done so manufactures can sell you a new one when everything is working but the battery..
I pulled apart just about every product with a hard connected battery that I have ever owned. Apart from phones most thing have rechargeable AAA, AA, 18650 battery that COULD have been designed to be easily replaceable. Instead they are designed to be not replaceable – including glue etc etc
I’ve replaced many of those batteries (some are up to their 4th or higher battery) – and those products are still working fine…
However most consumers don’t have the skill or interest to crack plastic cases (and re glue them later) and don’t own a soldering iron.
So this EU law should have been in place decades ago…
Highest repairability index mean you have the full source code of the software, all the schematics, a complete datasheet of every chip (with fines attached for any mistake), and spare parts available for 50 years?
I’m sure you would love the price tag.
Probably not. I find the skepticism in all these comments very interesting (and, given historical context, the skepticism is understandable). Let’s look at SBCs, they’re close enough to phones – if we were to compare a Raspberry Pi to its alternatives (Orange Pi, Radxa, etc) you’ll see some interesting differences. Raspberry Pi, if I remember correctly, uses a non-standard PSU – doesn’t mean you can’t use it without a different PSU, just that it’s more difficult / may lead to instability.
Radxa I know of one SBC that is pretty well documented all things considered. Compare e.g.
https://docs.radxa.com/en/rock4/hardware/download
to
https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/
Would be an interesting exercise to apply these regulations to both cases (or multiple other comparable SBC as well). A lot of commenters point out that “it will be more expensive if it must be repairable”. While this can be true, there is something left unsaid: If you can repair your stuff, or if repair shops have easy access to spare parts, repairs will be easier. Also had to compare the two SBCs for other purposes (RPi just doesn’t cut it sometimes), the other one is 20$ more expensive – a fair price to pay for peace of mind and an SBC that comes with electrical schematics in my opinion. Especially if repairing costs less than buying an entirely new phone all five years.
Price gouging for spare parts is literally prohibited by the regulation.
Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/1670 of 16 June 2023 (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/1670/oj) is most interesting. First of all, it is a regulation, not a directive. This means it is directly binding to all member states.
Of particular interest:
“(5)
In order to ensure that devices are able to be effectively repaired, a range of spare parts should be available to professional repairers or end users. Those spare parts should, regardless of whether they are new or used, have the effect of upgrading or restoring the functionality of the device in which they are installed.
(6)
In order to ensure that devices are able to be effectively repaired, the price of spare parts should be reasonable and should not discourage repair. To create transparency and incentivise the setting of reasonable prices, the indicative pre-tax price for spare parts provided pursuant to this Regulation should be accessible on a free access website.”
That is an excerpt from the considerations section of the regulation, not the actual law, in effect what things were considered when making the law (and thus stating pretty clearly the intended result). A bit interesting is the first part of the actual law text:
“2. This Regulation does not apply to the following products:
(a)mobile phones and tablets with a flexible main display which the user can unroll and roll up partly or fully;
(b)smartphones for high security communication.”
But they pretty clearly define what they understand as a smartphone for high security communications later on. Where it becomes really interesting is “Article 8 Review”.
“(d) the appropriateness of increasing the stringency of the requirement on battery endurance in cycles; (e) the appropriateness of defining a standardised battery that could be used interchangeably across a range of mobile phones and slate tablets;”(xkcd!), “(f) the need to set out requirements to enable or improve repair and upgradeability with used or third-party spare parts;”…”(l) the option for manufacturers to make data for 3D printing of plastic components (e.g. battery compartment cover, buttons etc.) publicly available on a free-access website, either in addition to their obligation to make these spare parts available to professional repairers or end-users or as a means to fulfil this obligation;” and so on and so forth.
I recommend reading both “Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/1669 of 16 June 2023” (Labels) and “Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/1670 of 16 June 2023” (Repair ability), at least the actual law texts. For a law text they’re quite interesting and refreshing.
TL;DR: Not necessarily, but the Commission has left themselves a door open. They could literally make “Highest repairability index” mean those things. They probably won’t. Interestingly enough a lot of what the regulation touches upon are things done by companies like Apple or Google, who are well known for their stance on repairability. The Annexes of the labeling regulation thing are fun to look at.
If I had a tin foil hat, I would like to imagine, there’s some person in the EU Commision who got so annoyed at not being able to repair their phone that they thought “I wish somebody would do something about this…oh. Wait…I can actually do something about this!”.
Honestly, the commission deserves a cheer for this one (and for the USB-C one as well. I can’t wait for Apples magsafe patent to run out…imagine…magsafe and USB-C combined, standardized by law, enforced…a man can dream…).
So, BL-5B it is? 😁
Obviously the only right choice is 18650 :p
Sure, and it still uses enigma to protect access to your online banking…
Remember there are also small start-ups that produce open source smartphones – something much better for our privacy and easier to repair. It could be harder for them to fulfill all these requirements, i.e. get an energy efficiency label, than for large producers. I think people should have freedom what to produce or buy, there should only be information before purchase about any drawbacks that aren’t obvious.
Did anyone say the spare part screw holding the battery compartment lid has to cost less than 150% of the original complete device? No? There you go then.
Just look at what white goods manufacturers have been doing for ages.
Yes, (6)
In order to ensure that devices are able to be effectively repaired, the price of spare parts should be reasonable and should not discourage repair.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ%3AJOL_2023_214_R_0003&qid=1693469612388
Says so right in the law.
Price of spare ‘parts’ reasonable – cracked the screen glass? That’ll be a new ‘display’ assembly. There are spare parts and then there are assemblies; one being easy and the other cost effective.
The regulation is pretty clear on what must be available as a spare part and what may be available as an assembly. It also very clearly states a spare part is not necessarily an assembly.
Nobody can comply with this requirement. This is ridiculous; it’s expecting the manufacturer to hold on to the tooling and production lines of an obsolete product for 7 years, or manufacture extras and stockpile them.
What’s the penalty if you don’t? Paying the fines are probably going to come cheaper.
No one? Oh, I’m confident in Germany of the 1970s or 1980s it was possible.
That’s when car and washing machine makers had warehouses full of replacement parts.
It’s just the Chinese/American way of making business that’s incompatible with the concept.
Making quick bucks vs making things that last..
It is possible when the technology is moving slowly, or has stopped developing. A washing machine designed in the 1970’s wasn’t much different from one built in the 1980’s or even the 1990’s. It’s the same old solenoid valves, motors, belts, switches and rotating mechanical program selectors until you get to the mid 90’s and things like direct drive starts to appear.
A cellphone that has been on the market for say, 5 years now, is built on components and technology that are 5+ years old and already obsolete when it came out. If you look 7 years into the future, that gap between what’s on the market and what you’re trying to support stretches to 12+ years, and that’s ancient history. It’s completely different.
12 years is enough time that some components drop out of production and become unobtainable, so you’re expecting the manufacturer to essentially predict how many of any model they will sell, how many of those will break and require spare parts, and then buy enough extra parts in advance to supply them.
It’s practically impossible to do that, so manufacturers are more likely to just not, and then wait for the lawsuits, if anyone ever bothers to, and pay them out of court later.
“A washing machine designed in the 1970’s wasn’t much different from one built in the 1980’s or even the 1990’s”
Err, yes and no? Washing machines are microcontroller controlled, to perform specific washing programme.
Back in the day, by late 70s, they contained the equivalent to a C64 or Apple 2.
It’s not just some gears, springs and such. There’s more.
While the base components surely were interchangeable to some extent, the model specific modules were not. They had to be on storage.
Same goes for the cars, they started to have computers by the 80s.
The CAN bus was common, for example. The computer in the car optimized the motor’s work and did other things.
There also had been cars with an electric dashboard and a touch screen.
Such as this one: https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/heres-how-car-screens-have-grown-through-history
Perhaps the most expensive models, but the bog standard washing machine, whether for clothes or dishes, ran with a simple mechanical program drum with switch contacts well into the 90’s. When the digital stuff started appearing, it was for the blinkenlights first – like a digital clock on the front panel – while the program drum was still re-used from the previous model.
Our family bought a new dishwasher in 1995 and it was exactly like that – and when the mechanical program drum broke some 20 years later, there were no spare parts available anymore.
“12 years is enough time that some components drop out of production and become unobtainable”
Keyword: second-sourcing
Back in the 1970s/1980s, computer chips like 6502, 8086 or 68000 were made by different manufacturers exactly because to make sure availability is secured.
The whole 74xxx seties of TTL chips is now made by a dozen manufacturers.
But for some specific custom SoC chip, image sensor, display module, or other custom component, there isn’t and wasn’t enough market demand to keep making it. They were only ever made for a handful of products that were discontinued in a couple years time, under licenses that are no longer valid, so they’ve become unobtainium.
“It’s practically impossible to do that, so manufacturers are more likely to just not, and then wait for the lawsuits, if anyone ever bothers to, and pay them out of court later.”
Sounds like more like the people involved are too cheap and lazy to make it work. IMHO.
But not everything can be solved by paying lawyers.
Reminds me of the old quote:
“When the Last Tree Is Cut Down, the Last Fish Eaten, and the Last Stream Poisoned, You Will Realize That You Cannot Eat Money.”
It’s kinda like the EU regulations about engine emissions and fuel economy. The regulators keep tightening the thumbscrew regardless of physics, so the car manufacturers are now considering to ignore the regulations, take the penalties, and pass the cost onto the consumers because what else can they do?
Do as the regulators demand and make more expensive products, or do as the consumers want and pay the fines. Either way the end result is the same – it’s just a question of which costs less.
Even with fast moving technology it isn’t a problem – as you don’t have to replace like with like, just with something that restores or upgrades the functionality. So the main brains of your washing machine dies, well flash the right firmware image onto a brand new part you are likely putting in your current machines so it knows how it is supposed to interact with the older HID and mechanicals – you let the tooling die a decade ago and yet still have a perfectly valid spare part!
In the case a phone/computer it really isn’t much different, the designs might become a little more standard module shapes so future generations remain compatible, but probably not even that – you just stockpile a tiny bit on the components that might well break like the screens (something they probably do anyway to turn shipping damaged units back into profitable products pretty cheaply) and if it becomes needed down the line actually refurbish and repair bits from your old devices into spare parts for the few folks that really want to keep using their obsolete tech till that legal requirement is up. Or if that ends up more costly just exchange the customers old device for a newer model, may not quite be inkeeping with the legal requirement, but nobody is going to complain, and shipping off that NOS you had leftover from the previous generations of device that still newer than the customers one you ran out parts for…
So you mean designing and manufacturing entirely new custom parts for a small and dwindling number of devices that are no longer being sold, while required to make such parts down to cost that is not prohibitive to the consumers?
They’ve tried to invent modular phones with standard physical interfaces already, but those have turned out uneconomical and technological dead ends.
Except for a computer it’s all about physical and electrical standard interfaces like ATX, PCIe, SATA, etc. while phones basically have none, because they’re such highly integrated devices.
Look at laptops – everything is soldered down to a single board that is custom shaped to the shell. No connectors in sight. Compare to earlier laptops that were somewhat modular with connectors all over the place – the difference is that the modular laptop was twice as large, twice as heavy, and cost twice as much – and the common consumer offering was still obsolete by the time it broke so practically nobody bothered to repair or upgrade them. That’s why they vanished off the market.
The old modular system only truly benefited the handful few collectors and nerds who wanted to keep their old IBM Thinkpads running, and that was less than 0.1% of the market.
And with the quick evolution in network technologies, a phone only has about 5 years of life before it becomes obsolete in terms of connectivity, so expecting someone to keep using theirs for 7 years beyond is ludicrous.
I had to switch phones last time, because I had bought an “LTE” phone that was supposed to be future proof after 3G, but then they changed the future and it was no longer compatible with all of the LTE spec so I could get no 4G on it and it dropped down to 2G.
That is exactly what I didn’t say – you simply have to create a firmware on your brand new board so it knows how to talk to older hardware – the part is something you were making anyway, and the added cost of a firmware to suit the older platforms is so minor as to be irrelevant…
Also really not true, yes many platforms are that way, but there are counter examples as well. Soldering everything to one board isn’t the only solution in play, still plenty of laptops and portables with some common connectors and modularity all the way up to extremes like Framework laptops where the chassis, speakers, display, keyboard, memory, ssd, motherboard and probably a few other bits I’ve forgotten are supposed to be and so far have been user replaceable and upgradeable across the generations! And all in a very slim form factor too.
That might happen to your device, but that actually just makes providing spare parts for those that want to keep their phone running easy – you have 90% of your originally sold stock turning up as waste to recycle as the customers chase the new thing. Not going to be expensive for the company to turn that into profit as they sell a spare part. Also really not been my experience my phones have frequently been 10 years old or more as the network round here at least doesn’t do anything but add the new faster options quickly – Not like everyone is running around fitting 10gig and more networking to every node of their home network… Heck most folks with it are probably still happy enough with the100meg wired 30 years ago!
“disassembly and repair – including obligations for producers to make critical spare parts available to repairers within 5-10 working days, and until 7 years after the end of sales of the product model on the EU market;”
They write clearly what is considered a critical spare part. The whole point of the regulation is to force manufacturers to design for reliability (as in “1.2. Design for reliability” in the Annex…), reducing the incessant amount of electronic waste produced by the manufacturers wanting to make a quick buck.
Critical spare parts: Battery or batteries, front-facing camera assembly, rear-facing camera assembly, external audio connector(s), external charging port(s), mechanical button(s), main microphone(s), speaker(s), hinge assembly, mechanical display folding mechanism.
Furthermore: “Spare parts concerned by points (a) and (c) shall not be assemblies comprising more than one of the listed spare part types, with the following exceptions:…”.
Basically all of those parts can nowadays be made in a backward compatible manner. It is just in no way compatible with the current state of the market – produce and sell as much irreparable stuff to maximize profit. Besides, it’s not as if this regulation happened over night. 16 June 2023 is the day they made this regulation, 20 June 2025 it came into effect. Except for Article 6 (Circumvention), which came into effect 20 September 2023.
The manufacturers had time to prepare. Also this whole thing now requires a “Product information sheet”, in short, the EU is taking the PIS. I wonder if a Product Information Safety Sheet will also become necessary. /scnr
The cellphone company itself cannot just start re-making a part because they never made it in the first place – they’re more or less assembly houses that sub-contract to other companies that make their components. Expecting the manufacturer to build up vertical integration and re-design their whole logistics in two years to comply with the regulation is just cloud cuckoo land fantasy.
Or rather, the whole business is sub-sub-sub contractors, so the factory that assembles your phone isn’t even owned by the company. That way they don’t have to keep money locked up in bricks and mortar, and can easily scale the production up and down with the market.
What this is asking is a return to a more 20th century way of doing things, which is less efficient in terms of utilizing productive assets, which in turn means higher prices for goods and services. You see, the profit maximizing is also cost minimizing at the same time.
I don’t think they’ve yet actually proven that they can keep their promises, and I’m not sure what their promises are exactly, or how is it relevant to the case. They also appear to be making their products by sub-contracting factories in China like everyone else does, using the same components and similar design as everyone else, so I don’t see why they would be a proof of anything. It’s just the same stuff with a thin veneer of social responsibility pasted on top.
I mean, Samsung makes a phone with a replaceable battery. I have one.
Yep, and as I already wrote, it would demand a return to a 20th century vertically integrated model of manufacturing, which is more expensive and less responsive to market conditions.
Or they’ve already figured out enough loopholes to cheat the regulation, or they’ll just ignore the regulation, trusting that the consumers will choose the cheaper throw-away products anyways. After all, what is the penalty?
For example: “This Regulation does not apply to the following products: (a)mobile phones and tablets with a flexible main display which the user can unroll and roll up partly or fully; ”
Ding ding ding… guess what’s the rising trend in phones and tablets?
“spare parts being made available within 5-10 working days for seven years after the product stops being sold.”
Let’s test this, and enforce it.
Instead of speculating about potential drawbacks, why not sit back, relax and enjoy the premiere?
It’s finally happening – something meaningful for us, Earthlings (in Europe). Let’s see how it works on a large scale – will we really save resources? Will the price rise?
Most importantly, will this lead to the next regulation, this time concerning software?
I hope so.
IMHO, the OS and software are part of the core issue. I still remember having to turn off my Galaxy S4 — a small, elegant device — because it had become so slow and outdated that I couldn’t even start my banking app anymore. The issue wasn’t with the CPU/RAM performance, but with the developers. And what did I get in return for a new phone? A bulkier, heavier device with no option to change the battery myself. A tracking monster with plenty of unwanted UI effects. And what about apps? Their binary size, memory consumption and network traffic have exploded. Who profits from that? Certainly not me, not the user.
This is an industry-wide issue, and regulation is one of the meaningful tools available to us in a democracy. Pure Neo-Liberalism won’t change anything — it’s a pipe dream. Nor will Europe give birth to the next tech giant that will solve this problem in a way that respects freedom (in many ways), the planet and its inhabitants. This is not due to an excess of regulations or spontaneous consideration for its citizens. The problem is a lack of motivation: mobile technology enriches other parts of the world, creates addiction, and shapes habits according to the will of the big tech companies behind it. There is an industry dictatorship, and at least we can acknowledge that the European Union is trying to break it (a bit).
Having said that, companies in Europe should definitely invest more in building its “own” tech-stack.
We are all reading Hackaday for one reason or another. Engineers should not fear regulations because they will simply become part of the next specifications. Customers should rejoice, and their budget will set the price cap, and businessmen will overcome potential issues — they always do.
Yeah they could’ve been more specific about OS. A text like “an operating system update may not negatively impact the devices functionality in such a manner that it decreases the usability of the device” or something like that would have been nice.
While I do not know if it will lead to such a regulation concerning software, I wouldn’t be too surprised if it did. The EU is looking for ways to get rid of Microsoft Windows – and Microsoft is giving them a lot of support in this endeavor (https://endof10.org/)! Seen some projects that go about making a EU centric operating system (https://eu-os.eu/ among others). The French National Gendarmerie apparently uses an Ubuntu spin-off called “GendBuntu” and OpenOffice/LibreOffice, and are using it to this day (Wikipedia article mentions “December 2024 – Upgrade to Gendbuntu 24.04” in timeline).
And the EU has a code repository (https://code.europa.eu/info/about), although “On code.europa.eu, projects can only be created by software development project teams working for European Union
Institutions. Dear colleagues, get in touch with us if you wish to set up a new group/project (see below)”.
So while they don’t directly address this issue yet – they may. Given the course they’re on right now it is not entirely improbable that they could be already preparing this step.
I for one am happy with this general direction.
“Seen some projects that go about making a EU centric operating system (https://eu-os.eu/ among others). The French National Gendarmerie apparently uses an Ubuntu spin-off called “GendBuntu” and OpenOffice/LibreOffice, and are using it to this day (Wikipedia article mentions “December 2024 – Upgrade to Gendbuntu 24.04” in timeline).”
My complaint about this is that they can’t come up with anything better/else than Linux, anything creative.
From a security point of view, it’s at least questionable.
Because, seriously, switching from Windows monopoly to Linux monopoly?
It would be more reasonable to use a combination of BSD, Solaris and the other Unixes.
So that one security hole can’t affect all desktop systems and server system (worldwide) same time.
But that will probably remain whishful thinking.
For over 25 years, people do only think of Linux as an alternative to Windows. As an universal solution to everything.
They’re unable to make a mental turnaround. They’re hard-coded into using Linux as a replacement.
“I for one am happy with this general direction.”
Good to you. I’m concerned.
There are so many alternative OSes that could be use in certain applications, to maintain diversity.
For example:
– AROS (AmigaOS successor, has distributions, too)
– Haiku (related to Zeta/BeOS)
– MinuetOS/KolibriOS (simplistic, but tiny and no known security holes, runs easily on thin clients)
– QNX (used to be used in automotive, has nanokernel, Unix like, was free gift on cover disks/internet dial-up floppy)
– ecomstation/ArcaOS (former OS/2)
– ReactOS (Windows NT equivalent)
– BSD (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD)
– Darwin (macOS kernal, BSD like)
– FreeDOS, PC-MOS/386 and many other DOSes (for industry, embedded use, immune against internet attacks)
– Solaris, HP/UX, AIX, IRIX, UnixWare (the former workstation *nix OSes)
And these are merely the most common that.
Sone thoughts:
ReactOS could be forked into a dedicated replacement/distro that serves a special purpose.
ArcaOS can run Win32 applications via ODIN and run ported X11/POSIX applications (Firefox etc).
Please don’t get me wrong, none is a one-fits-it-all.
But using at least some of them instead of defaulting to Linux is worth a try.
The less monoculture there is, the healthier is a network or workplace.
It makes things more failsafe, more rugged, also.
Not seldomly, a Windows update will affect many PCs same time (say, update happens over night).
On next boot-up, say in the morning, all PCs in an office might be broken.
This is very likely to happen if similar standard hardware was used (same PC models).
Linux has similar issues with attacks,
because Linux being the kernel is running in kernal space, after all.
It runs stable until it doesn’t. That’s why a security hole hits even harder on Linux.
Oh, I understand concern. When I say it’s a step in the right direction it’s because it takes strips the power away from the corporation. Microsoft has too much power over the European market (and market power in general), and is abusing this power for profit.
I too would like a world in which Haiku or FreeBSD were more available – this is mostly limited by hardware manufacturers who produce…closed source drivers for wireless chipsets and such. Heck, I’d even run FreeBSD if the wireless stack was a bit better (for some reason, across devices, wireless ends up being unbearably slow).
Linux just has the major benefit of being an open source commons. While an individual person may not have the expertise to modify it for e.g. running with legacy systems, a government should be able to pull that off. And it’s well supported and well known.
So it becomes a logical choice for most – supportive communities exist, there’s an ecosystem around it and such. From a technical perspective there may be trade-offs, but from a social perspective it’s currently simply the most practical option.
I’ve tried most of the available options but still used Linux. Why? Because it works – most of the time. It’s “easy” to fix most of the time. Heck, recently with all the changes I don’t even know how to use Windows (or many Microsoft products) anymore, since they keep changing stuff. And it’s layers upon layers of badly integrated legacy stuff. It’s less about what could be done, more about “how practical is it”. And sadly security is not practical, the end user only sees it as annoying (until they get hacked).
Obviously the only solution is to adopt DuskOS and write a GUI in Forth /scnr
What I find more concerning is the direction that communication has taken. Discord and Slack are both a boon upon humanity, it’s just the Windows mistake again but this time for chat clients. There’s a lot of projects that I’d like to contribute to, but then they have a Discord channel (which I categorically refuse to use). The simple truth is: some things should not necessarily be left in the hands of corporations with profit driven interests, as politically charged as that sounds, as it in itself can become a security risk/liability.
My first tablet became unusable when the touchscreen broke. I sent it in to the manufacturer (HiSense) and got it back with a note saying that they don’t have replacement parts. This was within the first year after I bought it.
My second tablet (Archos) eventually stopped charging. They didn’t bother to repair it and simply sent back a completely different tablet. Only after I insisted, I received a tablet of the same model. I later found out that the replacement had a broken µSD slot. And it freezes with garbage on the screen (bad solder joint?) if I touch it “too much” while playing videos.
Now after 8 years a 1 inch wide strip of the touchscreen no longer reacts, which made me buy a new one. (Why on earth did manufacturers stop making tablets with Full HD and +300dpi???) Anyway, I chose a cheap one from Doogee. The last available software update is from December 2023…
So, yeah, I do welcome this new regulation.
These are Chinese contract manufacturing brands. They’re basically fire-and-forget products that are made in a big batch of millions at a time, then pushed to all the retail channels at once, and then completely forgotten as far as warranties or returns are considered. They simply spam the market with cheap junk under different brand names, if they bother to brand them at all – you can find the same products on AliExpress from a hundred different sellers.
You don’t need a regulation to avoid crud like that. Just stop buying junk.
But now even these companies will have to offer replacement parts and updates if they want to sell in the EU.
And I’m sure they’ll comply. Just like they currently do with modern slavery laws, IP laws, CE certification, RHOS certification, energy efficiency, and import duties.
What’s the EU going to do when they don’t? Invade China?
Probably stop export technology to China. China can’t produce without European tech – at least not at the level that Europe is producing stuff. A lot of PV technology has been brought over from Germany.
KUKA for example started as a German company, the was acquired by China’s Midea Group. Transrapid, developed in German – “The last one, Transrapid-08, was offered to China under the brand name SMT Transrapid”, which was iirc the same model as the one that led to a fatal crash in Germany (due to human error), resulting in the Transrapid never being adopted in Germany. PV tech, strongly pioneered at Frauenhofer, came to China through strategic assimilation of production lines and experts into China. When Germany caught on, making acquisitions harder, China obtained licenses and reverse engineered.
And that’s just the case of Germany. Other examples exist, like Nokia, Opera, Cars…
Running over to China for cheap manufacturing and increased profits was one of the dumbest idea in the history of MBAs anyways, and a mistake they keep making (Japanese did it similar to China with cars. Toyota has the reputation for reliability for a reason, and both their reliability and adaptability has been proven by yours truly – insurgents in the middle east).
What the EU will most likely do when these company systematically try to undermine these regulations is simply to make it much harder for these companies to put their products on the European markets, or prohibit it entirely.
One interesting example is Russia: China for a long time used the Russian Saturn AL-31 (e.g. SU-27 Flanker), which powered Chinese J-10 jets. When Russia caught on to what they were doing (using their technology to develop their own jet engine and trying to compete with them), Russia stopped exporting to them altogether, resulting in the WS-15 engine in J-20.
Thing is, making jet engines reliable is hard. And the predominant Chinese culture doesn’t necessarily mean they build the most reliable stuff in the first place. That’s not to say the Chinese are bad craftsmen – they certainly have capable people – but culture does play a large role in shaping technology (e.g. Japanese Kaizen and similar).
So no. Europe doesn’t need to invade China. It wouldn’t solve anything and there are alternative routes that make more sense for dealing with China.
Why do you think that both USA and Europe are so bent on bringing chip manufacturing back? Do you think it will be only chip manufacturing?
The reality is – both Europe and the USA are already taking steps precisely because of the non-compliance regarding modern slavery laws, IP laws, CE certification, RHOS certification, energy efficiency, and import duties, and because they have finally realized that it’s a matter of national security not to have China produce everything.
Yes they can. That ship has sailed.
Smarter Every Day did a video about the subject recently, where they noted that not only does China run the factories, they run the factories that make the factories including the tooling while the US companies only do the designs, which the Chinese are perfectly capable of doing themselves.
So, stop buying the cheapest of crap no-name things then complaining when they’re exactly that……
FYI the law also says the following, which is good news for those afraid that this will be meaningless in a few years:
Article 8
Review
The Commission shall review this Regulation in the light of technological progress and present the result of this assessment including, if appropriate, a draft revision proposal,
The EPREL database for smartphones and tablets is here, btw.:
https://eprel.ec.europa.eu/screen/product/smartphonestablets20231669
The silly interface doesn’t allow to filter by manufacturer.
EPREL – 1.0.92 – 20/06/2025, 05:45:33. Heh.
I’ve written to the European Commission. It’s not straight forward, but possible.
Hopefully they can implement some sort of search function like every online shop has, put in “Iphone 16” and you’d get all Apple Iphone 16 related entries (you’d still need the model number, but it would make it far easier to use).
There will be basically zero manufacturers adding easily removable batteries under this law. As written, after 18 months, manufacturers can apply for an exemption if their batteries have a high enough cycle life. 83% at 500 cycles or 80% at 1000. So pretty much well get one year of crappy models that are thicker than the existing models and have substantial waterproofing and durability concerns and then everyone will figure out it’s a terrible idea and we’ll go back to where we started.
And the regulation doesn’t apply to folding or rolling display phones at all, so the fancier newer phones are totally exempt.