I wish I could upvote this more.

It's a crime how I had to throw away in the past perfectly usable devices because they were forced into obsolescence.

So plan ahead. For the 2024 model of each iPhone, get all the permissions to release all of the firmware in year 2032.

It’s the smaller products and businesses that cease to exist because it’s too expensive to meet regulations. Bad regulation raises the cost of entry into the market and strengthens the big players like Apple.

And that's one that got big enough to remember them. Wikipedia lists 188 mobile phone manufacturers [1]. A lot of them very local (e.g. EvertekTunisie making phones for Tunisia and Morocco) or defunct; But even my local (German) retailer offers 35 brands. Big ones like Apple, Samsung and Xiaomi, budget brands like Oppo or ZTE, niche brands like CAT or Beafon. It's a crowded market that doesn't seem particularly hard to enter.

And judging by the spotty compatibility of LineageOS they don't all use the same hardware either.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mobile_phone_manufact...

Europe has an unhealthy culture of naturalistic hippiedom, so this is just the same thing that causes Germany to shut down nuclear power.

(If you think this one's good, try combining it with their six other giant laws you haven't heard of some of which conflict with this.)

And every country regulates cell phones in particular, since they use shared airwaves, have rare earth metals in them, sometimes have exploding batteries etc.

Really? Are you claiming that capitalists are so much of a fool that instead of making, say, half the profit they were making before in an unregulated market, they would readily prefer to make 0 profits? The reality is that if American BigTech exit the EU market, then some local or non-American competitor will step in to fill the vacuum. Or have you already forgotten that the European Nokia once dominated the mobile phone industry?

As a legislative body it certainly isn't perfect but you are ascribing motivations and making statements about it that have zero connection with reality.

Please do link the other "six giant laws that conflict".

The people on here saying phone OSes should be open source and unlocked to make them last longer will find the ecodesign and security regulations actually encourage locking them down so you can't break them.

could you specify the actual GDPR regulations in question which clearly conflict with these battery regulations (without any creative contrivance required on our part)?

or are you saying there isn't a conflict in that case (in which case, which ones do?) that part wasn't clear

it seems like a creative but unlikely contrivance that there is an actual legal conflict there as you describe

you quoting yourself when it doesn't answer the question, without adding more context, leads me to believe that you don't think there is any actual legal conflict there, either

Yes, I firmly believe every every manufacturer would ignore an economic block full of developed countries and 450M people.

This is the sort of bad take that keeps me returning to HN. Some people here are incredibly dense.

On a side note, I wouldn't mind if Apple decided to not sell their toys around here anymore.

Regulations can be adapted to affect only the companies that reach X percentage in sales or in market share. The EU's Digital Markets Act does precisely this, for instance.

The regulators can let smaller players grow and thrive, and regulate them once they've exceeded a certain threshold.

Look at that GDPR popup. I and everyone I know just clicks “Accept All Cookies” now.

Sometimes regulators make something amazing, but sometimes it’s a load of turd. It’s hard to tell what’s going to turn out sometimes.

No one is building a product from complete scratch.

One could also imagine radically different IP laws concerning firmware or even software.

Moreover, there exist devices with fully open source firmware, so if anybody wanted one to copy, they don't need yours. They only need yours to use it with your hardware.

These devices have a chip in them that needs drivers and firmware. That's software. In particular it's the software that interfaces with the operating system. But the software is specific to a given version of the Linux kernel. When a new kernel comes out, you often have to update the software, for which you need the source code. So when the vendor stops doing this without publishing the code, nobody else can cost effectively do it either, and you can no longer use the hardware with recent versions of the kernel. But older kernel versions have known security vulnerabilities in them, so you can't use those either.

The ask is not that they provide free factories for everyone to make their own hardware, it's that they release the source code for this software in particular. Anybody could then copy the software, but it's only useful in combination with their hardware. A competitor in China can't use the same drivers with some other chip, that chip would need different drivers. That's what drivers are. So the only people who want this code are the people who paid the hardware vendor for their product and want to continue using it.

The hardware vendor, by contrast, doesn't want to give it to them, not because they fear some competitor using it but because then the customer would be able to keep using the hardware they paid for instead of having to buy a new one. Which is unreasonable enough to prohibit.

Well, it would also allow compatible hardware to be manufactured. E.g. "IBM compatible".

And it also has no meaning in this context. What is "compatible" with a WiFi chip or a storage controller? They're all already compatible with each other. The driver is the thing that converts from the device-specific operations to the APIs provided by the kernel. The kernel APIs are already public and anyone can implement them for their own hardware.

Do you want to sell your devices in this large, debeloped, profitable market? The you have to comply.

Manufacturing supply chains are already awfully complicated beast. Complying with reflgulaion of providing firmware for your hardware should hardly be a huge problem.

In 2011 you obtain a patent wholly owned by the company.

In 2012 you fail to pay the franchise tax and filing paperwork for your company so the state dissolves it. You don't care because you aren't making money.

In 2013 another company starts making a product that infringes on your patent.

You are the defacto owner of the patent. This is because you were the owner of the company when it was terminated. All of its assets and liabilities devolved to you. No action was required of you for this to happen, it just happens.

Now imagine this business was actually a joint venture between two wholly owned subsidiaries of two different holding companies, one of which was public but has gone bankrupt and the other was private but subsequently merged with a public conglomerate that spun off a child company, keeping only 40% of its stock after IPO.

The patent is still owned by people, but good luck finding them all.

The invention as disclosed and documented in the patent is free to the world.

This is reversing the natural order of things. That bureaucrat isn't nullifying fucking ANYTHING. That bureaucrat is artificially limiting who is allowed to create/use a thing.

The natural state of the information is: "Use this - it's free". The whole of humanity might exist because mirror neurons literally go: "Hey - I can do that too!".

It's only when you add a monstrously complex and entirely artificial patent system on top of things that it gets complex.

So we're ALREADY deciding who is allowed to use things, and it's already artificial and bureaucratic.

All this does is fucking stop making it worse. And patent/copywrite is already so god damn egregious as a system. I'm firmly in the camp of "nuke it from orbit". It's time to try something other than this hideous abusive system.

I agree that patents are odd here, but the solution isn't to patch in more power to bureaucrats over the top of the other power. You seem to be saying this at the end as well, so, as I say, I'm not sure what point you're making. But your excitement on this topic is appreciated.

What is confusing here? The entire structure is already a perversion of the natural world.

If we did not have our government, and the rules that it enforces (those "bureaucrats" you don't seem to like), then there is no "invention" to be nullified.

They already have this power. They enforce it through violence and imprisonment (tools reserved officially to the government). If the bureaucrats want your idea - they will take it, because they are the only thing stopping them from doing so.

The question is not: "Will the government nullify my invention?!?!?". It's - "What might my life have been like if the government did not restrict SO many people from competing at all - by artificially stopping them from using the tools and ideas they see around them? (for fairly ridiculous time periods)"

This is possible, but the power to enforce patents is in the courts, and not in the patent bureaucracy. Having a single group that can invalidate parents on a whim is different to that.

And patents can be useful, although I don't have many examples. SawStop is one, though, where even a 20 year patent doesn't seem to have been long enough to establish a successful business before incumbents swoop in. Patents like that are pro-competition in that scenario. Otherwise why bother starting a new business when your R&D effort can just be taken advantage of by someone else as soon as you hit on the answer?

In reality, it's a bunch of work which costs money, and if you don't have to spend that money, why would you?

There's an entire government department dedicated to selling this property.

Arguably the American model of abandonment is better because abandoned IP doesn't actually result in any lawsuits, while that UK model is built to effectively encourage them.

I think I have even more elegant solution. All IP should be subject to a tax (or maintenance fee or whatever you want to call it). As soon as the IP owner fails to pay the tax, IP falls to public domain irrevocably. The actual structure of the tax can be subject to debate. I would propose a highly progressive tax over time, for example for patents something like $100 for the first year, then doubling every year.

Seriously, why should IP not be taxed? We tax almost everything else that is possible to tax. Especially given it is far from certain that IP is net benefit for society. (I'm willing to give the benefit of doubt though, that's why I am not proposing to abolish IP completely)

I can support your proposal only if the IP taxes are deductible from incoming tax.

If you can't see the glaring problems there then there's no hope for you....

But hopefully you immediately recognize that it hurts the least advantaged the greatest while also providing a mechanism for anticompetitive behavior under the guise of following your precept (make the fee high enough and only established authors/publishers can hold any copyright).

I really get the feeling you didn't think it through at all....

Correct, but easily solved if the tax were to be based on license sales numbers and income. Small/poor license owners would pay almost nothing whereas the big players would pay plenty.

If there's no income the fee is negligible, permitting the rights holder to squat on them for next to nothing and prevent the use of the otherwise abandoned IP by the public....

For instance, an art gallery takes a photo of an artwork that's out of copyright for reference/insurance and (a) doesn't allow photos in the gallery and (b) the photo which is copyright isn't on sale (as it wasn't intended for that purpose). So the out of copyright artwork is locked up from reproduction.

Variations on this theme are a problem with galleries and museums worldwide.

If it wasn't viable then it would either never be created or would automatically enter the public domain.

Currently, if IP is not commercially viable then the author has the choice of not creating it, or creating it and releasing it under CC or just public domain. So essentially the same.

To assert the model isn't blatantly flawed is absurd

I said the structure can be discussed. There is no problem giving first number of years free to see if the IP is commercially viable. The aggressive progression (doubling every year) means that literally all IP is in public domain after a couple of decades.

A simpler solution is to start with a return to something resembling the original IP laws where one lost their rights within their own lifetime.... Theres a reason that was originally proposed, rather than lifetime protections, and why creators originally accepted it with glee... All parties need to remember those reasons, whether rights holder, state or consumer.

Just stop fighting for a broken concept and come up with something better.

It's hard to see in the status quo, but it doesn't mean it can't be changed. Whatever system exists today works the way it does because laws defined (or didn't) how they operate. If we change those, the system has to change with it.

So no "permission" to release would be necessary if government's modified ther copyright laws to withdraw their granted protections after some "event" occurred.

The bigger problem is not the permission, it is actually finding the code so it could be 'released' once the event triggered. To make this work would require some form of required escrow in order to gain copyright protection in the first place where the code would be held until such time as the removal of copyright protection from it triggered, and then it could be released.

Trying to mandate that for all software might be too ambitious to politically succeed in practice - but mandating source code escrow for software used in certain regulated devices - smartphones, cars, planes, medical devices, etc - might be more achievable. You wouldn’t even need to touch copyright law, it would just need to be a product regulation. Of course, copyright law would have to be touched for a compulsory license, but consider that phase 2 and source code escrow as phase 1 - phase 1 could be enacted now, phase 2 saved for later

There's no such thing as a natural right, period. They're all imaginary creations of humans.

There is a recent movement trying to redefine them as such, led by moneyed interests that would obviously stand to profit from such arguments; but legal history is very clear: IP was never conceived on the grounds of being "natural" or "innate" in any way, but as a device to sustain certain economic sectors. IP is no more natural than subsidies for carmakers are natural.

Copyright and patent are not among those. The Constitution provides that congress can grant "for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"

"Limited times" could be defined by congress to "expire" under whatever circumstances they choose.

Realistically, I'm sure there's a loophole they can leverage to achieve these. The EU is a major party to the WIPO and other members will likely be open to "renegotiating" if the alternative is the EU leaving completely rendering the WIPO pointless. The US pulled this stunt many times with other international orgs and treaties.

"We would never think about taking your IP but if you want to do business in this region, you must agree to voluntarily open-source all drivers after the product is no longer maintained."

Or:

"Of course you don't have to agree to anything but if you stop supporting the product and don't open source the drivers, consumers can obtain money damages for their devices becoming inoperable. "

Then it would be understood and agreed that anyone making software they have to release as open source what was closed source 5 years back. This way I would say that you can't bring the "but the competitors will use this to steal my business" argument.

What you would get in essence is a snapshot of what technology looked like 5 years ago (or a decent number of years people can agree on) and you can fork from there if there's a will to give a second life to various devices.

But really, I don't want an ugly phone because someone decided batteries should be user replaceable like in the old days. And yes, I like my iPhone to be sleek.

I don't know about ugly, but my galaxy s5 with a replaceable battery was barely thicker than an iphone 14 without one: 8.1 mm vs 7.8 mm, according to wikipedia. The difference is actually bigger between the 14 and the 7, so even without removable batteries, iphones are getting thicker.

The GS5 was also IP67 certified, and, indeed, it had no issues under heavy rain attached to my motorcycle handlebars, during multiple long trips.

I strongly doubt that having a removable cover would noticeably alter the phone's looks or thickness.

Secondly, you put prioritise on asthetics over what's good for the planet?

It’s a typical facade argument you might hear from politicians when they parrot lobbiysts.

Exactly the reason to force manufacturers to change their supply chains.

Huh, why not? I'd love yours too, but battery is also good. What do you do with a superb open source phone where you need to replace device because battery is dead and you cannot replace it? Let's please aim for both and everything!

Except it doesn't. The last two waterproof phones I had had user-replaceable batteries, a USB port, and even a headphone jack.

What it does is add a few dollars onto the BOM.

https://www.gottabemobile.com/samsung-galaxy-s5-water-test-d....

So this is demonstrably possible. The only reason I can think of that it's not done anymore is cost savings.

I don't want my phone to look like that by law.

Asking unironically: what were they? I want such a phone

Maybe if they decrease size of display, it wouldn't be that bulky. And we would finally get a phone again that is not wannabe tablet.

But how are you gonna show all the ads, dark patterns and newsletter signup forms? We can't afford to miss out on all that growth and engagement.

There is a dive housing that can handle up to 60m depth, but that’s a special case.

First, it seems like you could just make the phone part waterproof and if they dunk it, they have to replace the battery. I have ruined a phone by putting it through the wash, and I would have been very happy to just replace the battery instead of chucking the phone.

Beyond that, I wonder what the reality is for waterproofing needs. Are people taking smartphones diving? IP65 means it's resistant to 'spray' - like rain, not a firehose - and it seems like a battery compartment with a tight-fitting cover would be more than enough for this. IP68 doesn't apparently mandate a depth rating but recent iPhones are tested to 6 meters for 30 minutes. That's more water pressure than 99% of those iPhones are ever going to see.

I don't personally think the non-replaceable battery has anything to do with IP rating, it's because manufacturers want soft-sided batteries with more delicate terminal connections, for volume/capacity reasons.

It is far more than "just a gasket and a few screws". The rating can't just be good on unboxing day. You want it to hold even after a few years, several drops on the floor, in cold weather, etc.

Watch maintenance has been done by skilled professionals using generic tools and (generally) generic components. Waterproofing is an excuse used to limit our ability to repair and maintain our devices and maybe because somebody didn't like the appearance of a screw face or screw cover on one side of the device.

Are you prepared to have a similar ratio for your phone? Basically the phones we have now with a permanent, very durable waterproof case?

Strictly from a product design and especially hardware design standpoint, I get the resistance to easy replacement of certain parts. Designing for a replaceable battery means designing your seal to withstand at least twice as many battery replacements as the law requires, or you make sure you have enough replacement seals stockpiled to cover the number that will be replaced, or you use a a commodity seal (think an O-ring).

Apple eventually made ~86 million iPhone 8 and 8 plus. Let's say that's representative of any given model of phone. How many millions (billions?) of seals is that? How much does that cost to store? To distribute? How much does that affect the cost of the phone?

I am fully behind right-to-repair. I won't work for companies that have lobbied against it (and as an embedded hardware and firmware guy, that's significant). But there is a measurable, monetary cost to designing things to be repaired. Either we accept that only the richest n% of e.g. phone manufacturers can afford to stay in business, we as the consumer accept lower performance at the same price point, or both.

All of that said, my point regarding connectors with finite cycle lifespans is relevant. These physical devices themselves have a lifespan. What is the point of replacing a battery when the charging port, headphone jack, physical buttons, touch screen, etc are spec'd to fail well before the average battery does? What about if you have the same iPhone 8 soldering problem, where the phone can't actually survive being put in the back pocket of a decently tight pair of pants? How does government regulation regarding batteries reverse the trend of people buying cheap things because they cost less?

> What is the point of replacing a battery when the charging port, headphone jack, physical buttons, touch screen, etc are spec'd to fail well before the average battery does

Parts often/usually last far in excess of what they're spec'd for as I'm sure you know. And many of the things you list aren't critical to operation like the battery is.

The vaunted Samsung s5, you still had to make sure that the battery was very secure and just right.

> https://www.gottabemobile.com/samsung-galaxy-s5-water-test-d...

> If you remove the battery, the Galaxy S5 will remind you to make sure the back cover is back in place securely.

The new law apparently doesn't require a user to be able to replace the battery by hand. Just that it is serviceable.

I think the new law would basically mean the end user doesn't have to deal with glue now at least.

Also, it is just ingenious to attribute everything to malice — is a modern combustion engine also irreparable because of some conteo, or is it irreparable simply because for efficiency reasons they had to use more precise technology with smaller error margins, where one’s fatty human hand just doesn’t cut anymore?

Plus the Samsung Active line never needed to go to these extremes to churn out perfectly fine waterproof phones at slightly higher than average prices. And they weren't the only ones with these sort of offerings.

I never claimed it was impossible. I'm only pointing out there are far more severe design constraints than a lot of people even understand, yet they confidently proclaim it is both a simple matter of trivial engineering and completely free of consequences.

The fact is gluing is simpler and cheaper but most importantly it reduces the repairability of phones by third parties. Quite often trying to repair a phone will cause it to be destroyed, making replacing a battery more risky and difficult. Companies would love not to have to use glue, but <design excuse>! Nothing at all to do with built-in obsolescence.

Honestly, it probably only adds a few bucks to the BOM and the consumer who doesn't care about repairability still likely comes out better off in the long run because their phone lasts them longer and/or resells for more because it isn't junk after 3 years.

With android phones the resale value/demand wasn't there (also due in part to bad software support lifetimes which would also need to be addressed) so they'd just get tossed/shelved after 2 to 3 years even if they were perfectly functional.

If you scaled the forces and subjected the car to the equivalent of dropping a phone on the floor it would be totaled instantly... forget about maintaining waterproofing.

Thus I stand by my original statement: people making claims like "just a gasket and some screws" have never designed a product under similar constraints and are making bad assumptions or straight-up Dunning-Kruger errors left and right.

http://www.n2ltd.com/intermec-introduces-latest-rugged-mobil...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_5210

They can even fit into a pocket!

They also want displays not to crack. That is why lot of them are buying protective cases.

Are not sealed up phones overrate in this context?

I loved lumia devices - easily openable back to replace battery, nice materials (rubbery polycarbonate?) that offered nice grip. Having PC displays instead of glass would be awesome - no need for extra protective case because the shatter woild be a tning od the past. At the worst, a scratch resistant screen protector, which we all already put in the devices either way to help avoid screen cracks..

Yes, id didn't have newest 5G, but guess what - my new phone has it yet I don't have coverage. Storage could wear out but are you really doing load IO test on it? screen burnin/crack... maybe if someone is glued to the phone "24/7" and doesn't take care of the device... but as I said - using good policarbon materials (including for screen!) would get rid of this problem mostly...

See Jerry Rig Everything. He even says that there are solutions for this even for glued-up phones, manufacturers just don't want to implement them because they're for sure against battery replacements.

It's not like glue is some sort of magic substance.

I have this new Nokia phone with a replaceable battery. It came with the pin you can use to open it (probably costs a few cents to manufacture, but if I had plenty of time to spare, I could've made one with a sturdy piece of plastic and sandpaper). The "mechanism" that keeps the back panel is just a piece of rubber, probably the same kind you find on hermetically sealing food containers.

Also, very few people want their phones water-proof (what for?). And even if you really, really wanted that, you could like spend 5-10 Euro on a water-proof case.

This is insane. So that rain doesn’t destroy it? So that spilling a drink doesn’t destroy it? So that dropping it in the toilet doesn’t destroy it?

I'd take a removeable battery over almost every modern feature on phones today.

If rain destroys your phone that is just plain incompetence from the design department. Or rather, they were not incompetent, but other forces made sure they were not paying much attention to water resistance.

My wettest experience with a smartphone was when I got surprised by heavy rain when walking to the hair dresser. I arrived soaking wet. Got the phone (a HTC Desire Z) out of my pocket, water was running out of it. I opened the battery lid, the hairdresser blew with the hairdryer for a couple of minutes and all was fine.

Once my Google Nexus 4 died because of rain. Normal rain was no problem ever with it, even to make calls in a rain. But one day it rained very heavily with a wind so strong it was hard to walk against it. It felt like being in a carwash for ~ 10 minutes.

I was waterlogged up to my underwear. Nexus 4 was in my pocket and died. I put it to a bunch of rice and let it airdry. After it dried, the phone acted weirdly.

Lesson learnt: if the product doesn't specifically indicate a high level of water protection level, consider it not having ANY protection. "Resistant against spills" and other handwavy marketing mumbo jumbo has zero substance.

Yes, if you were stupid and went swimming with your wrist-watch you would've killed it... and every now and then I'd hear a story about how something like that happened.

Water-proof watches were seen as a luxury, however small, that nobody really needed outside of like scuba divers.

I don't even know if my phone is water proof or not, and I had it since 2016. I never tried swimming with it or leaving it outside in the rain or doing any of the other stupid things you listed... why would any sane person do something like that?

No, they don't. And those who do have to expose their phones to extreme conditions might buy a protective case. Very few people expose their phones to conditions they know to endanger electronics... it's common sense not to use electronics underwater, unless it's the special kind that's designed to do that.

You really shouldn’t want to replace batteries on the fly in general — it makes stealing easier (modern phones can’t be powered off easily without authorization) so you may find it before it loses power, waterproofing suffers, etc.

Yet I don’t see manufacturers add better screen protection, quite the opposite in fact.

So phone cases/bumpers it is for me now.

Software can come after (or during).

Let's amplify postmarketos a bit ..

If one was lucky, maybe with developer tools there was a firmware update, and even those happened at most once.

Feature phones weren't a substitute for personal computers. They weren't as necessary of an accessory as it is today. On the other hand, standards governing how those phones worked weren't changing as fast, so, given good care, you could use your phone for 10+ years.

Updates today are a way to force users into buying a new phone (eg. my banking up decided not to support an older version of Android, phone vendor doesn't produce updates -- I have to buy a new device).

There weren't updates because there weren't banking apps which could've forced you to abandon your perfectly functioning device.

I am quite sure that many people across the African continent and Asian see it differently.

Best you could do on your phone is to play snake or send an email.

And if we are talking about places like Zimbabwe... there might have been like a hundred cell-phones in the entire country.

As for Asian countries? -- well, places like Japan or Hong Kong weren't much different from Europe. Places like India or China, by and large, didn't have coverage. Even relatively well-off Russia only had cell towers in and around big cities. In Russia at that time there were very few people able to afford a high-end Nokia phone, but even if they had one, those wouldn't be the people who needed a replacement for a PC, nor would they ever use their phone in such capacity. Due to poor economical situation all electronics were seen as a way to prevent wealth from depreciating. Few people who did buy expensive cell phones had no interest in using their advanced abilities, nor was there anything to use such a phone for.

If the software problem ever gets solved, you WILL want to be able to replace the batteries won't you? You can and should fight both battles since they serve the same purpose.

The precedent is also good for devices other than phones.

I agree with what you say, but even phones I had that became unsupported and I couldn't replace the OS in didn't become useless. They still worked.

A user-replaceable battery would be useful for them as well.

Basically, I'm not sure that any one "thing" is the thing that always fails. There are multiple common points of failure and generally speaking, phones are hard to service in any manner these days. I personally would gladly give up water and dust protection, as well as thinness in exchange for ease of serviceability. Unfortunately, that seems to be a relatively uncommon set of preferences (although obviously it's probably much more common in places like Hacker News).

I have had this problem on a regular basis with all of the iPhones I have owned, and the problem has never been that the charge port is dead, but that dust and/or lint has gathered in it.

The solution is very simple: use a tootbrush or similar, preferably something plastic that won't break, BUT NOT ANYTHING METALLIC, to dig out the dirty stuff. Problem solved.

  1. Battery
  2. Software
  3. Charge port/headphone port
  4. eMMC storage runs out of writes
  5. Accidental damage
  6. Screen scratches
  7. Wanting more RAM/storage and faster processing

The software can only be solved by constant effort. There are certain things that could possibly be done to make it easier, such as arranging the device-specific stuff so that the effort already spent on producing a newer set of software for a newer device can be more easily back-ported to the older devices. I think this will only be solved by legislation, such as a law saying that the software must be updated for X years, or even just a law saying that the support duration must be very clearly advertised with the phone allowing consumers to make a choice.

A USB-C port is rated for a minimum of 10,000 plug/unplug cycles, which should be enough to charge the phone once a day for 30 years. If that isn't actually being achieved then we need to ask why not.

The eMMC storage is a problem with many phones. My phone is just starting to slow to a crawl because its main storage is old and it takes a while for it to perform certain writes (or something - it's hard to get an accurate picture of what is happening in there). There is zero information that a consumer has available when deciding which phone to buy to tell them which ones will have a problem with this. This seems to be a fairly obvious target for a law, similar to the software support duration.

Accidental damage - I remember reading a statistic about how the average phone survives a ridiculously short time before being dropped and broken, and I don't get it. I haven't dropped/broken a phone ever. I guess we just let the people who are constantly dropping their phones pick up the tab on that one.

Screen scratch protection is also getting really good now. My current phone has lived in my pocket for several years, and there's almost zero scratching on the screen. Just don't keep your keys in the same pocket.

In terms of replacing a phone because you want something better - I had a look recently to see about replacing my phone. The ones on the market at a comparable price to what I spent on my current one had specifications that were really not much better at all. It doesn't make sense - if a phone with those specifications is deemed suitable for today's market, then my old one with almost identical specifications should be fine too.

So, I don't really see any barriers that aren't insurmountable to a phone lasting several times longer than they do at the moment. Ten years should be easy, 15 years should be possible. At the moment, it's more like 3 if you're very lucky.

And since 2018 I have iPhone XR, and the battery is fine still. So is the phone speed. I’m not changing it anytime soon

iPhone slowness can go hand in hand with batteries going bad, especially in the iPhone 6 days. Apple phones will limit peak performance when it detects the battery voltage can't handle it without too much of a voltage drop. From what I understand its now an opt-out setting, but for most of the iPhone 6's life it wasn't an option.

This isn't the only reason an old phone would be slow though, batteries are not the only consumable component in a phone.

Regulation is not a bad thing - though within the US a fair amount of regulations were constructed to increase the barrier to enter a market at the behest of lobbying.

Which would require regulation, or you have way too much faith in humanity. Regulation isn't bad, just dumb regulations.

https://hackaday.com/2023/04/21/the-cyber-resilience-act-thr...

Because given limited resources, companies prefer to spend their resources on what pays the most. Manufacturing updates may be comparable or even more expensive than making new devices.

I don't see much hope of such a thing being decided soon, if ever. The incentives for politicians are mostly not aligned in this direction.

The much more realistic path towards having devices/software that can be used for more than 3-5 years is IMO if more people started supporting projects like postmarketOS, fairphone, shiftphones, Librem, (mntreform for laptops) and other such croud-funded and more open/free designs.

Once such devices/OSes work good enough to be usable in day to day life without serious hassle/disappointments, more people will actually use them and a community can grow, allowing the products to mature.

I think a very good example (in software) is the f-droid app store that has reached a sufficient level of maturity that many people now use it exclusively (instead of the Google play store).

i used any and all of my smartphones that long. no problem.

-- sent from my Fairphone 4

We should have both. Replace battery, components, and software access.

They should have to provide documentation for every IP block in the device, source code for any drivers, and the ability to unlock the bootloader.

This would make it easier for people to back-port modern android / iOS, or just run linux on old devices.

Going by HN traffic, it appears that what the EU is for is to redesign the iPhone to get the details right that techies disagree with Applle on. We live in extreme times with some remarkable challenges - the EU is wasting bandwidth on this triviality. And it isn't a phone manufacturer, it is probably not going to make phones cheaper or, on net, better for consumers.

Please EU, behave rationally and focus on creating a peaceful and prosperous environment. Stop generating headlines about backseat driver phone redesigns.

[0] https://theconversation.com/poland-dreams-of-building-europe...

[1] https://www.iea.org/commentaries/europe-s-energy-crisis-unde...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65235579

[3] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2022/html/ecb.sp220...

that'd take actual work from the EU.

Mobile phones are very important for European citizens: there's so much stuff that depends on them... companies require their employees to use them for 2FA, governments use them for logging into various government services, it's the preferred method of interfacing with banks, supermarkets, post office... my son's school has a phone app, which is the only way they communicate school schedule, or stuff like teacher's absence, going on field trips etc.

Apple is just another empire of evil that needs to be regulated in order not to treat its customers like slaves. It's absolutely not a waste of time to make them play nice or gtfo.

I thought fear-driven hyperbole ended with the expiry of covid lockdowns. On to the next end of the world story.

It'd be stupid in the good times. It is still stupid in the current times. Let Apple do what they want and focus on keeping people warm, safe and with a roof over their head - all things that are at risk right now. Spend some time on diplomacy trying to calm the re-arming armies down. In Germany the AfD has gone from nothing to nearly 20% in the polls over the last decade; something is really badly wrong with "normal" in Europe to get that sort of political realignment.

Exchangeable batteries are not going to help.

First, the EU doesn't have that much power. It's restricted to commerce and a small part of intergovernmental policy. Defense, tax, criminal laws, education, wellfare, etc., are all outside its remit.

Second, this doesn't take that much "political bandwidth." Someone proposes it, they discuss, end of. This is not an attempt at extending the parliament's power, or controversial.

Third, where do you get the idea from that Apple makes the best design decisions for consumers? They're a rather capitalist and very American company. They exist to increase profits and shareholder value.

Fourth, even something that is well designed from one perspective, can be bad from another. Repairability is one such aspect. The EU is not very activist when it comes to ecology, but at least they get this right.

Fifth. The A fucking D. That's partially on the neo-liberals. Their grubby little hands have made life for certain groups hard and taken away any prospect. Hence people turn to extreme protest parties. For another part, it's on extremist politicians, of course, but also those on the "good" side, with their holier-than-thou attitude. That drives people to the wrong side. None of these is anywhere near the authority of the EU. Make the SDP go back to its roots, and vote for it.

https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/most-popular-phone-brands

If someone decides to buy the phone that is best for them, most likely designer of that phone is going to be Apple.

If you like maybe there is an argument it is Samsung or a Chinese company - but fact is that Europe, as far as real-world results, doesn't have a person on the continent who is willing and able to make a good phone. They certainly don't have someone like that working for the EU.

> First, the EU doesn't have that much power.

Less power they have, the more it matters what they draw attention to.

Companies optimize for profit, that’s it. Capitalism only optimizes for that. Regulations are the means we can mandate some other values taking any kind of priority. Otherwise we would still have coke putting cocaine into our drinks.

The EU gets convinces people to do things with fines and, ultimately, threats of jail time.

Now if one design people want to own and the other design only takes hold because of threats and fines, we ought conclude that the mandatory design is the weaker one. People aren't paying for replaceable batteries. They're paying for tough, cleanly built & waterproof phones. That is why there are sometimes actual queues outside Apple stored as people try to buy iPhones - people really think Apple designs great phones. For the EU to manage that they'd need a man with a truncheon standing off to the side forcing people to line up when they don't want to.

And they're doing this while Europe is being hit by crisis after crisis. This is a terrible time to be trying to reduce the quality of phones in the EU. It is bad enough in a good year. It is a terrible time to be drawing attention away from the actual problems that Europeans are facing. They should be working on making things cheaper and better for EU citizens.

It’s an intercontinental organisation with 30.000 workers, 705 elected seats in the EU Parliament, and the European Council that sits the heads of state of every EU member state.

It better be able to deal with more than one subject at a time.

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/mpo/2023/6/corep...

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/mpo/2023/6/corep...

Incidentally, a lot of cheap Chinese phones based on Mediatek have plenty of leaked documentation available, and a thriving aftermarket community as a result of that.

The EU is ensuring the cell phone companies start by fixing at least one issue. They can then move on to the other.

Without really strict rules in place this would be doomed to fail. You would need to have a huge number of people whose job it would be to review every single software/firmware submission.

Would you mandate that companies must deliver code and build scripts that can be built with a single command and produce usable software/firmware?

Otherwise companies would probably submit random archives of plausible looking code that will never be usable because it depends on 100+ proprietary components.

I ended using even a KaiOS phone just to have a phone I could replace the battery. People keep moaning about phone being waterproof yet my phones fail on me nowhere near water so what is the point?

you know... you could also try asking the US government to do it...

It has considerably slowed down in the last 3-5 years, so it makes sense to only mandate longer lifespans nowadays.

Not sure what the latest update on this is. IIRC the planned penalty was to make the manufacturer give full refunds to the consumer for devices that violate the requirement.

[1] https://www.androidauthority.com/eu-smartphone-updates-rules...

https://www.heise.de/news/EU-Kommission-bringt-Reparatur-und...

So I see it as a starting point, and we need further targeted iterations, including the one you pointed out (thank you!)

No woke bs marketing, no coorporate white washing, no marketing with "green sustainability": they just do it instead of talking about it.

Doesn’t need to be hyperbolic bs marketing just to advertise that your phone has these features.

I want to believe that something so good could happen.

I and many, many other people don’t mind using a phone or tablet for many years, even with an obsolete OS. But battery life tends to be the #1 factor in this devices ending up in the bin.

In fact, by making battery changes easier with less intensive surgery, it’ll put even more pressure on manufacturers to allow for repurposing them with a different OS.

Maybe mandate a 5-year limit before a device must be allowed to be unlocked allowing alternative software to be installed, thus giving these disposable devices a far longer lifespan.

Is there any precedent for forcing firms to release software? And if so, has it resulted in a third party adopting the support after it?