Being in favour of the GDPR will bring out downvotes and FUD from the people whose very salaries are dependent on invading your privacy.

Somethings are big more challenging like getting the data for customer when asking or deleting it when reasonable. But as user I also like at least having that option. It is least any business can do.

The problem is that it applies to small organisations, even non-profits, that do not trade that information which is proportionately a much bigger burden. Real examples of organisations I have come across who have to comply with GDPR include a local community theatre, a parish church etc. They are keep fairly simple information, and not exchanging it with anyone, but they still have to put effort into ensuring compliance. They are pretty good and ethical anyway - the theatre recently impressed me when I found out that if you give them medical information in case of emergency they put it in a sealed envelope and no one opens it unless there is an actually emergency that requires it (i.e. you keel over there!).

Eh?

Collect only the personal data you need (with permission) and keep it secure. Such a basic responsibility to your members privacy and safety is hardly a burden.

Yeah, and that is precisely where you want something like the GDPR to be as well!

Large corporations are one thing, they have compliance departments, but so, so many local organizations have gotten hacked or data exfiltrated because "why do software and hardware updates when everything is working" or due to incompetence ("cc all"). GDPR finally gave the younger crowd some leverage to get the old guard to do things at least somewhat decently.

What does each one of your systems store exactly? Do they allow configuration of reasonable data retention policies for PII? What do your systems log? How do you make sure that only the minimum amount of PII (including user IP addresses) is logged and that the covered logs are destroyed at the end of a reasonable retention period?

How do you handle Data Subject Access Requests? Can you compile all the data related to that person in a reasonable time to send it to them?

How do you handle deletion requests? Can you name all the data storage that is affected if a deletion request comes in? Are your systems technically capable of deleting the data? What data is exempt (e.g. billing addresses can't just be deleted before the mandated archival period is over)? Do you maintain backups? Then how do you make sure that data covered by a deletion request is destroyed and stays gone even in the event of a backup recovery?

Nobody who wants to bootstrap a business wants to deal with any of this. It's an enormous time sink.

I doubt anybody wants to deal with fire safety inspections either.

Though I'm quite sure you will change your mind when your personal data gets hacked or your office burns down.

Fire safety is less onerous and less complex.

If there is one thing that is incredibly complex, it is fire codes - in no small part because these vary from town to town, or to be more precise, the height of their portable ladder trucks. Once you build higher than these, you have to plan for a second escape route.

That's not that bad of a thing if you work exclusively in one area... but good luck if you operate across the nation or, worse, internationally because everyone does things a liiiitle bit differently.

Also, I'd take fire safety over GDPR if I had a choice. That is much easier to get a handle on.

Indeed but it forces you to answer these questions and to think about them during the development process as well, maybe even enough to write decent unit and regression tests for anything authentication/authorization related before some security "researcher" siccs Claude Code or whatever on your API and pwns it.

That's a very narrow perspective. The vast majority of businesses aren't this. Even a plumber who types up offers and invoices on a computer is subject to all of this mess.

Yeah and that plumber has 1000s of customer names, addresses, phone numbers, mail addresses, in Europe maybe even SEPA Direct Debit data.

Not funny if that kind of stuff leaks, especially not if you're, say, a person with a public register block due to domestic violence or whatever (basically, one step before witness protection that gives you a whole new identity).

If your primary focus as an electrician, plumber or other tradesperson is SME or industry, of course, then there is far less customers.

At least here in Germany, in most rental contracts the responsibilities are split between landlord and renter, with the landlord being responsible for the heating, the water mains and the large fusebox, but the renter has to deal with everything under the scope of "Kleinreparatur". Exchanging faucets and siphons, wall sockets, installing laundry machines and other appliances, installing lamps, that kind of stuff many people (like me) can DIY but other people (like a lot of my friends) can't or don't want to, and they call in the professionals for an hour or two. And these guys have like 4-6 service calls a day.

"I don't want to deal with it" is relatable and human - and one of the main reasons why potentially dangerous things are / have to be regulated.

They have a lot less information. Consider my too examples. What do they record electronically? Name and address. The church will have relationship to people such as spouse and children, which are in public records anyway. A few details of sons preferences and involvements. The theatre is even more public - if you act its publicised. They might both have records of tax deductible donations. They do not have unique identifiers such as appear on ID documents or NI (UK tax and social security) numbers. They do not correlate this with outside sources. There is very little to leak.

Based on this behavior I'd have to infer American courts are punitive oriented (so you must never slip up) while European courts are resolution oriented (so good faith is enough and stop worrying so much).

My inference also explains why American businesses don't listen to European courts until the fines get big. They get some small penalty on their first violation and think "that's all?" and continue the violation, then four or five cases later the penalty gets big enough to make them comply. See Apple with the interop rulings.

Politicians have a tendency to think that passing legislation fixes problems, where is its only the start of the process.

The EU is just extremely worried about US tariffs and retracting support to Ukraine.

IMO they should just bite the bullet and do what they need to do. In a world of bullies those that are willing to show their teeth win. But instead we have a lot of politicians without a spine.

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SO8KcfhJmc

Old school methods like what McDonald's use, literally allow the customer to see in to the kitchen are very effective.

Not always ideal for every type establishment but I've seen high end Indian restaurants even do it by having the POS at the back where you can see the kitchen when paying which keeps the noise separate for the desired quiet atmosphere of a fine dining restaurant

I'm not sure how to translate this to the smartphone market though. Fairphone and LaJolla seem to do well in this regard though so back to brand reputation for a lot of this.

I'm not here with a silver bullet or anything, but I'd say the EU's energy efficiency labeling works well and has a fairly low level of being gamed/falsified.

I don't think there's any big reason why the EU couldn't enforce labeling of a similar kind to IFixit's repair-ability scoring[0] for set devices.

On a separate note, the article mentions the lousy attempts some smart phone makers are guilty of with regards to repair instructions:

> Some records even refer customers to Temu or AliExpress for spare parts and repair instructions.

There are at least a lot less smart phone manufacturers than restaurants and cafes (comparing to scores on the doors) - if the EU really wanted to, it wouldn't be a huge resource to produce clear guidance on what expectations are for smart phone spare part provision, and issue fines whenever they're violated (you might think is a bad idea, and too much regulation, but my point is just that it's at least feasible)

[0] https://www.ifixit.com/repairability/smartphone-repairabilit...

*Jolla, pronounced yolla. It's a Finnish word. Maybe a bad choice given the geography of tech.

Because the public generally does not care one iota about repairability. Phones are more robust these days than ever. A fatal flaw like a screen break occures on the order of years. People just assume that, if something bad does happen, the phone will be out of date and/or no longer getting updates anyway. Many also get thier phones as part of a service plan and so dont even view them as an expense.

Look at desktop PCs. Infinitely repairable. But 90% of people will just buy a new one the moment anything significant fails.

They are certainly not more robust than ever. The trend of screen glass extending all the way to the edge of the phone and around it has ensured that most people need a case. Back in the 2010s I never used one and my phone would survive many drops.

Guess that's why the new refits have a giant wall to stop you seeing into the kitchen.

> I'm not sure how to translate this to the smartphone market though

Me neither, The pre-existing ways are independent lab testing ( euro-ncap for cars, or ifixit) or the "you have to pay for testing" like for large white goods. None of those work if they are not enforced though....

I am unfamiliar with these matters and I am also unsure what specifically you are referring to.

But in general, if big companies get away with wrongdoings by receiving a gentle slap on their fingers, figuratively speaking, it will, in my opinion, lead to no change whatsoever.

Because if there are no material consequences for wrongdoings, they probably would not care. And there are very few kinds of actually material consequences for big companies. One of them being a really hefty fine.

In mono/oligo-poly situations there's no really such a thing as "a really hefty fine". Either the cost will be happily trickled to the very public that are being wronged or the fine is effectively unsurvivably hefty, which noone would levy against a too-big-to-fail entity.

Look at the recent fine for Meta for example. Settling a case against one of the core monopolic drivers for a couple percentage points of early revenue is peanuts. I can't believe the exec suite[-s] are thinking anything else than "which anti-consumer behavior can we buy indulgence for?", they would be stupid not to at these discounted rates.

I'm half joking here, but at this point it feels like the only reasonable way to instill some fear against building Torment Nexus and cyberpunk dystopia would be personal criminal liability of the boards and exec suites that is impossible to settle.

substantial improvement to quality of life. Goals: build a company such that people don't think the world would be better off if you don't exist.

> Another good example is NCAP ratings.

Worth noting that NCAP and Scores on the Doors are not regulators. NCAP is an industry body; SotDs is run by TripAdvisor.

I'm not sure how the Scores on the Doors website, which is at least related to TripAdvisor, fits into all of this...

* Which you can at the website you listed.

This could work for products too: have webshops add links to verdicts of inspections and also put them on the boxes (in link and QR code form).

Frankly, I'd prefer it if we just let them howl and said fuck it more but it's probably a good job I'm not making those decisions (and in honesty the picture is complex for companies that size/the politics).

privacy rights, standardization of cables, and monopoly busting are also pretty good things.

the real question is why americans havent pushed back against their new feudal lords to carve out the same rights they did against the old ones

Not like it's the only issue in US/UK relations these days either.

That's the situation whether we like it or not.

Europeans by and large don't care about American companies these days. They use American software products because frequently there are no alternatives. And most of the news about them are negative.

Hint hint

South Korea is a very dynamic, tech heavy country and it hasn't managed to push any software product as a market leader.

The EU is bigger, but it's fractured, so functionally it's basically 2-3x South Korea in terms of "software power". And that's not enough to compete with the much larger US juggernaut. Only China has managed to hold its own by simply banning US software all together.

I'm actually all in favor of the EU banning all American software. Fairly sure that after a huge initial tumble a healthy EU software market would thrive.

Edit: I need to brace myself, the Americans are waking up :-)))

If the current EU mindset existed 150 years ago, they would have banned steam engines because they are too loud and annoying. That's the level of shortsighted immediate gratification we are dealing with.

I don't know what SK has to do with this, they are basically still close to an emerging economy. Europe had a roaring economy when SK was still mostly farming.

The environment can absorb pollution, just not as quickly as we're currently polluting. It's okay to emit pollution sometimes. I'm totally in favor of heritage railways running their ancient smoke-belching steam trains on the third Sunday of every month so we can see them go. Just not every day.

I really like history but nothing like this come to mind, I'd be happy to read about it, what exactly did they do/not do?

Technical note: For some years, the few regions that got the OPAL optical network had the worst internet, but that problem would not have occurred with OPAL everywhere: Fiber can always be upgraded at the endpoints, the numbers were just too small to develop the technology.

Not having a silicon valley is a good thing.

Delete the US and China and all Europe has left is 6 weeks vacation.

Besides, 6 weeks vacation is great. Also we don't need to have so much stuff, I don't even own or want a car, something that's very hard to do without in America. We don't have this exhausting desire to make things a race and to be number 1.

Ever heard of China? The US probably imports 50% of its industrial parts, machinery, finished products from China.

Europe also has plenty of big industrial companies, BASF, Bayer, German auto companies, pharma companies, French and Dutch agriculture, etc.

What do you think we all do over here? Wear wooden clogs, eat baguettes with wursts?

Personally I have done both <3

In fact I really feel like a baguette with bratwurst now :P And a 6-week holiday come to think of it.

The EU also needs easier financing of risky ventures, probably with tax incentives associated.

The EU needs specific regulation to facilitate accelerated scaling across all its countries. This last part is the hardest to do because by definition startups are challenges to big and rich incumbents.

I would just ban US software companies like China did (I'd obviously also ban Chinese software companies, too). The resulting chaos would end up with some pretty solid EU software companies, the know how is there.

Estimated GDPs for 2026:

US $32tn.

EU $23tn.

It's not like the EU only has couch cushion money for investments.

> Some records even refer customers to Temu or AliExpress for spare parts and repair instructions.

> But even for products that are technically compliant, the listed weblink still rarely offers a direct path to parts prices. For major brands such as Apple and Samsung, it can take some clicking around before you find what you need, Right to Repair says.

However for point one, the samples I saw were a picture of a minor posted by a minor in a normal situation. Someone would say @grok show me her in a bikini.

for point 2, this is not born out by the examples that I saw.

The bigger point here is that under UK law, there is little distinction between "real" and "fake". Any depiction of a minor engaged in sexual activities is illegal. This was to get round the "oh its photoshoped" defence. In the USA is different, but I have no experience on that point.

The only reason why I know is because a member of staff at a previous company was found to be using his workstation to store and distribute anime shit that depicted this stuff, and the company legal advice was "oh wow you are totally fucked." It was a huge faff to deal with and posed huge risks to everyone involved.

(Depending on your local jurisdiction. But GP said "Online Safety Act" so I'm making an assumption).

Minors were involved and people were generating sexually charged images ("donut glaze" etc). This is why other countries, like South Korea, also went after X under deepfake related regulations.

I don't think there's a single politician in Bruxelles that wouldn't love to come down hard on X. There is no love for Elon in those circles anymore. The problem is that he's attached himself to international politics through his daddy. Trump has threatened the EU with strict sanctions if they levy any sort of proportional fine to US tech companies.

The problem is no longer capitalist liberalism. The new challenge is American Fascism.

I'm getting sick of this hyperbole, if you want to see a real fascist regime you can look at Iran that killed several thousands of its own people over the course of a week shortly before the current hostilities, in contrast in almost a year of protests 3 people were killed in the US under circumstances that were at least debateable. Or maybe China that literally was rounding up ethnic minorities and sending them to rededucation camps while performing genocide. Or maybe Russia whose government is current grabbing their people giving them 2 weeks of training and then sending hundreds of thousands of young men to die on the front lines to seize their neighbors territory.

In contrast the US is, not following UK rules about taking down websites, is downsizing some government departments, and oh the horror removing people from the country who entered illegally?

I'm not saying things are great, I'm not saying I approve of what is going on right now, or that we are headed in the right direction, but this hysterical exaggeration helps no one and makes any semblance of progress less likely as it alienates more moderate people that would be willing to listen to your side. But it does give you a hit of righteous indignation on the Internet so score one for you, your only continuing to nip at the fraying social fabric of our society but you are getting updoots so good on that.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

The image literally says "inspired by Starship Troopers". Which was inspired by fascism and Nazi uniforms in particular.

> if you want to see a real fascist regime

Is it not worth looking at how such regimes got there? Maybe as a preventative? Do we have to wait for it to go all the way to Holocausts before we go "uh oh, should've said something"?

We had our https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch a few years back, even.

Yes, it's a great satire. You get problems when, as with The Boys' Homelander, people apparently can't figure out who the bad guys are.

> And what exactly does it change? Are you afraid that particular type of pants will make people Nazi or what?

I am afraid of people who are super into the Nazi aesthetic, yes, especially when they run the country I live in.

> The government get to many tools to influence every aspect of citizens' lives, and then uses those tools to get rid of all opposing voices. That is far more relevant to the Europe than to the US.

Have you been in a coma the last few years?

I am talking about weaponized trade relations, such as coupling embargoes or tariffs, to inner market fines. I am talking about explicitly threatening allies for enforcing their own legally sanctioned laws inside their sovereign territory. I am, in part, talking about threatening allies with invasion, if they don't do what you want.

President Trump has spent over 7 years trying, without any proof, that US state and federal elections are rigged when he or his allies do not win.

Ironically it's a very bad example: EuroNCAP is an independent organization and has nothing to do with the EU and legislation/regulations as such.

Source for this claim? How can you say regulation is good without even defining what the regulation is? Or do you just believe that all regulation no matter what is always good?

The issue is that people want quick sanctions until they wind up on the wrong end of the pointy spear--at which point they want accurate sanctions.

The problem is that quick and accurate are opposing forces when it comes to sanctions.

As an example of sanctions both quick and accurate, X in Brazil. All ISPs blocked it and it was a crime to use X until Elon complied. Of course many people still accessed X through VPNs, but public figures couldn't because they'd be charged.

However, basically the same mechanism lets Spain block Cloudflare on Saturdays, which is bad. Even though I hate Cloudflare, that's worse.

That’s easy to calculate with, and almost certainly cheaper than compliance.

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.

God I wish.

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

The simple calculus is: will it cost me more to comply, or more to ignore? If a company chooses the more costly option, they are betraying their shareholders and being managed poorly.

If you do not fine early and often, you are almost mandating that companies ignore the legislation. If this continues for several years, then you almost make it impossible to turn around later and fine, as businesses will want to know what's changed now. You will create an impression of uncertainty and instability, which is the last thing businesses want, and the last thing you want to do to encourage investment.

If you just set and enforce the rules from the start, then everyone can relax, do the right thing and be happy about it. It's funny how rarely this actually seems to happen.

> will it cost me more to comply, or more to ignore?

Is an (unfortunately) American view of things. The vast majority of European businesses I’ve worked with attempt to comply with the _spirit_ of the laws, while my experience with most American companies is they try to skirt the letter of the law to do whatever the hell they want.

I’m not saying one is better, or that all companies in both places are like that. But it rings true in my experience.

You need to register in several countries for packaging, there is no central thing and it's kinda obscure (in Germany there are several different companies you can do that with, from my understanding). There is a new law since August who tries to centralise and make it easier for sellers. But right now it isn't, there are several country specific small hoops and Ive experienced returned items with complain letters and threaten fees as well.

I personally happily followed GDPR rules, so did many others. Making it generally a better place. That wasn't because of fines but because we now had a framework to follow to make the world a safer place.

If you can afford to keep fines in litigation/appeals/formal-defect limbo for a sufficient number of years, you can grow out of even once-threatening fines and delay compliance until the law that you finally bow down to is so old that its signs of old age will in the meantime become popular arguments for undermining or retracting it.

The directive is far more complicated, and you will not see that at all.

This happens a lot, see Samsung and Apple announcing more years of security updates and feature updates, Apple announcing the switch to USB-C for the iPhone.

Once it's clear the EU will not budge, some big companies will just switch over in advance, other companies will lag.

This is what the OP said, and what I was replying too.

Spare battery: ???

However when your battery is old, and drains fast, it's really nice to be able to order a new one and easily change it by removing 4 screws.

Not having to perform surgery on your phone, heating it to remove glue, etc.

And if you keep your phone in flight mode when you're not using it, you'll quadruple your battery life or more. Both because the radio is off, and also because apps aren't waking up the CPU to spy on you every few minutes, since they can't transmit it.

That would be great, obviously there would be tradeoffs (not as thin, potentially less waterproof) but that seems like the right direction to go in.

Obviously, if you want to introduce new regulation, it must be because you want to change something, right? Or is the regulation about preventing a hypothetical scenario that's not the case right now?

Reducing the amount of manufacturing for phones, and thus reducing the impact of the species on the environment is an extremely sensible goal, given that basically all resources are limited.

If you can do that while making things cheaper for your populace, then it's a double win.

The modular phones I've owned probably used more resources than the non-modular ones, because I needed to repair them more often. But hey, at least the repair was marginally more easy.

And yes, modular phones might have gotten better the last few years. But then you need to show that, not just claim it.

And really this is what this law does already.

Yes, as I said, I've easily replaced my screen on my phone from 2022 already.

My point is that the definition of "easy" is different for me and GP (is it "easy" to remove and apply glue?). So which definition do we need to write into the law?

People were probably saying "I'd love to avoid tracking cookies on all websites" back before the EU cookie law too, and look at how that turned out.

The problem there was industry lobbying. What the EU should have done was one of two things:

- Forbid third party tracking entirely, completely

- Or mandate that a technical flag (e.g. Do-Not-Track) be respected by law

However the advertising industry would have been decimated (rightly so IMO) and billions of euros are coming from that so they lobbied for this stupid compromise that made things a lot worse.

They are now doing the latter: There will again be a DNT flag under the recent proposals, but it still has to go through rounds of lobbying and watering down.

If there is a market for spare batteries, there might be a market for external battery chargers as well > swap battery in the morning instead of charging, place empty battery on charger, repeat the next day

Several times I thought about purchasing a spare battery, but I never did. I also thought about detaching the battery and using the machine without it, such as on AC line power, or when I didn't need the extra juice. But I realized that it was a bad idea to carry it around with a gaping hole on the bottom and exposed battery contacts. I would've felt comfortable if there was a dummy cap to snap on instead.

However, what is needed desperately is the ability to quickly change a degraded battery.

Look at DSLR cameras: take out in 1 second, put in in 1 second, physically robust.

We absolutely can have the best of both worlds. We just need to align the smartphone manufacturers to user serviceability and right to repair… even if they go kicking and screaming since they decided their bottom line is most important.

My ThinkPad t420 had a small built in battery so I could switch batteries without shutdown. Imagine the magic. Imagine taking 20+ hours of laptop battery with you 15 years ago.

All three, in fact. GoPro is about 15 seconds from "battery empty warning" over safe shutdown, battery replacement and it's booted back up into fully working. Professional camera (Sony A7S2) about 10-15 seconds, depending on what BS the lens tries to pull on startup. Drone about 1 minute including landing/takeoff (DJI Mini 3 Pro).

My Android tablet from Samsung however? Two minutes for safe shutdown and boot to userland alone plus all the apps starting in the background that keep yapping to whatever mothership cloud. It's an annoying hassle. And on top of that, despite the thing actually having a removable battery and being marked watertight and suitable even for underwater operation - it clearly is not.

I'd rather have an actually watertight device that has guaranteed availability of spare batteries, and actual screws instead of that glue shit that can't ever be fully removed from either the display or the housing.

New definition of nightmare just dropped: changing a battery. Or is it simply handling a battery? I can't figure out what's supposed to be the nightmare.

Maybe it's the turning off of a telephone.

Both types of products from them were recalled after about a month for being fire hazards.

I imagine it's not universal but it really made me question the product category.

Aside from FairPhone no one offers that

They are easy _enough_ to replace already. Is it as easy as 20 years ago? Surely not. It also seems reasonable that something you're going to be realistically doing once per 3-4 years would require 1 or 2 hours.

Moreover, the regulation doesn't affect this process, apart from "no proprietary tools".

> That’s the only part that will wear out within a reasonable lifecycle.

Millions of broken screens and back glass/plastic panels beg to differ.

This is far from true. Power connectors.

But no matter what your battery is at 80 or 70 percent in 2 years.

Power connectors are much harder to engineer to be replaced. Something has to connect at some point

Of course this doesn't work if you're expecting to receive calls or notifications.

I personally buy mid range phones for around 400$ and then buy new after 2 years.

Better than buying a 1200$ phone and expecting it to last 5 years

- 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.

The problem is the response is toothless. I reported Amazon for a violation to ICO in February 2019, received an automated email a month later asking for a swathe of information, replied to that, and 3 months later got an update that it would be assigned a Case Officer. That was the last time I heard from them on that matter.

Meanwhile, my local council will respond to pretty much _everything_ within 24-48 hours. I’ve reported all sorts of “small” things and when it comes up naturally friends are surprised that the council did anything. They’ve never actually tried reporting the issues, and assume it’s all fruitless.

The company that looks like a medieval food shop with meat warming in the sun and a big sign that says "caveat emptor" and manned by a slave with very dirty hands. The fact that it still operates in the EU is prove that more tough punishments are needed for corporations that push fraud, dangerous products, abuse of monopolistic position, etc. Amazon in a nutshell.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/apr/...

It is not reputation, it is committing actual crimes...

I wonder if it will just lead to using same size batteries more gently.

"back in the day" we had waterproof phones with user replacable batteries, you could just buy another battery and replace it yourself. I have no idea why we can't do this now.

> I have no idea why we can’t do this now

For better worse I think the answer is quite simple - a combo of ease of manufacturing, a long term trend of slimmer devices that is broadly supported by customer behaviour, and an extra place to suggest a device upgrade instead of a repair. You’re more than able to get pretty much any smartphone battery replaced with a manufacturer similar spec these days, and people still choose not to do so.

Having replaced the battery in my old phone, I sure understand why people don't "choose" to do so. The battery itself is worth maybe 20 bucks but the labour and tools required to replace it cost much, much more.

Compared to spending 30 bucks on a secondary battery back in the day, things sure have gone downhill since the days of user-replaceable batteries.

These phones weren't very popular in the west (Japan in particular had a large waterproof phone market, allegedly because people were taking them with them into the shower), but they have existed for a years, before the first Androids or iPhones became water resistant.

Phones like the Samsung XCover (the Android 2.3 one from 2011) were sold worldwide and featured a hotswappable battery. Over time these became bulkier and frankly uglier as they doubled down on how "rugged" they were, but the technology was clearly there.

ip68 rated from 2020!

If you go further back, you have the whole "active" series of samsungs, eg. galaxy s5 active (ip67): https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Samsung+Galaxy+S5+Active+Batter...

Samsung actually made such phones even in 2020, eg the xcover pro: https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/mobile-devices/how-to-rep... , the phone is rated for ip68, so yes, waterproof by phone standards.

Ok byeeee

Power density and all of the problems that are fallout from high power density. A modern LiPoly battery contains a lot of energy. It's stored in a chemical that is highly reactive with oxygen, which you happen to be surrounded by at the moment.

Watch some videos on lithium battery fires. Not only do they have extremely hot flames but they spray out molten bits of battery and can't be extinguished with water.

To make a LiPoly battery that can be safely handled by normal people it needs a strong outer casing. A sealed battery in a phone uses the phone's case itself as the battery's protective casing. A user replaceable battery would need its own strong case. The phone then needs to be larger to accommodate the extra volume or have a smaller battery which stores less power than a sealed battery of equivalent volume.

The market has rewarded thinner phones with long lifetimes but also high performance. That triple point is challenging if not impossible to hit without sealed batteries.

Maybe non EU people shouldn't judge this much? Its generally Very welcomed around here

I’m not interested in fixing the device myself. I’m taking it back to the company Apple, Sony, Nvidia or Audio-Engine and have them fix it, a third-party chop shop or me involved trying to fix it myself is unacceptable.

Most of the items sold today-simply cost too much to try a tinker with it myself. That’s utterly ridiculous. I hope the EU or any country for that matter concentrate on making sure companies with strong laws, honor/standby and fix the problem with their product. I have little faith that they will.

Now the EU is already quite challenged to stand up against US, China (and Korea) when it comes to enforcing such regulation and dealing with accusations from US/China/Korea of "sanctioning sales of their products"...

...so how would one expect the government of an individual country to fare in this, in times of Russia/Ukraine war, energy crisis, Strait-of-Hormuz-crisis...?

- Regulations are binding acts for all member-countries.

- Directives are goals the union should achieve, but actual execution including laws is up to the local countries.

The handicap comes when important actions like this repairability target are defined as a DIRECTIVE, leaving it up to the local country (and all its lobbying influences) to set up the corresponding laws and governance.

This inevitably leads to delays and fragmentation, tainting the result

- new requirements

- ignored => small fine

- still ignored => large fine

- not ignored anymore

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.