by sohkamyung on 4/24/25, 12:31 PM with 82 comments
by myrmidon on 4/24/25, 12:53 PM
Having standardized chargers for phones and laptops is SUPER nice and would never have happened without intervention IMO.
The only equivalent for US "useful, average-citizen friendly legislation" that I recently heard about was the standardization of powertool batteries pursued by doge-- which turned out to be an april hoax when I just looked it up :(
by danieldk on 4/24/25, 1:21 PM
This is so great! A lot of manufacturers were counting from the date of introduction. A lot of phones only had a 3 year support period. If they are on the market for two years, the people buying last would only get one year of support. This swaps to the last date of sale, which is much more consumer-friendly. I still have to read up on what operating system upgrades entails.
rules on disassembly and repair, including obligations for producers to make critical spare parts available within 5-10 working days, and for 7 years after the end of sales of the product model on the EU market
Awesome!
by greatgib on 4/24/25, 1:14 PM
On one side, it is good to have consumer friendly regulation like manufacturers to be forced to support right to repair. But on the opposite side, lots of bullshit requirements again like the energy labelling, that will do that we have less products, mostly from big actors only, and more expensive due the then useless regulation barrier.
And the mixed feeling is stronger for things like manufacturers that needs to provide support for the os for 5 years and more. Sure, I'm happy that it applies to big tech like apple, Google and Samsung, when it is what I'm expecting. But, I, as a consumer, I would like some times to be able to buy other products, cheaper, crappier (for a burner or test devices for example), and to have small actors being able the try innovation without needing a 500 millions backing to be able to see in Europe.
What I would have preferred is a law more oriented on consumer rights than manufacturing regulation: Forbidding more clearly explicit monopolistic behaviors like what is done with app store; and for right to repair and co, not needing the company to provide support for repair for 5 years but that if they don't, or after 5 years, that they have to release in open source the software, blueprints or tools that are needed to be able to support your own device yourself.
by code-blooded on 4/24/25, 1:02 PM
Hopefully online stores will add ability to filter by these criteria.
by drooopy on 4/24/25, 1:52 PM
by wiz21c on 4/24/25, 1:10 PM
I'm happy to be more conscious, but someone is working against the scheme: I don't have a real choice...
by gizmo on 4/24/25, 2:26 PM
Repairability rules I like. Rules about OS updates are good too. But the energy claims look like BS to me:
> In 1990, the annual electricity consumption for (networked) standby of the base stations and charging cradles of cordless landline phones was 37.1 kWh. In 2020, without measures, this would have been 24.5 kWh. Due to the Ecodesign standby regulation, this was reduced to 16.1 kWh in 2020, a 34% saving. Due to the addition of the 2023 Ecodesign regulation on phones, this is expected to further reduce to 8.0 kWh in 2030, a 63% saving versus no measures.
by sofixa on 4/24/25, 12:53 PM
> The regulations focus on measures to extend product lifetime (reparability, upgradability, battery life). The increase in average lifetime, e.g. from 3.0 to 4.1 years for a mid-range smartphone
by MrBuddyCasino on 4/24/25, 1:37 PM
by djoldman on 4/24/25, 1:21 PM
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?toc=OJ%3AL%3...
by jeffbee on 4/24/25, 1:45 PM
1: https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings/data-centres-and...
by ltbarcly3 on 4/24/25, 1:43 PM
The average power draw of a cell phone is what, 4 watts? 6 watts? Lets say 10W, which is silly high (most can only charge at around 20W for an hour and a charge lasts at least 12 hours, but lets just take a high number.) At 10W constant draw it would consume 87,600Wh per year. Lets round up for inefficiencies and call it 100kWh. (That's about $11/yr of electricity where I live, about 3 cents per day but this isn't my point.)
(For reference, my Pixel 8 Pro gets 16+ hours on average if I don't put it on my wireless charger, and it's battery is only 5000mAh, which my calculations say is around 1W of average draw. This matches what I see on the display on my charging cord.)
An average person in Norway consumes 24000kWh per year (according to wikipedia. Someone in Spain would be about 5000kWh). This regulation will cut their cell phone power usage by about 1/3 (based on the quoted estimated savings and the # of people in the EU, but I don't believe these numbers), so maybe about 33kWh per year (and remember this is using absurdly over estimated numbers). That is approximately a 1/1000 reduction in power usage (or 1/200 in spain). Using realistic numbers I don't see how it's possible to anticipate any reduction in energy usage, in fact it would be a huge increase if all phones only met the minimum required in this regulation.
I will wager that the cost of compliance will slightly increase, however. This is a benefit to established manufacturers as their cost per device for compliance is low, and they already have mechanisms to ensure compliance and testing, and relationships with regulators. It's a nontrivial increase in the already significant barrier to entry to everyone else, even if their devices easily comply.
Cell phones and other mobile devices already compete on energy efficiency being one of the primary factors driving purchasing decisions (in fact it's more potent competition than that, since it's battery life). There is no meaningful initial price/efficiency tradeoff like some other products, such as mini splits or other HVAC where people might be 'cheap' up front but then it costs them more over time due to less efficiency, in fact the more efficient a phone is the cheaper it can be to manufacture because you can install a smaller battery. This compounds the benefit of being efficient. Based just on my own intuition, I would predict that the anti-competitive barriers to entry this sets up will lead to a slight reduction in competition in the market, which will actually let manufacturers invest less in energy efficiency (and every other aspect of their phones) while maintaining their market share.
I predict that this regulation actually causes phones to become slightly less energy efficient than they would otherwise. Worse, if there were no regulation phones and other devices would likely become significantly more efficient than this regulation requires regardless, so the regulation just imposes a cost. Worse, there isn't a problem here to begin with, the energy usage of these devices does not show up in the data of total energy use unless you scroll all the way to the bottom, these devices are already using less power than a single LED light bulb turned on for 4 hours a day. If they just redirected the costs of compliance with this stupid regulation to something effective, such as adding to the subsidy on hyper-efficient mini split systems, it could save substantial amount of energy and push forwards electrification goals.
by havaloc on 4/24/25, 1:00 PM