The news is rather short on their page, but there are a few articles that describe it more in-depth. In a nut shell they want to try to standardise a lot of the "right-to-repair" stuff. Ban stuff like glueing components which makes it impossible to repair or even exchange parts. A good point is also that they want to ensure that processors in products have to be replacable, so that consumers dont need to buy a new phone just because it got slow over time.
One issue I see though. Supposedly they are doing this because the current situation is too expensive for consumers (well, guess they got a point there), but developing the products in a way that everything is interchangable might make the purchase way more expensive in the long run... guess we'll have to see.
All in all it sounds fun and dandy, but if and when this will go into law... not sure, by the time that happens we'll probably all be old and grey and don't know a smartphone works anymore...
What they didn't mention (and I had hoped they would) is update policies in general. They talk a bit about embedded systems and how software updates need to be compatible to the old version. But I had hoped they would talk about a certain timeframe where a manufacturer has to provide updates for their devices. In my opinion it's just obnoxious that you're not even getting software updates through the warranty period. Most smartphone manufacturers may push an update or two (with a hell of a delay too), and then ignore it for the rest of the 2 year warranty.
Interesting. I hope they can do it. I mean if someone can pull it through than that's the EU parlament. Till then we the consumers have to stop buying crapy products. Ofc i don't have to tell this here.
It's a great idea that will come up against a lot of push-back from manufactures sighting increased costs in manufacturing to make items repairable which probably has some merit, but the idea is a good one and needs to be considered well beyond devices like phones and other electronic gear... to household appliances that are basically pure junk with plenty of design flaws and built-in obsolescence from day one of your purchase.
The whole idea of mass production is to drive down costs so there is not really any reason why they(manufacturers) couldn't manage to handle this, however it might mean that the very cheapest/crappiest products might disappear from the EU market. The higher tier products on the other hand would be more easily repairable and maintainable so people on tighter budgets would still be fine.
Actually the Parlament doesn't have a whole lot of say in it, they can't pass legislation. They will however give this to the commission that will further talk about it.
This is great, but I'm not sure I need to be able to replace the processor on my phone just because it got slow. Sure, let me at least be able to reach and replace the board if that's what's broken.
However, I don't really need phones with swappable cpu's like my desktop.
It's not just about getting slow, but if something breaks or whatever (though I guess that happens rarely). The point is why would you throw away your phone when just the CPU is the issue... if the rest of the phone is perfectly fine, just exchanging the CPU can give it another few years, so why not?
On a sidenote, when Project Ara was still a thing everyone was hyped about interchangable CPUs
It's a good start where they could come to some very reasonable standards like a removable battery. It's easy to incorporate into todays phone designs, even if it might lead to that dreaded 0.8 mm extra thickness. And force everyone including Apple to go USB-C for charging.
