The products covered by the obligation to repair currently include:
- washing machines and washer-dryers
- dishwashers
- refrigerators
- electronic displays
- welding equipment
- servers and data storage products
- mobile phones, cordless phones and tablets
- tumble dryers
- e-bikes and e-scooters batteries (from 18 February 2027)
- local space heaters
Unfortunately there are some exemptions. Flexible / folding displays are not covered. Fitness trackers and watches are not covered.
There is also a battery regulation coming in next year to require phone batteries to be replaceable with no tools but that has loop holes too - long life batteries aren’t covered, IP67 rated phones aren’t covered. So you can bet your boots those two reasons will be what makers use to bullshit their way out of it.
Those aren’t loopholes though, they’re part of the legislation. Phone makers don’t need to “bullshit” their way out of anything if they meet the criteria, which almost every mobile phone released these days does - making the regulation pretty pointless lol
Having those rules is much better than not having them. Also, IP rating is not enough, batteries also need to have sufficient load cycles. So if it forces them to use only long life batteries that reduces the need for battery repkacements and is already something.
Also software… I would love to have regulations that make it clear that the root of trust on all devices need to start by the owner of the device, not by the vendor… That would allow the end users to repair the software on their devices… Replacing it with whatever else they want. Next would be to provide hardware documentation to the owners to program their own devices… I don’t expect that to happen, but I can dream.
The root of trust can never be on the owner of the device for anything that requires actual security.
I disagree. For any actual security, the owner of the secrets is the only one that can be trusted. It is their secrets. Their own interest to keep them save.
Any company or government is a shifting entity, maybe now they are trustworthy, but maybe in some years they aren’t.
Owners are the only stabile point, because it is their data. They should be able to transfer the trust to a company or government to handle security, but they also need to be able to take away that trust and access, and either handle it themselves or transfer that trust to some other entity.
It is not okay for companies or government to hold the data of individuals hostage… That is not security, that is a business strategy.
If the only person that can verify the safety of your device is the owner, that device will and should be marked as insecure and not to be trusted in any instance where security matters.
Are you talking about owner safety, or some bussiness security. Yes the device is ‘insecure’ if you are taking the point of view of DRM provider or software vendor who wants to make sure advertisements are displayed, etc. Or if your software actual security depends of taking control away from the user. But actual end user security does not have to depend on that.
You are not giving a reason for your statement. The owner is the one that bought a device. The sole arbiter about what a device should do or shouldn’t do. The person responsible of the device. The owner must trust their device in order for the device to be trusted. It doesn’t matter what if other people do or do not trust that device, they are not the owners. They should take care to protect their own data on their own devices.
Well it’s a start.
Fitness trackers would be hard to make them easy repairable, when most of them is waterproof
Gaskets are a thing. Many, many, many watches would brag about their water resistance up to 10, 50, 100 meters depth. So I don’t think the excuse is credible.
Water resistance does not mean what people think. ISO 22810 says that a 3 bar (30m) water resistant is “Not suitable for showering, bathing, swimming, snorkeling, water related work, fishing, and diving.”
30m. Not. Suitable. for. showering.
Also, most really waterproof watches, 100m+, have small circular metal cases with metal backs that are screwed shut against a gasket. Some, like G-Shocks, have a proportionally thick stainless steel backplate screwed down, but the plate is what? 3 cm. Diagonal?
Doing so on a thin rectangular device with a reasonable cost is near impossible, too much flex.
So that’s why after almost a decade, only now Apple is ready to launch their foldable