Fixify

There are plenty of simple design choices that can greatly aid repairability. However, until manufacturers are motivated to make those choices they will continue to make things difficult to repair.

‘Europe’s ‘right to repair’ regulation should be a spur for firms to design out e-waste' | Reuters Events | Sustainable Business The growing e-waste problem, raw materials scarcity and global heating is driving new legislation in the consumer electronics industry. The UK government recently introduced so-called “right to repair” legislation in the form of the Ecodesign and Energy Labelling Regulations 2021. This legally r...

The EU looks to be getting serious about forcing phone makers to supply software updates and parts.

7 years is a long time in software but there's no reason why OEMs can't do that, at least for security updates.

Some OEMs currently barely manage 2 years of updates and many budget phones never see more than one or two minor updates. For this reason i think budget phones should be released with Android one or Go so that they can be updated easily.

It would be better of course if the software was hardware agnostic like windows or Linux distros so you could just self install Android along with a driver/app package downloaded from the OEM. This may require OEMs to offer bootloader unlocking which they argue is a security risk. However, if the OEM isn't going to support their phone anyway then it seems reasonable that they should offer bootloader unlocking (and release the code binaries or drivers) at end-of-support so that devs can build updated software and owners can update.

Smartphone tech and software has already matured so there's no longer the leaps in capability we saw from 2010-2017. Any flagship and many mid range phones from the last 3-4 years are more than capable of running whatever Google spits out and many are well overpowered for what they do.

A new phone might get you a better camera or play more demanding games but that's about it.

Germany wants smartphone makers to offer 7 years of software updates Germany is currently mulling over a new law that would force smartphone OEMs to deliver seven years of software updates for their devices.