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
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.
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.
So that’s why after almost a decade, only now Apple is ready to launch their foldable