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
Source?
As far as I know, nearly all flagship phones, Apple or otherwise, get about 7 years of update support (
except Pixel phones with GrapheneOS which get 14ignore; I remembered this incorrectly).The difference is, even my old phone running Android 8 (a 9yo OS) can still browse the web, run all apps, and perform fine as a phone. An even older phone running Android 4.4 can still run 3rd party apps. iPhones seem to stop working about a year after they stop receiving updates, and they don’t support sideloading (also know as running the software you want to run on the device you own).
https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/1upwfda/lets_be_real_no_company_beats_apple_in_terms_of/
Oh trust me, I’m no fan of Samsung, but I tend to value control of my devices over…whatever it is Apple does. I had an iPhone until I discovered replacing the home button myself artificially bricked the device due to DRM forcing customers to go to an Apple store for repairs. Never again
Control over your devices is on the way out regardless of the major manufacturer.
Unfortunately, this is very true.
For what it’s worth, I still try to maintain as much control as possible by using OSes like Graphene or Linux. I also have just started refusing to pay for things I can’t own. That includes gaming consoles, cloud services, smart home devices, Samsung/Apple phones, leased cars, etc. If Google keeps killing and locking down AOSP, it may soon include all Android phones too.
I’m hoping we can get some regulations pushed through before that point.