The EU Right to Repair Directive takes effect July 31, 2026. Manufacturers must offer repair at fair prices. The US has no equivalent federal law. Here is what changed.
Planned obsolescence is not one thing. It operates through several overlapping mechanisms, each individually defensible as a design choice and collectively functioning as a system that ensures a device’s useful life is shorter than it needs to be.
The lifespan the manufacturer assigned it, engineered through battery chemistry, software policy, availability of spare parts, and a set of design choices that ensure the device becomes unrepairable or artificially obsolete before its hardware wears out. The EU just made significant elements of that practice illegal in its markets.
Significant elements? Sounds like weasel words. The main bits of the law are quoted further on: it contains lots of flexible adjectives like “reasonable”. Better than nothing I guess.
Apparently in some countries planned obsolescence per se is illegal, but I didn’t see that any EU law includes that.
BTW often the software alone makes all the difference: I know one operating system that still runs & receives updates on 8yo phones and the hardware is still tip-top.
I just checked and Lineage would work for my phone! It’s starting to slow down. Lineage looks good, any tips or quirks I should know about before committing to it?
Significant elements? Sounds like weasel words. The main bits of the law are quoted further on: it contains lots of flexible adjectives like “reasonable”. Better than nothing I guess.
Apparently in some countries planned obsolescence per se is illegal, but I didn’t see that any EU law includes that.
BTW often the software alone makes all the difference: I know one operating system that still runs & receives updates on 8yo phones and the hardware is still tip-top.
You said it, mate. Lineage OS on Samsung is damn awesome. Makes my 9 y/o phone run like butter.
I just checked and Lineage would work for my phone! It’s starting to slow down. Lineage looks good, any tips or quirks I should know about before committing to it?