Smartphones: Germany wants to force brands to offer 7 years of repairs and updates – Frandroid

To reduce the mess, brands may soon be forced to offer better support.

Source: Jun Wai Chin (via Unsplash)

The market renews smartphones very regularly, sometimes to saturation, and this obviously generates a lot of electronic waste. Manufacturers spend their time releasing new products, often quickly forgetting previous ones. To remedy this problem, the European authorities would like to force brands to maintain their products longer. Germany wants to go even further.

German Ministry of the Economy takes a stand

This is indeed what we learn in the columns of the media Heise, who was able to question the German Ministry of the Economy. The latter made a proposal to the European Union: to force manufacturers to offer security updates and spare parts for smartphones for 7 years. In other words, an old smartphone like the iPhone 5S from 2013 would still be entitled to spare parts and updates.

As a reminder, the European Commission would already like to impose this kind of principle on all smartphone manufacturers, but only for a period of 5 years. The German government wants to go further and would also like spare parts to be offered at a reasonable price.

Apple is the best student in the business to date. The 2015 iPhone 6S continues to receive updates. iOS 15, the next version of the system will be offered as a free update on the iPhone 6S. The same cannot be said of Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge Plus, of Huawei mate 7, of LG G4 or the Sony Xperia Z5 launched the same year. The Google Nexus 5X and 6P have also been abandoned for a long time.

The fact remains that if the proposal were to succeed, it could undoubtedly contribute to reducing the waste in electronics for the planet.

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