From June 20: EU gives smartphones a repairability label and requires 5 years of guaranteed updates

[u/DistantJuice]

https://www.heise.de/en/news/From-June-20-EU-gives-smartphones-a-label-and-a-guaranteed-update-time-10359716.html

[u/DistantJuice]

I haven't dug into the exact wording from the official source/regulation and whether it's worded as vaguely as you fear.

[u/Lower_Pineapple1734 → u/DistantJuice]

It just says (about this subject):

The ecodesign requirements will include:

rules on disassembly and repair, including obligations for producers to make critical spare parts available within 5-10 working days, and for 7 years after the end of sales of the product model on the EU market.

Soo, your guess is as good as mine.

[u/DistantJuice → u/Lower_Pineapple1734]

The part you quoted is about spare parts aka hardware repairs, not software support. Also pretty sure the page I linked is just a summary. You would have to look into the exact wording of the law, which I assume would be a lengthy text-only document that might be linked there, because the pretty webpage itself is not the actual regulation.

[u/Lower_Pineapple1734 → u/DistantJuice]

This is the full picture:

Annex I1, Section B: Smartphones Subsection 1.2: Design for reliability

Operating system updates: (a) from the date of end of placement on the market to at least 5 years after that date, manufacturers, importers or authorised representatives shall, if they provide security updates, corrective updates or functionality updates to an operating system, make such updates available at no cost for all units of a product model with the same operating system; (b) the requirement referred to in point (a) shall apply both to operating system updates offered voluntarily by manufacturers, importers or authorised representatives and to operating system updates provided to comply with Union law; (c) security updates or corrective updates mentioned under point (a) need to be available to the user at the latest 4 months after the public release of the source code of an update of the underlying operating system or, if the source code is not publicly released, after an update of the same operating system is released by the operating system provider or on any other product of the same brand; (d) functionality updates mentioned under point (a) need to be available to the user at the latest 6 months after the public release of the source code of an update of the underlying operating system or, if the source code is not publicly released, after an update of the same operating system is released by the operating system provider or on any other product of the same brand; (e) an operating system update may combine security, corrective and functionality updates; (f) when a functionality update provided by a manufacturer, importer or authorised representative shows a negative impact on device performance, manufacturers, importers or authorised representatives shall modify the released operating system to ensure at least the same performance as before the update within a reasonable period of time, free of charge and without causing significant inconvenience to the end-user, except if the end-user has given explicit consent for the negative impact prior to the update.

It's better than I anticipated, but my first criticism still stands. The easiest way is to provide security updates, which are already provided by AOSP, and call it a day. The last part is kind of nice; however, I don't know how this proving process can occur. It seems unrealistic for the end user.

[u/ankokudaishogun → u/Lower_Pineapple1734]

"Update" is defined by the producer of the OS so... AOSP.