Starting June 20, 2025, all smartphones and tablets sold in the EU will feature a new label inside the box, indicating battery life and efficiency. This is will be an update to the energy sticker Europeans are already familiar with on many household appliances. All smarthones and tablets have to meet also key ecodesign criteria. How will this affect Fairphone?
sources: GSM Arena, Tweakers (in Dutch), European Union
thanks for the links.
I had not heard of this european law before. itâs really cool!
From june 20 this year, phones and tablets will need to display lots of info, including a fall resistance category, battery life rating, and reparability score.
everything depends on the testing method of course.
but i believe that the FP will lead in terms of reparability.
Also 5 years updates mandatory! thatâs bound to change things up.
Unfortunately, itâs going to be more painful on the smaller manufacturers, and I think Fairphone included, even if they expected to do that anyway. Now they may have to report to bureaucratic powers and/or follow standardized processes and such.
To note: the document will have to be inside the box, wich i interpret it to mean that youâll only read it after you buy itâŚ
and with warranty info/first use setting up, i fear it may not be exploited as such.
but itâs maybe a foot in the door?
Thanks for posting @mr_T1449 .
It indeed looks revolutionary as it stipulates 7 years of spare parts and 5 years of software after the end of sales ( not the launch date as it is often now done).
Even for FP which is exceptional in this regard it could be a stretch.
According to the first of the two links in the original post this will fall into the European Product Registry for Energy Labelling (EPREL) which is a database where already today you can look up for instance basically all available washing machines and sort them by energy consumption or other criteria. Iâm pretty sure smartphones will be added there, too, and then youâll have this one platform where you can easily compare products instead of having to read through many different websites with different numbers etc. Itâs a pity that this platform is not known more.
FP started to implement the EU labels for already produced devices (nothing for audio products as of yet)
Thereâs one for FP5
I think the major issue is theyâll have to get much faster at feature updates. They currently take around 1 year since Googleâs initial release to update the devices, while the EU directive says theyâll have to do it within 6 months.
Thank you for the comment. Could you link the source?
I tried to find it myself and so far I have found something else which might be interesting
Software Updates (duration)
The âSoftware Updates (duration)â (SSU) score shall be calculated at product level as follows:
- Minimum guaranteed availability of security updates, corrective updates and functionality updates to the operating system for at least 7 years = 5 pt.
- Minimum guaranteed availability of security updates, corrective updates and functionality updates to the operating system for 6 years = 3 pt.
- Minimum guaranteed availability of security updates, corrective updates and functionality updates to the operating system for 5 years = 1 pt.
The above durations refer to years from the date of end of placement on the market of the product model.
Given FP5 is scored 5, would that mean FP guarantees software updates seven years after the end of placement, which I reckon from the warranty wording might be 2027? Then 2027 + 7 => 2034? Thatâs definitely longer that what they currently promise
Source: Delegated regulation - 2023/1669 - EN - EUR-Lex
Edit. I found the source for @gigimava comment - here Commission Regulation 2023/1670 ANNEX II. Smartphones.
To make that clear: there is the label and the corresponding directive 2023/1669, effective as of today 20th June 25.
And there is a second directive 2023/1670 defining ecodesign requirements also effective as of today 20th June 25.
This topic here is about he label.
@Meaghan
I allowed myself to change your post to make it clear where the referred Annex II belongs to
*looks at the calendar*
*looks at the post*
*looks back at the calendar*
Okay tomorrow 
so FP is ahead with the label guess that confused me 
You forgot to look at timezones 
.
Even before the new EU label takes effect, the European Commission has already proposed a âcorrective legislative act" that would weaken the ecodesign criteria. Specifically, the proposal could effectively scrap the requirement for user-replaceable displays. This could mean consumers can buy spare screens for repair, but not be allowed to install them themselves.
source: RepairEU
So apple part drm would be allowed under it? You can get a screen but you need to âcalibareâ it at an apple verified repair shop (Dont forget to bring all you ID with you when going to those places)
With an overall score of B for the FP5 there are 10 smartphones with a better overall A rating in the EPREL database (6 of them by HMD).
https://eprel.ec.europa.eu/screen/product/smartphonestablets20231669
Hello, what do you mean by overall score, I thought a letter just referred to the energy efficiency?
Canât see FP5 in the database, and the link from the pdf is not working, am I missing something?
PS. I have been checking on a mobile myself, usually get better search results on my computer;-) so I can double check in the afternoon
Yeah, youâre probably right, the big A in the screenshot seems to be just the energy score, not some combined score. My bad.
And yes, the FP5 doesnât seem to be listed yet. No search result so far and https://eprel.ec.europa.eu/qr/2378858 from the PDF above currenty says ânot foundâ.
Maybe we have to wait a bit. The total list for smartphones and tablets is only 523 entries long. I canât imagine this to be the full list of smartphones and tablets available in the EU. My best guess is that right now the list only has the most recent models and those that were released earlier probably come later because theyâre less likely to get bought today when they were released in 2023 like the FP5?
I think thereâs no obligation to provide there the information on any device launched before 20/06/2025. But I can double check:) still on mobile
The entry for FP5 is now working on the EPREL website.
A nice addition is the phone number - for support? Phone: 31 85 2250 203
The entry for FP6 so far only on FP website.
https://eprel.ec.europa.eu/screen/product/smartphonestablets20231669/2372958
The entry for the fairphone 6 exists, but it did not come up when I searched âfairphoneâ with either of the 3 search types (model, brand, GTIN). It only came up when I browsed the list of phones filtered by having a user-replaceable battery⌠Broken search function?
