Skip to main content

New smartphone labels for battery life and repairability are coming to the EU

The new label highlights energy efficiency, durability, repairability, and battery life.

The European Union has announced details of new mandatory labels for smartphones and tablets sold in the bloc, which include ratings for energy efficiency, durability, and repairability. Hardware will also have to meet new “ecodesign requirements” to be sold in the EU, including a requirement to make spare parts available for repair.

The labels, which will be required for any devices that go on sale from June 20th onwards, are similar to existing ones for home appliances and TVs. They display the product’s energy efficiency rating, on a scale from A to G, along with battery life, the number of charge cycles the battery is rated for, letter grades for durability and repairability, and any applicable IP rating for protection from dust and water.

An example of the EU energy label for smartphones and tablets

Alongside the labels the EU is introducing “ecodesign requirements” imposing minimum standards on the same products. Those include protection from splashes of water (and dust particles larger than 1mm for phones), scratch and drop protection, batteries that retain at least 80 percent of their capacity after 800 charging cycles, and making “critical spare parts” available within 5-10 working days. Manufacturers are also required to provide operating system updates within six months of the source code becoming available — a bar that Samsung would have failed to meet with its recent One UI 7 rollout.

Covered products include smartphones and tablets with screens up to 17.4 inches, along with cordless landline phones and feature phones. Phones with rollable displays are exempted — not that any are on sale yet, though they’re coming — while Windows-based tablets will be covered by a separate scheme for computers.



from The Verge https://ift.tt/D6pegZt
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pandora Stories lets artists add commentary to their own playlists

Pandora launched Stories today, a tool that lets artists and creators add voice commentary to their own playlists. The Stories feature merges podcasts with music playlists, and is meant for artists to add context to an album, or for podcasters to experiment with new storytelling formats. The feature is part of Pandora AMP, the streaming service’s free Artist Marketing Platform that helps creators promote their work. To kick off the launch, Pandora’s prepared some Stories by artists like John Legend and Daddy Yankee, who tell listeners their personal stories interspersed between their own songs. There’s also a Stories playlist called Love Songs That Aren’t Really Love Songs , which includes commentary on individual songs like a podcast... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2Xz1oNc
Post a Comment
Read more

Instagram’s updated algorithm prioritizes original content instead of rip-offs

Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge Instagram is making significant changes to how its system recommends content, with a focus on original content and increased distribution for smaller accounts. The slew of changes were announced by the company in a blog post today. The biggest change deals with aggregators — accounts that download or screenshot other users’ videos and photos and repost them. Sometimes aggregators will credit the original poster by tagging them in the post or caption, but often, content is wholesale ripped off with no acknowledgment, and engagement is siphoned off from the person who created the content in the first place. Instagram clearly has a problem with this and will begin removing reposted content from recommendations across the platform. The... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/ECgcPAU
Post a Comment
Read more

We asked camera companies why their RAW formats are all different and confusing

When you set up a new camera, or even go to take a picture on some smartphones, you’re presented with a key choice: JPG or RAW? JPGs are ready to post just about anywhere, while RAWs yield an unfinished file filled with extra data that allows for much richer post-processing. That option for a RAW file (and even the generic name, RAW) has been standardized across the camera industry — but despite that, the camera world has never actually settled on one standardized RAW format. Most cameras capture RAW files in proprietary formats, like Canon’s CR3, Nikon’s NEF, and Sony’s ARW. The result is a world of compatibility issues. Photo editing software needs to specifically support not just each manufacturer’s file type but also make changes for each new camera that shoots it. That creates pain for app developers and early camera adopters who want to know that their preferred software will just work. Adobe tried to solve this problem years ago with a universal RAW form...
Post a Comment
Read more