For a few weeks now on the French site of Samsung it is possible to download a manual for the repair of one of its most recent smartphones: the Galaxy S21 + for free. The decision to publish the manual has been defined by some specialized media as an “unprecedented” event because until recently it was unthinkable that a multinational such as Samsung would make this type of information public. There is a reason: the manual in fact exists only in French, because from January 1st in France there is a new law that requires companies to indicate the “repairability” of the products, that is a number from one to ten that indicates how easy it is to fix them if they break. And Samsung, like many other companies in the sector, has a vested interest in raising its scores.
The law was created to combat waste and specifically the problem of planned obsolescence, i.e. the intentional creation of technological products destined to last for a limited period (both as regards the software and the hardware part) to encourage a frequent purchase of newer models. It is the first law of its kind in the world and according to some experts it could lead other countries to take similar measures, changing the habits of consumers and companies.
The law went into effect in France in January, but is still in its infancy and currently only affects five product categories: smartphones, laptops, televisions, washing machines and lawn mowers. Companies still have time to adapt to the legislation and will be legally obliged (under penalty of a fine) to expose their repairability score only as of January 1, 2022. Some of the larger companies, however, have already started to do so and in French stores. , next to the price of some products, a sticker representing a wrench and a gear is already visible, with a number ranging from one to ten and a color ranging from red (difficult to repair) to green (easy to repair) .
France has had a planned anti-obsolescence law since 2015 and this is not the first time it has taken sides against companies on this issue. The repair sticker operation is part of the broader attempt to make the economy more circular and reduce waste. In fact, according to 2020 data in France, only 40 per cent of broken technological devices have been repaired: with the new law, the government aims to raise this percentage to 60 per cent within five years.
Especially in the West, the duration of household appliances has significantly reduced in the last period: faced with the prospect of spending a lot on a repair and waiting weeks for the arrival of a spare part, the owners of household appliances and technological products often give up and buy them. of new ones. But, even when they are recycled, the environmental impact of discarded products remains high, especially given the reduced number of years for which they have been used.
According to the new French law, the repairability score of products must be calculated by the manufacturer based on five factors: the accessibility of the repair instructions, the ease of disassembly of the products, the availability and price of spare parts and a last indicator that varies according to the type of product. The final score is given by the average of the five factors which are in turn given by a series of more specific sub-indicators. To develop these indicators, the French institutions have referred, among other things, to the iFixit website, which contains repair manuals of all kinds and for years has been calculating and publishing the repairability score of many technological products on the market.
The fact that companies calculate the repairability score of their products rather than an external body has raised criticism from some experts and activists. The association HOP (Halte à l'obsolescence programmée – literally “Stop planned obsolescence”) explained that “one of the things we regret is that producers are not required to communicate their detailed grid” and that ” bodies that fight against scams can request this grid, but we doubt they have the resources to guarantee regular monitoring ». According to Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, companies could partially regulate themselves: for example, if Samsung markets a new smartphone with a suspiciously high score, Apple could point this out to the authorities.
However, the first results suggest that even without external control it is not so easy for companies to raise their scores. Apple, for example, does not exceed 7 tenths for any of its iPhones or MacBooks, and the scores for all of its products have a final average of 5.5 out of ten. Just to give an example, the iPhone XR and iPhone 11 ProMax took zero in ease of disassembly because none of the parts that commonly break or damage (like the screen or battery) can be removed in less than 16 steps. Microsoft only scores below 5, and its latest Surface Duo (a smartphone that opens like a book) scores 3.7 out of ten. In the case of Microsoft, the indicator that lowers the scores is the one concerning the availability of spare parts such as the RAM card or the keyboard, which after five years from the product's release are often unavailable. For the Pixel 4a and Pixel 5 smartphones, Google scored 6.3 out of ten.
Samsung is for the moment the company that is working hard to raise its scores. The publication of the Galaxy S21 + repair manual, consisting of forty pages illustrated by hundreds of teardown photos, raised the score to 8.2 out of ten, while the Galaxy S20, which currently has no manual, remained to 5.7. As reported by Le Monde, the two brands Oppo and Asus are also preparing similar manuals and many manufacturers are working to raise their score by improving the availability of spare parts. Olivier Vongxay, technical director of Asus France, explained that the company does not have a warehouse in France for the parts that make up the smartphones and its turnover is not large enough for repairers to keep their parts in store. The pieces then arrive slowly to both the repairer and the consumer and this lowers the score.
Ugo Vallauri, co-founder of Restart Project, a London-based advocacy association for the right to repair, said Europe is still a few years behind the obligation to put the repairability score on all labels, but that the fact that France started this experiment first shows that it is possible and that “it is a good opportunity for other countries that can now rely on the work done by French legislation”. In Europe, something began to move in 2019, when the European Union approved a new regulation that came into force this year and guarantees consumers the right to repair household appliances. Manufacturers now have the obligation to make spare parts available for at least 7 years (10 for washing machines) from the time the products are put on sale and to make repair instructions easy and accessible even to professionals outside the companies.
Again according to Vallauri, «when something becomes an obligation, it is no longer really a problem for producers. They simply have to accept it, as well as take into account many other variables when bringing a product to market. The more producers choose to make their products easily repairable, the more motivated others will be, if only for fear of being excluded from the improvement process “.
