Live data from Hacker News

EU Energy labelling will apply to phones and tablets from June 2025

energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu

41–50 of 85 posts

Re: EU Energy labelling will apply to phones and tablets from June 2025

#41
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to agree with you but then I remembered that while I don't care about energy labels when I decide to buy a phone or tablet... ... I know far less about, say, refrigerators. So last time i needed one i bought the one with the most economic energy label from the ones I liked.

I don’t see why energy labels move the needle for phones and tablets, considering battery life is already a highly maximized and sought after feature. An appliance plugged into a wall is different as most people have no easy way to discern energy usage. But they are reminded everyday of their mobile’s energy efficiency. And no one is going to use a black and white mobile to save 100kWh per year.

Estimates for the numbers are right there (which I really appreciated).

I think the main expected gains here are less from the estimated 0.2% electricity savings and more about longer average product lifetimes (thanks to better repairability).

If a manufacturer gets his phone to last for a day of heavy use, there is little motivation to improve efficiency past that benchmark I think (and this labeling provides that).

Re: EU Energy labelling will apply to phones and tablets from June 2025

#42
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, to me its crazy how anti-consumer the US is compared to the EU, just because of laws

This law has more to do with the environment/Energy usage than with the consumer. And the US consumer cares a lot less about energy usage since they're much more energy and monetarily rich than the EU. If they paid German gas and electricity prices for example while having European wages, they'd care a lot more about energy consumption, believe that.

> this law has more to do with the environment/Energy usage than with the consumer

Not sure about the distinction there, improving the environment and energy usage is benefitting the consumer, because the consumer is also the citizen living there

Re: EU Energy labelling will apply to phones and tablets from June 2025

#43
post #3

Nice page! I'm extremely happy about efforts like this. You might argue that the EU is a sprawling, wasteful bureaucracy and you would not be wrong, per se, but they made a lot of useful laws that just simply make the world a better place. Having standardized chargers for phones and laptops is SUPER nice and would never have happened without intervention IMO. The only equivalent for US "useful, average-citizen friend…

Can you share some equivalent Japanese laws that make the world a better place, or maybe Australian ones? Or are there none? :(

> laws that make the world a better place

That's a bizarre starting point to me. Iphone / Android made/make the world a better place. There were no laws mandating creation of them!

Re: EU Energy labelling will apply to phones and tablets from June 2025

#45

I have mixed feeling about this. On one side, it is good to have consumer friendly regulation like manufacturers to be forced to support right to repair. But on the opposite side, lots of bullshit requirements again like the energy labelling, that will do that we have less products, mostly from big actors only, and more expensive due the then useless regulation barrier. And the mixed feeling is stronger for things li…

> I have mixed feeling about this.

“WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.”

Re: EU Energy labelling will apply to phones and tablets from June 2025

#46
post #7
post #3

Nice page! I'm extremely happy about efforts like this. You might argue that the EU is a sprawling, wasteful bureaucracy and you would not be wrong, per se, but they made a lot of useful laws that just simply make the world a better place. Having standardized chargers for phones and laptops is SUPER nice and would never have happened without intervention IMO. The only equivalent for US "useful, average-citizen friend…

Yeah, to me its crazy how anti-consumer the US is compared to the EU, just because of laws

And yet, only US has right-to-repair laws for cars. When is EU going to fix that?

I can't get manuals and software access to fix a new car made in EU.

I don't really care that I can't fix my all-glued-up phone for <1000 EUR but I do care that I have to spend thousands on car repairs that I could do myself.

Re: EU Energy labelling will apply to phones and tablets from June 2025

#47
post #26
post #13

In the shop in my town, they sell televisions. Led ones, oled ones, big screen, the usual stuff. They have about 50 models. All have energy labels C or worse. No A, no A+, no B... Once there was an A one but the picture quality was horrible. I'm happy to be more conscious, but someone is working against the scheme: I don't have a real choice...

What does it even mean for a TV to be energy efficient? A TV's job is to convert electricity into... light, I guess? It's not light like a light bulb, nor would you want it to be. You wouldn't light your home with TVs. So is it something like "only produces light where needed on the screen" or "uses the least energy when turned off" or "does image processing for x format with the least energy" What are they measuring…

Yes,measuring the energy consumption and efficiency of the conversion from electricity to light is part of the label. The light bulb example is not as unsuitable as you seem to assume. Incandescent light bulbs only convert about 5 percent of the energy consumed to light, the rest is converted to heat. LEDs, in contrast, are 6 to 8 times more efficient.

Your "does image processing..." part is also important. Different processors consume vastly different amounts of energy. A hobbyist example would be trying to run something on a battery powered ESP32 with or without deep sleep.

Re: EU Energy labelling will apply to phones and tablets from June 2025

#49

availability of operating system upgrades for longer periods (at least 5 years from the date of the end of placement on the market of the last unit of a product model) This is so great! A lot of manufacturers were counting from the date of introduction. A lot of phones only had a 3 year support period. If they are on the market for two years, the people buying last would only get one year of support. This swaps to th…

I wonder if we get some malicious workarounds for this, like re-releasing the same phone under different SKUs to pretend they were different models on sale for a short time.

Re: EU Energy labelling will apply to phones and tablets from June 2025

#50
post #28
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tariffs on Chinese EVs are very unserious at the same time as subsidies are being withdrawn while the alleged deadline for phaseout of ICE is still in place. VW showed which side they were going to bet on with Dieselgate and should get no further sympathy.

I wonder how much charging infrastructure China has built inside their borders for their cheap EVs. In the EU, everyone who could afford an EV probably already has one. The rest will buy what they can afford and can charge.

When I last bought a car 5 years ago, the used car marked for EVs was very small and EVs were very expensive. Since then, they became much cheaper, there are a lot of new models and a lot of used cars on the market.

I'm not planning to buy a new car though, as mine is only 8 years old and still working fine. I'll check again when repairs start to get more expensive, maybe in a few years.

Post reply on HN