Know before you buy: starting today, EU’s new labels shake up the smartphone market

I was about to comment how this number doesn't make sense, but reading the article they mention the power savings for phones specifically is actually 2.2TWh per year, which might be realistic. The rest of the 14 TWh comes from landline phones (2.2TWh) and energy used to produce phones that would be saved (8.1 TWh) from the lifetime extension measures, that aren't even related to the power efficiency of phones and won't take place in the EU.

However, even these numbers are overinflated when you take into account they're using a PEF factor of 1.9, meaning they multiply the actual power usage by 1.9 to adjust for stuff like power transfer losses (only 5-10%) and the inefficiency of generating power from e.g. fossil fuels (because e.g. petroleum might only convert 40% of its potential energy to electricity), but when people typically talk about power usage they're talking about the actual amount of electricity that needs to be generated, not this abstract representation of it, meaning that e.g. phone electricity savings are actually only 1.1TWh-1.2TWh.

I was thinking at first that this would lead to even more aggressive "app optimization" where it would refuse to notify alarms you've explicitly set due to battery life concerns.

But instead there's a better way, which I hope manufacturers will take. Perhaps smartphone chips can stop chasing absolute peak performance and instead focus on good performance at a reasonable power budget.

Of course the biggest problem is bloated software but idk how we can fix that.

I think the big value of these labels are not the energy class (like for bigger appliances) it’s the fields under the energy class. Repeatability, (official declaration of) battery duration, simple to spot resistance to dust/water, etc

1.6MW is absolutely tiny for a nuclear reactor and most produce at least 200MW with a lot of them going up to a GW and not to say 14TWh isn’t a huge amount of energy just that the comparison to a nuclear power plant is off

... optimise the use and recycling of critical raw materials

Does anyone have an idea how this helps with recycling?

I’m having trouble finding actual ratings for anything on this site

Would be funny to know how the supposed 14TWh savings compare to the cost required to introduce/maintain these labels. And by costs I mean overall costs with everything related to it.

The data seems to be weird/lacking so far, a lot of phones have "10" as "battery endurance in cycles", and some have the "Battery user-replaceable" even though it clearly isn't (e.g. glued on back glass)

PS: sorry I'm an idiot, I misunderstood what "battery endurance in cycles" meant (it seems to actually be "hundreds of cycles"). Also "battery user-replaceable" phones don't have a glued-on back indeed, I was looking at a wrong model.

This is sick! In 5-7 years when I'm looking for a new phone this will come in really handy :)

Thanks

What do they actually mean by "model identifier"? Serial number? IMEI?

This happened with appliances. They ended up with the silly A++++ ratings added in 2010 as otherwise everything would be an A.

In 2021 they decided to redefine grades instead. A fridge at A+++ became a C. A became the top grade again.

It's also worth noting that as they push the whole scale and G into being more efficient that essentially bans products that can't achieve a rating.

if everything becomes an A the system has worked and increased the efficiency across the market. They'll adjust the goals every 5 to 10 years.

The EU battery life measure is going to be the most interesting battle ground in my opinion. "All day battery life" will have a measured metric in hours.

If the EU have managed to make that metric representative of an amount of screen time in a busy day it could become the first thing consumers look at. Or at least a deal breaker when that number is too low.

I think it might be a way to keep phone manufacturers happy so they don't block the bill.

If most of the phones get a C or a D you can be sure that most phone manufacturers will lobby against the bill. So it's probably easier to pass a bill with meaningful criteria but most of them get a B or a A and in a few years adjust the levels required.

You don't care about battery life?

Minuscule? A modern phone has a battery around a third or half that of a laptop (5000mAh x 3.7V = 18.5Wh). They also start having processors similarly capable. Gaming and other intense tasks can consume surprising amounts of energy. They put more and more emphasis on cooling, some phones including a fan. If we continue this way it starts to become expensive...

I think that's the wrong way to look at it. Times any of those metrics by the literal billions of phones out there and it adds up quite quickly.

Sure on an individual basis it might mean savings of a few bucks over the course of the lifetime of the phone, but scale that up and we're talking entire power plant's worth of electricity that isn't required.

I feel this way about washing machines already. Oh wow, this one uses 0.6kwh less per wash. That's like 30kwh a year!

meanwhile my fridge

Agreed, it's just that they unified it for all electronic devices.

Kinda dumb.

Ahem:

Article 8

Entry into force and application

This Regulation shall enter into force on the twentieth day > following that of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.

It shall apply from 20 June 2025.

This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States.

Done at Brussels, 16 June 2023.

Source: EurLex

Law was in effect from yesterday, but that doesn't mean stores have to wait for that day to implement it.

I couldn't find any Google Pixel

They have 5 models listed for Google

The "Battery endurance in cycles" [...] never seems to exceed 15?

It's hundreds of cycles. So 1500 cycles.

Agreed that a lot of the phones' batteries are not actually replaceable without serious disassembling most of the phone. The common names of the phones are not front and center either. It's quite disappointing from an official governmental service.

This is a straight up lie because all these phones are glued together (nearly all are IP68) meaning that you need some special tools.

You'll also need a battery, which in these cases then will come with a spudger, a tube of suitable glue, and instructions. Bring your own hairdryer I think is reasonable.

The idea is not so much that everyone will be replacing their own battery but that they could, which on the flipside then also means that shops will readily do it because they have no issue getting at parts and you don't need to be a specialist to do it. What won't fly is pulling an Apple and crypto-locking batteries to phones and requiring activation and only doing that for swaps made by the Apple store and stuff. Tesla tried to pull the same kind of shit with their cars in the EU and they got completely obliterated by regulations, up to and including price controls for their diagnosis software because they wanted to price out independent repair shops.

If you want a list of phones with actually replacable batteries try this.

Did you guys just stop testing after 15?

Times hundred. The labels have the zeroes, the database doesn't.

Also “with regard to energy labelling” what is this labelling about? Energy? Ok then why are there values about the phones “Repeated free fall reliability” or IP protection inside there?

That "energy" label is an old and well-known scheme that people are actively looking for when shopping for things, makes sense to tack other sustainability stuff onto it if you want people to see it. Does it make sense? No. Does it make sense? Yes.

The “battery endurance in cycles” is the weirdest thing to me. Even Li ion batteries from 20 years ago could achieve 100+ charge cycles before <80% capacity is hit. Fifteen (or lower) is suspect for the testing method or concerning for the engineering.