Image credit – iFixit
When considering purchasing a product for long-term use, one of the factors that is taken into consideration is the after-sales service. Is the product easy to repair? Are repair centers easy to find? How long does it take to repair? Will it be expensive? These are some questions that you might consider, and in Europe it will soon be easier to determine.
The European Parliament has recently approved recommendations for companies to make devices easier to repair, and also to add labels that could introduce iFixit-like scores for repairability. For those unfamiliar, iFixit is a website that specializes in tearing down electronic products to determine how easy it is to repair, where at the end of each teardown they will offer up a score and reasons why a product might be easy/difficult to fix.
So by attaching these kinds of scores to products, customers shopping for a new device will have a better idea of whether or not their purchase is easy to fix which could influence their decision making. The European Parliament is also looking to make critical components like batteries and LEDs to be easily removable, as opposed to glued in where removing it is trick and could end up damaging it.
Whether or not they will be successful in their implementation remains to be seen. As Engadget points out, Apple has never made an iPhone with a removable battery and whether or not they can be convinced to do so could prove to be a monumental task, although we guess we have to admit that it’s not necessarily a bad idea.
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