A regulatory ask we'd happily put our weight behind: when a manufacturer stops shipping software updates for a device, they should be obliged to publish what the open-source community needs to keep that device alive. Not as a charity gesture, not on request, but as a default.
In plain terms: the instructions, source code and keys that let someone other than the manufacturer install fresh, safe software on a phone or watch the manufacturer has given up on.
Exhibit A: the Samsung Galaxy S10
Take the Samsung Galaxy S10. Launched 2019. In spring 2023 it dropped off Samsung's update list, and by March 2024 the last S10 variants had followed. The hardware is still excellent: a Snapdragon 855 (or Exynos 9820), 6-8 GB of RAM, a sharp AMOLED display, fingerprint sensor, decent camera, NFC, IP68. For today's web browsing, messaging, banking, navigation, and most everyday tasks, it remains far more capable than what the median user actually demands.
What's stopping a 2019 S10 from being someone's main phone today? Not the silicon. It's the end of security updates. And, for the determined user, it's the effort of installing a community-built system (LineageOS, /e/OS), hunting down the right pieces of manufacturer software, and living with whatever manufacturer-specific features stop working.
And we're not theorising: we use an S10 every day, years after its last official update, thanks to LineageOS. It does everything a phone needs to do, with up-to-date Android security patches from the community. The only thing it was ever missing was permission to keep going.
Multiply that across every phone, tablet and smartwatch whose maker has moved on to the next model, and the picture comes into focus: tonnes of capable hardware sliding into recycling bins because the manufacturer's calendar said so, not because anything broke.
What "opening up" should mean concretely
A meaningful end-of-update-open rule would have to be specific. At the moment a manufacturer declares a device end-of-update, it would have to publish:
- How to unlock the device for other software (the "bootloader") safely, without bricking it
- The source code of the system core (the "kernel") exactly as it runs on that device
- The small pieces of manufacturer software ("drivers" and "firmware") that talk to the camera, modem, sensors and radios
- Enough hardware documentation for community developers to write replacements where licences prevent a direct release
- The keys the device needs to accept a community-built system, or a documented way for owners to install their own
Most of this is already partially there for some vendors, sometimes, with friction. The proposal is to make it standard: the moment the company stops its own engineering, the door opens.
Why this won't happen voluntarily
The economic incentive toward forced obsolescence is well documented. A phone that lasts ten years is a phone the customer didn't replace eight years in. Manufacturers know this. The argument they make publicly (security, complexity, support cost) is real. So is the one they don't make publicly: selling a new phone every three years is a much better business than selling one every ten.
Left to themselves, vendors have moved slowly. The ones who publish the most treat it as PR, not policy. The ones who publish the least treat the question as confidential.
There are exceptions worth naming. Fairphone supported its Fairphone 2 for more than seven years, and when it finally ended updates in March 2023, it pointed owners to community systems like /e/OS and LineageOS instead of the recycling bin. Its current Fairphone 6 is promised updates until at least 2033, and unlocking it for other software is officially supported. So it can be done. Where it doesn't happen, that's a business decision, not a technical limit.
The regulatory hook
The EU has already shown it will step in. Since 20 June 2025, new EU ecodesign rules for smartphones and tablets require manufacturers to keep providing operating system updates for at least five years after a model leaves the shelves, and to stock spare parts for seven. Before that came the right-to-repair package, the USB-C mandate and GDPR's data-portability clauses. None of those were ideas the industry would have moved on without outside pressure.
Five years is real progress. It also marks the exact moment this proposal is about. The EU now defines when support may end. What it doesn't yet say is what happens to the device afterwards. A "release-after-EOL" rule fits the same pattern:
- Defined trigger. The manufacturer's announced end of update support.
- Defined deliverable. The artefacts above, in a standardised form.
- Defined window. Within X months of the trigger.
- Proportionate enforcement. Penalties that bite the worst offenders, with reasonable safe harbours where code or designs are genuinely licensed from third parties.
The rule wouldn't kill intellectual property. It wouldn't force open-sourcing of code still in development. It would apply only to hardware the company itself has declared finished. The cost falls overwhelmingly on the marketing fiction that "support is ongoing".
Sustainability in concrete numbers
Electronic waste is one of the fastest-growing waste streams in the world. The Global E-waste Monitor 2024 counted a record 62 million tonnes of it in 2022, and less than a quarter (22.3%) was documented as properly collected and recycled.
For a smartphone, most of the damage is done before you ever switch it on: around 72% of its climate footprint comes from making, shipping and disposing of it, not from charging it. That's why keeping devices longer matters so much. The European Environmental Bureau estimates that using all smartphones, notebooks, washing machines and vacuum cleaners in the EU for just one more year would save about 4 million tonnes of CO2 a year by 2030. That's like taking 2 million cars off the road.
A regulation like this wouldn't fix every sustainability problem in the sector. It would, however, take a meaningful chunk of perfectly capable hardware out of the disposal stream and put it back into the hands of people who want to keep using it. That is the entire goal.
What you can do
- Vote with your purchase. Prefer manufacturers who unlock devices cleanly, publish their kernel source promptly, and stay friendly to community systems like LineageOS, GrapheneOS or Mobian.
- Support the organisations that are actually in the consultation rooms: the FSFE, EDRi, the Open Rights Group and the Right to Repair Europe coalition.
- When EU consultations on durability or right-to-repair come up (and they do, regularly), write in. Industry associations always do; private citizens often don't.
- Keep older devices alive on community systems. Functioning fleets of "obsolete" devices demonstrate that the demand exists.
- Look after the battery. It's usually the first part to wear out, and often the reason a perfectly good device gets replaced. Keeping it roughly between 20% and 80% and out of the heat slows that wear considerably (Battery University explains why). For smartwatches, we're working on Batty, a small Wear OS app that reminds you at the right moment. More on that soon.
One sentence
End-of-update should mean open-by-default. Not "if you ask nicely". Not "if the lawyers say it's fine". Default.
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