Motorola recently released phones with awful update policies, but it the company may have found a loophole regarding EU update laws.

Motorola recently launched several phones with no Android updates but five years of security patches in Europe.

This could be due to the company’s interpretation of EU regulations regarding software updates.

It seems like the regulations don’t actually force smartphone makers to offer software updates at all.

  • Quacksalber@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    3 days ago

    Operating system updates: from the date of end of placement on the market to at least 5 years after that date, manufacturers, importers or authorised representatives shall, if they provide security updates, corrective updates or functionality updates to an operating system, make such updates available at no cost for all units of a product model with the same operating system;

    The only thing this quoted law stipulates is that you provide any updates, if you released them, for at least 5 years after the phone stopped selling. So this law is completely pointless.

    • Elvith Ma'for@feddit.orgEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      Wrong, keep reading. You only quoted (6)(a). Now go and read (6)©:

      © security updates or corrective updates mentioned under point (a) need to be available to the user at the latest 4 months after the public release of the source code of an update of the underlying operating system or, if the source code is not publicly released, after an update of the same operating system is released by the operating system provider or on any other product of the same brand;

      As soon as a security patch is published in AOSP they now have 4 months to roll out an update.

      • stuner@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        Yes… and it also seems to me like (6) (d) would prevent Motorola’s policy of only providing security updates:

        (d) functionality updates mentioned under point (a) need to be available to the user at the latest 6 months after the public release of the source code of an update of the underlying operating system or, if the source code is not publicly released, after an update of the same operating system is released by the operating system provider or on any other product of the same brand;

        But the language here is quite tricky… I’m not 100% sure that points © and (d) force a manufacturer to provide updates under point (a) if Google updates AOSP.