European Update Regulations

Altitude

Hi,

Just a heads-up: for European customers, it seems the brand may not be complying with the new update regulations.

Since June 2025, any new smartphone sold in the European market must offer at least 5 years of major system updates.

However, Nothing currently only provides 3 years.

It would be a good idea to report this to them to get an official response.

https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/news/new-eu-rules-durable-energy-efficient-and-repairable-smartphones-and-tablets-start-applying-2025-06-20_en

cherryghost

Heh, I should have searched this. I asked for clarification on this also. I would be extremely disappointed if they are going to go down the Motorola route and have me reconsider future purchases

Coldpaw

Phone (3) more or less complies with the new regulations, Phone (3a) Lite does not.

Things get even more interesting when taking the starting date into account:

Unlike before, where essentially the release date marked the baseline for the update policy, now the European Union declares the end of market as the baseline. So in case of NP3, when Nothing decides to officially pull it in Summer 2026, that’s when the five years are kicking in.

There is another subject which should heavily affect Nothing: Replacement parts and repairability.

So far Nothing stays true to their company name when it comes to spare parts, nothing is available. There is no other way than contacting Nothing customer support, get a quote and send in your device. With the new rules, they have to make their spare parts available to all professional repair shops, more common parts like batteries and displays even need to be made available for consumers.

CMF1_hacker

I believe those regulations need to be confirmed at the last point of sale, which hasn’t happened for any NTL phone yet released after that date.

They’ll simply have to continue providing the minimal OS updates required by law to comply or apply for an exemption.

Queue the complaints that NTL changed nothing (pun intended) from A15 to A16 and it should be easy to continue this trend.

But serious, it’s good for the EEA consumer and I’m glad we have some rights remaining in the UK.

Coldpaw

CMF1_hacker I did some research and those “minimal OS updates” indeed seem to be not only are limited to security updates as I initially believed, but include major updates. The regulation even goes further steps:

Major system updates need to be supplied not later than six months after the original source (in our case Google) published the base of a new major update.

There also is kind of a functionality demand in place, which means functionality or major updates aren’t allowed to lower or negatively impact performance, features and functionality of the original release.

For security updates, the rules state no longer than four months after the original source published the code, which of course doesn’t apply to Nothing at the moment with the bi-monthly cycle and is more targeted towards some Chinese brands which may only do security updates once or twice per year.

CMF1_hacker

Coldpaw excellent work EU.

What’s the penalty for noncompliance? Repurchase of device at original RRP?

Coldpaw

CMF1_hacker To be honest I don’t know what happens when manufacturers violate these new rules. They could be sued and have to pay hefty fines I guess.

JakubL To be fair I know more people who actually keep their phones for years (or would like to keep them) than I do know people who purchase a new phone regularly. My brother just retired his 2016 Galaxy Note 4 last year, my mother keeps using an el-cheapo China phone she purchased almost five years ago. Most of my co-workers are using budget phones which are already a few years old. A friend of mine keeps using his Fairphone 4 with no intentions to upgrade it any time soon.

If people just

use it for calls and communication
social media
watch some YT videos (or TikTok and Insta)
take some snapshots
do some casual webbrowsing

there really isn’t much of a need to regularly update a phone every two or three years. I’d still be happily using my 3+ years old Galaxy Fold 4 if I wouldn’t have switched to Nothing, in fact it still serves me as a secondary device.

Personally I hope to use my NP3 for years to come and would be delighted if I could actually, thanks to the new EU rules, either swap battery and backpanel myself because I can get them as spare parts or just go to our small, local repair shop and hand it in for a battery replacement.

JakubL

Who uses same phone for 5 years? People who don’t give a damn about updates.

CMF1_hacker

JakubL I keep my phones until my children break them. My last two phones were 4 to 5 years. The 1+1 and the Xiaomi Youth Edition. Now a CMF1 and NP3 (didn’t buy it.)

Stereobasic

JakubL me… lol why change if it works ??? And now i try to only buy brands that last and don’t use planned obsolescence. When a brand is caught doing that, i NEVER buy it again. The good brands keeps me as customer my whole life.

cherryghost

Hi there, I just purchased a 3a and loving it. Thinking of getting a 2a for me wife on the budget we have. Was reading here that the phone support policy is 3 months for OS and 4 months for security. This is against EU regulations that came into effect since June.

What’s Nothings official statement on this? The Nothing 2 series is still on sales across the EU. I’d be fairly disappointed to learn if Nothing are going down the Motorola route with this (and knowing that if I got a Nothing 2 series phone that it has less than 2 years of OS and 3 of security updates/support.