Right to Repair Is Actually Happening: What Changed for Phones in 2026
2026-08-05
For years, "right to repair" was mostly an advocacy talking point. In 2026 it's turned into actual, enforced law in a growing number of places — with real consequences for how phone and tablet makers have to design their products and support them after purchase.
Where the laws exist
A cluster of U.S. states — including California, Colorado, Minnesota, New York, Connecticut, Oregon, and Washington — now have comprehensive right-to-repair statutes on the books covering consumer electronics. Manufacturers selling into those states are required to make repair parts, tools, and documentation available to independent shops and to owners themselves, not just their own authorized service network.
A recurring theme in the newer state laws is a crackdown on parts pairing — the practice of using software to detect that a genuine replacement part (a screen, a battery, a camera module) wasn't "authorized," and disabling features or throwing persistent warnings even when the repair was done correctly. Newer legislative language explicitly bars manufacturers from using software locks to control who is allowed to perform a repair.
Outside the U.S., the EU's Right to Repair directive requires member states to have it written into their own national laws by the end of July 2026, extending similar obligations — spare-parts access, repairability requirements, restrictions on anti-repair design — across the EU market for phones, tablets, and household appliances.
Where it's still missing
There is no federal right-to-repair law in the United States as of this writing. Two federal bills aimed at closing that gap have moved through committee consideration in Congress but have not reached a floor vote, which means coverage still depends entirely on which state you live in. The FCC, despite regulating phones in other ways, has no direct authority over repair access — this is being fought state by state and, in Europe, at the EU level, not through a single national telecom regulator.
Why it matters if you're not planning to repair anything yourself
Even buyers who will never crack open a phone case benefit indirectly: parts availability and anti-pairing rules put downward pressure on independent repair shop prices, extend the realistic secondhand life of a device, and are part of why more manufacturers now publish official repairability scores. When we publish device pages, we note repairability information where a manufacturer or a recognized source has published it — this is one of the reasons that information is becoming more available.