If you live in the European Union and visit Apple’s website today, you’ll notice a new information snippet alongside iPhones and iPads: colorful energy labels grading each model’s efficiency, durability, and repairability.
This change isn’t voluntary, but rather Apple’s compliance with a new EU regulation that just went into effect.
The new labels assign each device a grade from A to G for energy efficiency and durability factors, including impact resistance and repairability. But Apple being Apple, there’s a bit more to the story.
Thoughts on the new EU guidelines
Alongside today’s changes, Apple also published a 44-page technical document in which it details its labeling process, as it found the regulation ambiguous:
The EU’s new Energy Labelling regulation for smartphones and tablets prescribes several interim test methods that contain unclear language. As a result, some metrics on the energy label are influenced by the choices made by manufacturers and test labs interpreting the regulation. This paper’s goal is to explain Apple’s chosen test methodology and the resulting scores that were, in some cases, voluntarily lowered to account for potential differences of interpretation. We look forward to working alongside other stakeholders to address test method ambiguities in the future.
A quick peek at the document is enough to make it clear that Apple is not thrilled with how some of these grades are calculated, or at least with how ambiguously the EU defined the testing methods.
According to Apple, its current iPhone models would actually qualify for the top “A” grade on the energy efficiency index. However, the company voluntarily downgraded its own rating to a “B” out of what it calls an “abundance of caution.”
The concern? That independent labs could interpret the EU’s testing protocols differently, and end up giving Apple a worse score. And guess how that would play out in public.
The same conservative downgrade approach was applied to iPhone drop resistance scores. Apple says it’s not convinced the EU’s standardized drop tests reflect real-world durability, especially given how much they depend on variables like the type of wood and steel used for impact surfaces.
Here are the tags for the 11″ iPad Air, the 11″ iPad Pro, the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro:
What the labels show, and how to find them
The energy labels cover six main categories:
- Energy efficiency per charge
- Battery lifespan (number of full charge cycles)
- Repairability
- Ingress protection (water and dust resistance)
- Drop impact resistance
- Battery endurance per cycle (hours of use per full charge)
For buyers, the most visible part is a new icon (a colorful little tag) that now appears on iPhone and iPad product pages for EU countries, including on each product’s purchase page. Clicking or tapping the icon reveals the full label. You can also find them in the environmental section of each product’s tech specs.
There’s also a downloadable PDF that digs even deeper. It includes details like battery capacity in milliamp-hours (mAh), the device’s scratch resistance rating based on the Mohs hardness scale, and the guaranteed minimum number of years each product will continue receiving security updates.
Beyond the website changes, Apple will also now include a printed version of the energy label in the box with each new iPhone and iPad sold in the EU, starting with devices manufactured from this point forward.
Via MacRumors
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