Your average person breaks devices before than and you expect people to have access to a load of money at once?

A very capable smartphone currently costs ~200€, so if prices rise by 50% (an unbelievable amount), that would be 300€. Certainly not nothing, but car repairs or a new dishwasher are much more expensive.

I expect the poorest to benefit the most from extended longevity, since more affluent people "need" the better camera or a more fashionable design the most.

I know quite a few people with >3 year old smartphones, but mostly with custom roms, since stock firmware isn't usable anymore.

Most people I know get a phone case to limit damage to their phone. A case is an inexpensive investment that usually pays for itself many times over.

Someone who is really clumsy or in a situation where they are much more likely than average to drop their phone should purchase phone insurance.

And for uninsured people who happen to break their phone, it would still be cheaper to repair it than to get a new one. Repaired phones still benefit from longer support lifecycles, and the proposed legislation would ensure that spare parts are affordable and available.

A case is fantastic at protecting the outer areas of the phone by being a layer that comes in contact with the ground. They do fuck all to protect the internals as the forces still exist and can break a phone months down the road from the drop.

That contrasts sharply with my experiences, having dropped phones that were adequately protected by cheap cases on many occasions. These phones were still working fine years later, with no internal or external damage. Users who are more concerned about phone damage can buy tougher multi-layer cases, which are still great investments.

The former is why right to repair is so important.

The latter may be a problem but you could still buy an older (mid-cycle) model instead of the latest one and still get updates for years.

Right to repair is nearly meaningless on the budget-end as a repair guy will charge £50 to £100 for the labour plus parts with their own mark-up.

Does everyone on hackernews get paid £100k a year and spend over £1,000 on a phone?

A repair in Romania (EU, unlike UK) has a labor cost of 10-20EUR depending on the complexity; in most cases the "repair" is just replacing a component that has connectors, so it takes minutes, or swapping a new battery. A £100 fee sounds like science-fiction or lack of common sense.

A fee of 100-120 euros is not unusual in a part of the EU that isn't dirt poor, nothing science fiction about it.

If a person can’t afford expected repair expenses during the useful lifetime of a product, then they can’t afford that product.

You wouldn’t buy a car either without planning for repair costs.