FactRated.

How FactRated compares products

FactRated is built around a simple rule: show the measurements first, and keep the interpretation transparent.

We do not assign an overall product score in the initial version of FactRated. A phone can rank highly for battery endurance and less highly for repairability. Another can have excellent ingress protection but a shorter declared software-support period. Combining those measurements into one number would require subjective weights, and different users would reasonably choose different weights.

Instead, FactRated publishes the underlying measurements, metric-specific rankings and filters that let users decide which trade-offs matter to them.

Our first product categories

FactRated initially covers smartphones and slate tablets that have standardized product data available to the platform.

Smartphones and tablets are kept in separate ranking cohorts whenever their standardized test procedures or class thresholds differ. A number that looks similar across two product types is not automatically treated as directly comparable.

Primary data source

The first FactRated vertical uses public product data from the European Product Registry for Energy Labelling (EPREL), operated by the European Commission.

EPREL contains model-level information registered by suppliers under the applicable EU energy-labelling framework. The fact that a value is registered in an official framework does not mean the European Commission independently laboratory-tested every individual model. FactRated is independent from the European Commission and is not endorsed by it.

Market scope and exact model variants

The initial source is centred on models placed on the EU/EEA market. A commercial product name can be reused across countries even when a regional variant or model identifier differs. FactRated therefore keeps the supplier model identifier and source registration tied to every product page and does not assume that a similarly named US, Brazilian or other-market variant has identical registered specifications.

Users outside Europe can still use the standardized comparisons where the exact model corresponds, but should verify the model identifier/variant before relying on a value for a local purchase. Country-availability fields are shown only when the source provides them; absence of a country entry is not converted into a claim of worldwide availability or unavailability.

FactRated retrieves source data server-side, caches it and maps it into a normalized internal product model. We do not expose or depend on the source API directly in the user's browser.

What we normalize

For smartphones and slate tablets, the FactRated comparison model can include fields such as:

A missing field remains missing. FactRated does not convert an absent value into zero or infer a specification that the source did not provide.

Battery endurance per cycle

The canonical FactRated value is stored in minutes from the standardized source measurement. Hours and minutes shown on the website are derived from that value at display time.

Smartphone and slate-tablet battery-endurance test workloads differ, so FactRated keeps their endurance rankings separate.

The standardized value is useful for comparing products under the same framework. It is not a promise of the exact runtime every owner will experience. Real battery life varies with settings, apps, signal conditions, temperature, network use and many other factors.

Battery endurance in cycles

The source expresses this field in full hundreds of cycles. FactRated converts it for consumer display as a minimum cycle count.

For example, a source value of 12 is displayed as at least 1,200 cycles.

This is the number of charge/discharge cycles associated with the defined battery-capacity threshold in the applicable framework. It should not be read as the exact moment at which a battery stops working.

Repairability

FactRated compares both the official repairability index and class where available.

The index runs from 1.00 to 5.00, with a higher value representing better repairability under the defined methodology. Letter classes range from A to E.

The repairability index combines several dimensions, including disassembly depth, fasteners, tools, the Spare Parts score, software-update duration and repair-information access. It does not guarantee the price or quality of a specific repair service in a user's location.

Ingress protection

FactRated derives the familiar IPxy display from the documented solid-ingress and water-ingress fields rather than relying on undocumented duplicate strings.

Ingress protection measures a specific kind of environmental protection. It is not a drop-resistance score, scratch-resistance score or blanket guarantee against all liquid damage.

Where an immersion-depth field is available, FactRated can show it separately.

Repeated free-fall reliability

FactRated can display the official class and the registered falls-without-defect value.

Raw fall counts are ranked only within compatible test cohorts. Foldable and non-foldable devices can have different test conditions and thresholds; smartphones and tablets also have different class thresholds in parts of the framework. We do not mix unlike raw measurements simply to produce a larger ranking.

A standardized repeated free-fall result is comparative evidence, not a guarantee that a specific unit will survive a specific real-world accident.

Software-update support

The source field describes the minimum guaranteed availability of specified operating-system updates using the regulatory reference period. That reference is tied to the model's end of placement on the market, not simply the date when an individual buys the product.

FactRated preserves source values and performs data-quality checks before using this field in a public ranking. If extreme or inconsistent values materially distort a ranking, the ranking can remain unpublished or noindex until reviewed rather than silently "fixing" the data.

Energy-efficiency class

The A–G energy-efficiency class is not the same as battery runtime.

For smartphones and tablets, the class is based on an energy-efficiency index that relates standardized endurance to the energy available from the battery. The class thresholds for smartphones and slate tablets are different, so FactRated does not create a cross-category efficiency ranking from the letter alone.

Product names and images

Not every source record includes a consumer-friendly commercial name or product image.

FactRated's preferred identity order is:

  1. official source commercial name, when present;
  2. authorized Open Icecat title/image enrichment when an exact GTIN match is available and the content is authorized for the FactRated account;
  3. supplier/trademark plus official model identifier.

Open Icecat enrichment is not used to change FactRated's standardized comparison metrics in the first release.

If no verified product image is available, FactRated shows a neutral category illustration rather than generating or guessing a product-specific image.

How rankings are built

A FactRated ranking must define:

Missing values are excluded from the metric denominator. They are not treated as zero.

A rank or percentile is shown only when there are enough valid comparable records for the result to be meaningful. The page should state the cohort, for example "current non-foldable smartphones with valid repeated free-fall data."

Why there is no overall FactRated score

An overall score would require weights. How much should repairability count compared with battery endurance? Is IP protection more important than software support? The answer depends on the user.

FactRated may offer a personalized finder where a user chooses priorities, but that is different from claiming that one universal weighting is objectively correct.

The first release therefore uses metric-specific rankings and transparent filters, not an overall product score.

Data freshness and changes

FactRated stores source freshness information and updates its normalized catalogue periodically. Suppliers can update registered model information, and external data structures can evolve.

Our importer keeps raw source snapshots/audit information and uses a normalization boundary so a source-field change does not silently become a different consumer meaning.

Where practical, product pages show when the normalized source data was last refreshed.

Limitations

FactRated is a comparison and research tool. It does not currently include every factor a buyer might care about. In the first smartphone/tablet release, it does not attempt to rank camera quality, processor performance, RAM, storage, retail price, network quality or subjective user experience unless a future verified dataset is deliberately added for those purposes.

A high rank on one FactRated metric does not mean a product is the best purchase for every user.

Source attribution

Source data for the initial smartphone/tablet comparison layer: European Commission — European Product Registry for Energy Labelling (EPREL).

FactRated independently normalizes, organizes and presents the data. FactRated is not affiliated with or endorsed by the European Commission.

Where optional product enrichment is used, its provenance is stored separately and does not replace the standardized source metrics.

See FactRated data sources

Data source: EPREL · Last updated: Sep 7, 2026