Samsung & Apple are fined by Italian authorities for building planned obsolescence into phones

[Master Disaster]

Apple has received a 10 million euro fine and Samsung has received a 5 million euro fine because both companies have been ruled to have deliberately mislead customers and trying to force customers to upgrade by slowing down phones via software updates.

Quote

Apple was hit with a 10 million euro (£8.8m) fine while Samsung received a smaller bill of five million euros.

 

"Apple and Samsung implemented unfair commercial practices", the Italian competition authority said in a statement.

 

Software updates were said to have slowed the performance of older phones.

 

This "caused serious malfunctions and significantly reduced performance", which provoked users into upgrading their devices, the authority said.

 

The companies encouraged users to upgrade operating system software but did not make clear the increased demands that new software would make on smartphones, according to the authority.

Samsung have said they intend to appeal the decision while Apple have declined to comment.

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Samsung said it was "disappointed" with the decision and said it would appeal.

 

"Samsung did not issue any software update that reduced the Galaxy Note 4's performance," a spokesman said.

 

"In contrast, Samsung has always released software updates enabling our customers to have the best experience possible."

 

Apple was fined more than Samsung because the tech giant also failed to tell customers important details about iPhone batteries - including how to prolong their lifespan.

Both companies must also post a message of their websites informing customers of the decision.

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Both firms must publish a declaration on their Italian websites telling consumers of the authority's decision.

 

Last year, Apple confirmed that it deliberately slowed down some older iPhone models because their battery performance diminished over time.

 

It argued the move would "prolong the life" of devices.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45963943

 

Interesting, obviously I've heard of the Apple case but I've never heard of Samsung being accused of this too.

[voiha]

Samsung's experience on top is already slow enough, they don't need to further do it.

[D13H4RD]

I'm interested to see exactly how they've come to the conclusion that Samsung slowed down their phones with updates.

 

I can't speak for everyone but my Note8 still performs well, being mostly identical to its first few days of use performance-wise.

 

Regarding the Note 4, was it the Lollipop 5.0.2 update? If so, you can't blame Samsung entirely.

[Bouzoo]

1 minute ago, Master Disaster said:

Samsung has received a 5 million euro fine because both companies have been ruled to have deliberately mislead customers and trying to force customers to upgrade by slowing down phones via software updates

Interesting. Just yesterday I found out that Samsung S line, even the S4, have been getting software, not OS, updates for 4-5 years. S6 is still getting them. It is weird they would slow them down after all that trouble of providing updates for so long that I don't know any other OEM does. That costs money after all.

 

1 minute ago, voiha said:

Samsung's experience on top is already slow enough, they don't need to further do it.

That is untrue as is possibly could've been. The times of slow TouchWiz have passed long time ago. 

[voiha]

Just now, Bouzoo said:

That is untrue as is possibly could've been. The times of slow TouchWiz have passed long time ago. 

Tell that to my slow responding S8+

[D13H4RD]

Just now, voiha said:

Tell that to my slow responding S8+

What do you have installed? My Note8 has had its laggy moments but they've been quite rare. As a person coming from a long time with stock Android, the Experience UX is actually a decent performer.

[Blademaster91]

Not surprising to have this happen to Apple, especially with battery throttling. However with Samsung, it should be more of a problem with Android in general not getting well optimized updates. Though phones have had planned forced upgrades built in ever since you haven't been able to easily swap the battery or add extra storage.

[Commodus]

Yeah, the Apple part is very familiar (and the issue wasn't that Apple was throttling to protect devices, it was that it didn't tell users before it happened).

 

The Samsung part, however, is new.  Without access to the raw court docs I suspect this is more about Samsung's bad habit of releasing OS updates that bog down older phones... and unlike Apple, not really doing anything to improve the situation.

 

It's hard to completely avoid weighing down phones as new software adds new features, but Samsung is notorious for not really doing much to optimize for older devices.  Strictly anecdotally, my girlfriend complained that her Galaxy S7 slowed down a bit with the Oreo update.  Conversely, my old iPhone 7 was still plenty speedy when I installed iOS 12 on it (shortly before I upgraded to a newer model, but that was my choice).

[Sfekke]

9 minutes ago, voiha said:

Samsung's experience on top is already slow enough, they don't need to further do it.

Okay while I would've agreed with this a few years ago, my Galaxy J7 (2017) is buttery smooth.

Don't feel the need to install the Google Launcher or Nova Launcher, which was a different story with Huawei phones I owned.

[voiha]

Just now, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

What do you have installed? My Note8 has had its laggy moments but they've been quite rare. As a person coming from a long time with stock Android, the Experience UX is actually a decent performer.

Well it's my girlfriends phone soo... I guess that is adding it up to. She has Facebook, instagram and all the crappy bloatware that you can install, but generally that's how most users use their phones. I am with Nokia 7 plus (without the Facebook app only messenger) and my transitions and overall response times are vastly better than hers. In raw power her phone is of course more powerful due to the SD835 chip.

[voiha]

Just now, Sfekke said:

Okay while I would've agreed with this a few years ago, my Galaxy J7 (2017) is buttery smooth.

Don't feel the need to install the Google Launcher or Nova Launcher, which was a different story with Huawei phones I owned.

Yeah I agree with you, as I said above, it really depends on how you treat your phone. If you keep it clean then it will operate in it's optimal speeds.

[Amazonsucks]

Just now, voiha said:

Well it's my girlfriends phone soo... I guess that is adding it up to. She has Facebook, instagram and all the crappy bloatware that you can install, but generally that's how most users use their phones. I am with Nokia 7 plus (without the Facebook app only messenger) and my transitions and overall response times are vastly better than hers. In raw power her phone is of course more powerful due to the SD835 chip.

Sounds like a problem with the user not the phone.

[D13H4RD]

2 minutes ago, voiha said:

She has Facebook, instagram and all the crappy bloatware that you can install

That's probably why.

 

My Note8 doesn't have the Facebook app and only has the Lite version of Messenger. A lot of the bloat was culled (you can uninstall them on the unlocked models) and I didn't mess around with Device Maintenance, with all of that said.

 

Most of my phones these days don't have the official Facebook app, and for the most part, they've stayed relatively sprite.

[Sfekke]

2 minutes ago, voiha said:

Yeah I agree with you, as I said above, it really depends on how you treat your phone. If you keep it clean then it will operate in it's optimal speeds.

Totally agreed.

 

I have a pretty good selection of apps installed, but do have the habit to restart every two to three days before I charge it up again.

Noticed if I kept my phone on for weeks on end it'd get sloppy and slow, but the same goes for my PC or laptop.

 

My first Samsung phone, running Android 2.3 (Galaxy Pocket somethingsomething) was slow when I bought it and as slow today.

They clearly did improve their software, I was a little hesitant to get Samsung again but I have to say; personally I really enjoy the Samsung experience.

Multitasking, layout of the skin & memory management.

Auto-focus is a little wonky, I don't seem to be the only one with that issue and that'd be more of an issue with the hardware since other camera apps excerpt the same behaviour.

[TacoSenpai]

Yeah I uninstall all the social media garbage and google stuff from my phones.  I also uninstall alot of the uneeded samsung stuff but get things like the music player.

 

I turn mine off every night no charging let it just 'rest' i guess lol.

[D13H4RD]

On another note, had a chat with @NowakVulpix and they remarked that their 2016 Pixel started to slow down to a crawl as of late, in a similar behavior to Artem's Pixel 2 XL, where apps would sometimes take upwards of 15 seconds to start up.

 

I don't know if there's something up with the Pixels, but seeing an OG Pixel starting to act up is giving me pause on their long-term performance.

[Rupe]

Well with Apple we know that they did throttle the CPU to preserve battery life so it's up for debate whether it was to increase the longevity of their phones or planned obsolescence. But what evidence does the Italian government have that Samsung is doing this? The Italian government really needs to release a substantial report justifying such large fines or I think it's fair to be sceptical about their motivations. I mean what do you think the 'Italian competition authority' really knows about the specifics of technology?

[ThePD]

My Samsung S5 started slowing down a year after I bought it. Whenever it hits 42% battery life it loves to go into a never ending restart loop. I attribute this to a decaying battery in the phone that I haven't replaced but that didn't explain the initial slowdowns I had noticed years ago. 

[rcmaehl]

I have the same problem @LinusTech has with his Samsung on my S5. The majority of other people have fine performance and battery life, yet mine seemingly has issues even with a custom ROM. I know several people that have the same issue with other Samsung models. I've replaced batteries, factory reset, and nothing seems to fix it. I dunno if it's a QA issue Samsung doesn't check for, an environmental issue, or what. Maybe Samsung will actually look into their processes... or maybe they'll just fight this in court and the underlying problem will never be solved.

[schwellmo92]

This isn't necessarily Samsung/Apple slowing down phones, it is that when they release new OS versions they are more power hungry so therefore slower phones... perform slower... it's not rocket science.

[Bouzoo]

24 minutes ago, voiha said:

Tell that to my slow responding S8+

You are literally the only person that I know that has a slow S8. Notnto soznd arrogant, butnl I can think of a million reasons why that might be happening, but this is not really a place for that. 

[SADS]

I'm on iPhoneX 1st gen, and im already noticing that its not as snappy as I would like it to be, or was in the past.

Just a few minutes ago I opened up 'settings' and it took a good few seconds of blank screen before it loaded.

This isn't acceptable for a flagship model. Regardless of 'battery preservation' etc.

[79wjd]

2 minutes ago, schwellmo92 said:

This isn't necessarily Samsung/Apple slowing down phones, it is that when they release new OS versions they are more power hungry so therefore slower phones... perform slower... it's not rocket science.

Mostly yes. In the last year Apple did intentionally throttle performance (albeit, planned obsolescence doesn't fit the bill since they didn't throttle the Plus models) in order to prevent random shutdowns due to a degraded battery and didn't inform users.

[Bouzoo]

22 minutes ago, voiha said:

Well it's my girlfriends phone soo... I guess that is adding it up to. She has Facebook, instagram and all the crappy bloatware that you can install, but generally that's how most users use their phones. I am with Nokia 7 plus (without the Facebook app only messenger) and my transitions and overall response times are vastly better than hers. In raw power her phone is of course more powerful due to the SD835 chip.

Suggestion, use ADB and uninstall bloatware, no root needed. 

[79wjd]

1 minute ago, SADS said:

I'm on iPhoneX 1st gen, and im already noticing that its not as snappy as I would like it to be, or was in the past.

Just a few minutes ago I opened up 'settings' and it took a good few seconds of blank screen before it loaded.

This isn't acceptable for a flagship model. Regardless of 'battery preservation' etc.

Sounds like something else is going on on your phone (specifically whatever you've downloaded to it) -- my X is still just as fast as day 1.

 

The only thing I've noticed is that starting with 12.0.1 FaceID has been having a lot of trouble.