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Samsung Won't Be Forced To Update Old Smartphones (bbc.com)
Samsung will not be forced to update the software on its mobile phones for years after their release, after it won a court case in the Netherlands. From a report: A consumer association had argued that Samsung should update its phones for at least four years after they go on sale. Regular software updates can address security problems but older models do not typically receive all the latest updates.
However, the court rejected the association's claims.
Samsung produces some of the world's best-selling mobile phones running Google's Android operating system. Google regularly produces software updates that address newly discovered security flaws, and offers these to phone manufacturers such as Samsung. It is often up to the phone manufacturer to distribute the update to its customers. Consumer group Consumentenbond said Samsung was not distributing updates in a "timely" manner. Samsung said it guaranteed consumers in the Netherlands would get software updates for two years after a handset first went on sale in the country. The court ruled in Samsung's favour and said the claims made by Consumentenbond were "inadmissible" because they related to "future acts."
Samsung produces some of the world's best-selling mobile phones running Google's Android operating system. Google regularly produces software updates that address newly discovered security flaws, and offers these to phone manufacturers such as Samsung. It is often up to the phone manufacturer to distribute the update to its customers. Consumer group Consumentenbond said Samsung was not distributing updates in a "timely" manner. Samsung said it guaranteed consumers in the Netherlands would get software updates for two years after a handset first went on sale in the country. The court ruled in Samsung's favour and said the claims made by Consumentenbond were "inadmissible" because they related to "future acts."
consumers won't be forced to buy Samsung phones
Of course they don't want to update anything. How are they supposed to convince you that your 1-year-old phone is now outdated garbage and that you must buy a new one if you don't want to be left behind? Never mind that the old phones end up crunched into little toxic bits and shipped off by the tonne to some asian country to be 'recycled' (as if !) only this fiscal quarters' profits matter; the environment is someone else's problem.
...when it comes time to get another phone. As if I needed any more encouragement to stay with an ecosystem that supports their phones for in my experience at least 4 years.
Yeah Samsung doesn't impress me, ever. Not their phones, not their microwaves, not their TVs.. nothing they make, I want.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
...requiring all packaging and marketing materials to state "This device will not receive security updates after [date]"
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1) What difference does privacy make here? People are still using Gmail, Google Maps, Facebook, etc... on their iPhone. Same data collected by the same people.
2) At what cost? As features are added the phone *feels* slower, battery life drops, more crapware added (I don't use a majority of the Apple developed apps because they are just that bad.)
3) I'll twist this one to Security. Apple does have the upper hand on maintaining device security and user privacy, though Android has made some strides with fingerprint readers and auto-wipe.
Grass isn't always greener.
Any version of Android prior to 4.4.x lacks support for TLS 1.1 / 1.2 - without these, you cannot access PCI DSS compliant web site. Have fun with that!
Honestly, I've always considered the privacy of iOS devices subjective as you never know what they are sharing (even if hey say they aren't) until some blows a whistle.
And I've always disliked their walled garden approach.
BUT, Apple has just won some points with me after this decision and giving some thought to the current state of Android updates in general.
Although Android itself is updated certain phones are deprecated due to hardware constraints, then the OEMs take the update and after deciding which phones to support they build their update and hand off to carriers, who also get to decide whether or not to push the update. This gives three parties control over whether or not a device is considered obsolete..when the ONLY time a piece of hardware should be deprecated is due to not being able to actually run the software due to hardware constraints (OS needs 12gb of space, but drive only contains 16 to start with..)
Looking at Apple, it is true to that their iPhone released 5 years ago is still supported. Interesting, considering for many Android users their carrier can and will deprecate their device after 1 year.
It is not just Samsung other manufacturers are in the same boat. The Motorola G4 Plus for example was sold with the promise that it will get Oreo in a future update. It yet to see an OS update 9 months after release. In a few months, Google will release the next version of Android. At this point it looks Lenovo/Motorola has played a bait and switch.
While desktop OS support multiple 10-year old hardwares it a pity that Google has not been able to come up with a update mechanism which can support phone older than 2 years. Whatever updates Google provides is limited to a few devices, My 4-year old Android non-Google phone is still very capable and meets my needs but the fact that it has no security updates scares me.
you could probably make some change rooting and flashing new images on unsupported samsung phones.
iPhones are replaced every six to nine months due to peer pressure to have the most recent model.
You sure? I've been on the iPhone since the beginning, and only replace ever 2 or 3 years; about ever 3rd or 4th model. Even my Mac cultist friends don't buy every model that gets released.
Plus the batteries won't hold a charge within a year
Demonstrably false. I have never replaced an iPhone battery, or felt the need to.
I'd be happy if they'd just stop pushing updates that completely broke things, or caused the phone to slow down to the point of uselessness.
And I don't want to take the time to search for information on what the new icons mean, why new forms of advertisement are popping up and how to disable them ("notifications" anyone?) Just, leave my damn phone alone, already.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
it's just turned off by default. See here.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I have one additional tidbit for you. Trigger TILT BITS command!
So not only are they not required to update old phones, but they're allowed to lock the bootloaders so users can't even update them themselves.
This is textbook "forced obsolescence" but they'll continue to BS that it isn't.
The battery in my iPhone 6 lasted three years before it needed to be replaced.
Battery replacements only cost $29 at an Apple Store now, mostly because of the kerfuffle over Apple throttling older iPhones with bad batteries.
There are reasons to hate Apple, but overpriced battery replacements aren't one of them anymore.
build a bare bones android OS with just enough software to run the phone & wifi, and txt msgs, camera, gps, browser, email, (including audio) but all the extra apps and addons be locked out, at least that way it will still be functional as a bare-bones smartphone, i do like samsung's hardware they make a great phone but there are some annoyances in the software side of things, like apps that can not be uninstalled, only disabled, especially third party apps that are not required for a phone to function
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Nobody wants an easily globally infectable monoculture. Smartphones are already worse than indistinguishable.
"fragmentation" has become a brain-dead meme, parroted without thinking, like a polical mantra of the always-afraid.
Choice is a good thing! (Yes, hello, fake two party system! ;)
Modern versions of Android (>7) allow easy updating, even with manufacturer drivers and modifications, as they are kept separate. So changes are not a problem anymore.
More and new features does not equal bad things or bloat anyway. Otherwise you'd be running CP/M and complain about DOS 1.0.
My phone has nearly stock Android, and a few very sensible additions copied from LineageOS. :)
It is not anyone's fault, if you picked and hence rewarded a bad manufacturer for your un-innovative utterly featureless slab of meh.
Making this work, I have the good luck to have a company-provided phone, but they have a policy of buying one generation back to keep the price down. So I'm already starting a year into the service life of the phone. I think we're hitting the point now where phones are good enough for a lot longer than two years, so people are going to slow down on the upgrades. If the manufacturer stops providing updates, consumers will be using phones with security vulnerabilities.
LineageOS, was a good choice, but they have stopped issuing updates for my SIII.
Right, because nobody uses Windows anymore.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
And plastered all over Samsung's PR BS: we take our customer's security and privacy seriously.
As long as we can get a LineageOS on it with working features, it matters less what the manufacturers do. But they can't abandon it, keep the bootloader locked, and not provide programming info. These are Internet devices and they become dangerous when they're abandoned in a locked or oblique state.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
My 128MB S6 edge just received another update. That's three years out from the date of purchase. But I'd be disappointed with anything less than five years support from Samsung for a phone they stuck a full retail $1600AU price tag on.
Maybe it should be a function of price? You pay less, you get less. But you can only make an informed decision if the manufacturer is required to make a minimum commitment.
They should state an end date at purchase.
Now that points to the second suit, which Samsung have just stitched themselves up with. No longer going to upgrade the phone, then by law pretty much you have to give customers full access to the phone as an option so they can update it themselves and now Samsung does not have a leg to stand on. They will have to provide root access to no longer upgraded phones upon owner request, likely having to supply software to do it.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
...in a world where your payment turns to monopoly money after two years.
Requiem for the American Dream
I'm really puzzled by that wording to
i'll have to see if i can find the original ruling somewhere, maybe it's clearer there, but it indeed sounds odd O_o
In the end, it was too painful to deal with Samsung and Android. The system was as unstable as a Windows Vista machine. And got tired of waiting for an OS update. After ditching my iphone 3G back in the day for the freer Android, I find myself back with an iPhone 6s+. Supported with the latest OS how many years after the phone was released? Yes, quite a lot. And iOS is pretty stable. Not as flashy and not as configurable as Android, but good enough. Went from a phone that crashed every 2-3 days to a phone that has months of uptime.
After GDPR, we could think about a Planned Obsolescence Protection Regulation (POPR)
Two years after it "first went on sale" is insufficient and ridiculous. Try more like Four Years after it was Last On Sale and you are talking about a more reasonable solution. When someone buys a phone for $800+ you expect more than one year of software support, especially for the security updates. At those prices expecting an average invesment of $400 per year extortion fee is completely unreasonable for the abverage user.