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In First Ruling of Its Kind, Apple and Samsung Fined For Deliberately Slowing Down Old Phones (theguardian.com)
An investigation by Italy's competition authority has found that software updates "significantly reduced performance" on Samsung's Android handsets and iPhones. From a report: Apple and Samsung are being fined Euro 10m ($11.4m) and Euro 5m ($5.7) respectively in Italy for the "planned obsolescence" of their smartphones. An investigation launched in January by the nation's competition authority found that certain smartphone software updates had a negative effect on the performance of the devices. Believed to be the first ruling of its kind against smartphone manufacturers, the investigation followed accusations operating system updates for older phones slowed them down, thereby encouraging the purchase of new phones.
In a statement the antitrust watchdog said "Apple and Samsung implemented dishonest commercial practices" and that operating system updates "caused serious malfunctions and significantly reduced performance, thus accelerating phones' substitution." It added the two firms had not provided clients adequate information about the impact of the new software "or any means of restoring the original functionality of the products."
In a statement the antitrust watchdog said "Apple and Samsung implemented dishonest commercial practices" and that operating system updates "caused serious malfunctions and significantly reduced performance, thus accelerating phones' substitution." It added the two firms had not provided clients adequate information about the impact of the new software "or any means of restoring the original functionality of the products."
My S5 was really fast when I got it in 2014. Now it is really slow.
No? Then much as I really hate having to perfectly good hardware as often as it seems that I do, I am not sure that the incompetence and laziness of bloatware kernels and OS's is actually malicious per se.
Check your premises.
I've noticed that my Galaxy Note 4 seems much slower than when I bought it, or even a year ago. Samsung and Apple should be required to release a software update that fixes the poor performance and malfunctions. Compared to the revenue and profits of the companies, the fines are too small, probably by at least an order of magnitude.
It seems to me that they would get in trouble for "planned obsolescence" either way. I'm sure some are thinking "What about 'C. Release software that doesn't slow down older phones'?", but that may not be possible based on the hardware. The only other realistic option is "D. Don't release software updates".
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
That way they should constantly fine almost all the software companies in the world because almost all of them deliberately slow their their software products all the time. Some programs are occasionally getting faster (e.g. web browsers, video encoders, compression software, etc.) but that's an exception.
Those pitiful sums won't stop them from doing it for as long as they are not physically restrained from scamming naive customers.
That's about what Apple spends on plastic wrap for the pallets of cash that Europe sends it daily for their products.
If you really like your phone the way it is and are worried about slow downs, don't update. It's that simple.
More features == more bloat == slower than the previous software on the same hardware. This has been true since the dawn of computing.
I would like to remind everyone that the Italian legal system is the same one that tried to put geologists in jail for an earthquake, and tried Amanda Knox for murder despite already convicting another person for that crime.
Let me know when another country reaches the same findings, because I don't have confidence in Italian courts.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
In other news, EU finds that suing big companies makes a great money stream.
This ruling is proof-positive that Courts, by and large, (and definitely this Court) do not understand "Tech".
I don't know about Google; but in the case of Apple:
Apple explained what their "motivations" were (which was to provide the User with an OVERALL more RELIABLE experience). Court OBVIOUSLY didn't get it.
Many, many instances of people with NON-clock-speed-managed phones (both Apple AND Android) having their phones showing what appeared to be "plenty" of battery charge suddenly reboot due to a voltage-dip from a sudden spike in CPU/GPU load. Court OBVIOUSLY didn't understand batteries, physics, nor di/dt issues in digital electronics.
Apple has already explained and given the User the CHOICE to "live dangerously" (by electing to disable this part of power-management). Court OBVIOUSLY didn't understand this.
Apple has already mitigated the root-cause of the matter (battery-aging), which again, is a fact of PHYSICS, by offering low-cost battery replacements to ANY of the "affected" phones.
Apple has gone to great lengths to release a version of IOS that SPECIFICALLY (and quite frankly, dramatically) IMPROVES the overall PERFORMANCE of OLDER PHONES, not by removing any "slowdowns"; but by running-around and seeing where they could make individual processes more efficient, and also by decreasing the amount of "ramp up" time for clock-speed in response to greater loads. (one spec I saw took that ramp-up time from 450ms to 80ms. Those things add-up...)
Apple is now supporting SEVEN generations of the iPhone (and about 5 generations of iPad) with the latest version of IOS 12 (the same IOS 12 that specifically and vastly IMPROVES the performance of OLDER devices).
So, tell me: How was ANY of this "Anti-Consumer"? How was ANY of this "In furtherance of a plot to trick people into Upgrading unnecessarily?"
Next up: I quit Verizon on my tablet after 3 years of a 2 year contract. When the final month was up, all app-based video (read: Netflix, YouTube, AMC, etc.) broke.
I am guessing the system video (HTML 5?) utility needs to call home to Verizon each video segment, fails, and the video ends or jumps back randomly.
Why, Verizon and Samsung? Why?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Then they'll just stop updating them. Heck, that's what Apple did with the iPhone 1 and the 3G, where each respective last-supported iOS version was released about 2 1/2 years after that iPhone's debut date. Certainly a safer alternative than getting sued for maintaining older hardware, and it still encourages consumers to replace their phones.
Several years ago, I upgraded a friend's iPhone 3GS to a later version of iOS (not sure which one). But after that the 3GS crawled to a halt. It was no longer useable. Everything was slow on it. Unfortunately, I did not make a backup of it beforehand (doh!) and I soon learned that unlike Android, Apple did not provide factory installation images for it. So my friend finally gave up and upgraded to an iPhone 4 (the one with antennagate). Apple really did seem to be providing iOS upgrades which made older but still supported iPhones so slow that users had to buy a new phone.
How many times do people have to explain that slowing it sown when the battery is weak is a good idea, should be the default, and it should perhaps allow an override. But an override is not expected initially in the software because over draining a Li battery is dangerous. So maybe you llow som over ride but only after you have studied the issue more.
Apple and I assume samsung were acting in good faith here.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
now crack down on battery slow downs and error 53 BS!
If the manufacturers are intentionally releasing updates that have a goal of degrading performance on a device, yes, that should be discouraged.
However, if a manufacturer releases an update that is just patches, fixes, new features, what have you, without the intention of degrading performance on a device, but instead as a side effect of the changes, the device's performance is degraded, then we have to say, that's ok.
It would be pretty absurd to expect a old device to run the newest software. This is nothing new in the PC world at least, I certainly wouldn't expect a 486 or Pentium to run Windows 10 all nice and usable.
It would be equally absurd to expect manufacturers from holding back updates that may correct security issues, or other critical bugs. Those updates might degrade performance.
I'm not entire sure I'm comfortable with a court making the call on which side of this fence the update falls on. Intentional performance loss, or just side effect of updates? There'd have to be some pretty solid evidence of the former if it's going to be the call. Apple is definitely guilty of this, among a plethora of other shady activities.
now crack down on battery slow downs and error 53 BS!
God you're stupid! Do you work for the Italian Courts?
Error 53 was a mistake, and was quickly corrected by Apple:
https://techcrunch.com/2016/02...
Apple has explained the rationale behind the "battery slowdowns", and has done several things to mitigate the "ill will" generated by their usual non-talkative nature. See my above post:
https://apple.slashdot.org/com...
Any questions, Hater?
I fucking told you so. (TM)
I have three Samsung S5's (me, my wife, and one more when she broke hers) and they can have the battery replaced as simple as pie. Yet the second they update Android and apps, they run slower than piss. A quad-core flagship phone that came out FOUR YEARS AGO. It eats the battery alive within a few hours and takes seconds to load Gmail.
When I bought a new used S5 for my wife, it ran fine. And then it connected to the internet and updated. And ran slow as shit ever since.
And all these apologists run around screaming "but they're SPECIAL batteries made of Magic(TM) so they decay faster!" (1. Tell that to my chromebook with the equally thin flat battery. 2. OS updates don't AGE THE BATTERY.)
Meanwhile, my laptops DON'T have replaced batteries, and get used way more than my phone, and magically, my 6+ year old laptop still runs as fast as when I bought it.
Who would have thought that corporations who sell luxury products with long-life times would throttle their phones to make you buy a newer luxury product? It's like I'm riding my Dad's Sears lawnmower again where the steering wheel bearing was designed to fail so it became "harder and harder to turn" until you just gave up and bought a new one. My Dad said "fuck that" and welded a new bearing holder to the steering shaft and it never had another problem.
The problem is, you can't do that with a phone because (Slashdotters USED to care about) it's not freakin' open source!
I mean, slowing them down is better than them abruptly shutting off well before 0% due to a weak battery, no?
What should they have done?
I guess if they made it a popup message like:
"Your Phone recently shut off prematurely due to a worn out battery, click here to activate a mode that will limit the maximum power draw of your phone to prevent premature shut off. Note that your performance will be somewhat degraded in this mode, you can change this mode at any time in the settings app."
Something similar to that.
But ultimately the reason they chose to do this was to limit the maximum power draw so that the phone wouldn't shut off before the battery was drained. This was only happening on phones with worn out batteries and replacing the battery brought the performance back to full. Slowdown was simply a necessary side effect of capping the maximum power draw.
In other news, they both made BILLIONS from users who wanted "faster" phones. C'mon...hit'em a little harder than that.
There's a simple low-hanging fruit here: simply pass a law that software products much support reversion to any version the user might have previously installed.
And if the manufacturer wants to scrub an old version from the face of the planet (say, for example, they infringed a patent), then they must provide the old version with only those fixes, or only those fixes with substantially the same performance profile, plug-in API, and UI layout, etc. (though it might be built on a later release which is more feature rich, at the manufacturer's choice).
Second, we repeal prohibitions against reverse engineering if the default install of the best-available older release can be rooted right out of the box by a known exploit that's more than a year old. (If you won't fix it, the government is providing no assistance through the legal system to help you prevent your customers from fixing it themselves; and if they publicise any of your trade secrets in the process, so be it, that cat is now forevermore out of the bag.)
Note that we're not making anyone fix anything.
We're making the corporations do precisely one thing: support older products by allowing original firmware to be reinstalled (original firmware, or narrowly patched original firmware, preserving operational characteristics and user experience).
And we're also saying: if you can't eff yourself to make your default install secure, and you also won't eff yourself to amend your mistakes once they come to light (surely there weren't so many that this instantly drives you out of business), don't come begging to the fiat power of government to shelter your half-ass trade secrets.
This would create an a much-needed incentive structure for companies with half trillion dollar market caps to tempt their customers to embrace the future with carrots rather than sticks.
The Wild West of the smartphone explosion is long over now.
It's high time for a more studied pace of product churn, one where security gets equal shrift.
Note also that leaves innumerable loopholes available for software corporations to continue to shit on their user bases. But the shenanigans will be a little bit more out in the open, and easier to ridicule, and hence more effectively policed by the court of public opinion (which is where this should and would be litigated, if the court of public opinion was lifted off the mat).
I seem to recall this isn't a new problem. The issue is that as the battery ages, some batteries aren't able to supply as much power under peak load. If you don't slow down the processor it with literally overwhelm the battery and the phone will crash or lock up!
No, but notice that each and every comment you post gets down voted?
Slashdot allows 3 comment moderations of a single user a day. Moderation lasts 3 days.
Every time you make a comment, I downvote you. Since you're a cunt, I get the benefit of being meta modded positively since each and every post you have is hilariously is douchey.
The more I mod you like the cunt that you are, the more I get mod points because the meta moderators agree with me.
So keep it up dick bag while I roast your sorry karma to hell.
I realise apple sucks at software but error 53 was no mistake, it was purposeful and anti-repair. In typical apple style when the media found about it and apple started getting bad press they claimed it was "mistake"
You lying on here isn't convincing anyone of anything otherwise.
No, I guessed you missed the update, it was a republican operative impersonating a democrat.
Boy, are you a real idiot troll, just the type that works for Russia and Trump.......if you are a dirt poor uneducated republican supporter, donâ(TM)t worry.. Trump and the GOP will soon take any Govt program that more than likely, you depend upon and get rid of it soon!!
Europe is really, really big on stopping planned obsolescence. A friend of a friend worked for one of the big printer manufactures. Their printers lasted 5x longer in Europe and could be serviced without hacking DRM.
It's not about fines, it's about landfills. The US has so much space we can dump crap far enough away from the water table that it's not a problem for 50 years (it takes about that long for a city to grow out to where the dumps are). Europe doesn't have that luxury.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
and you always had more customers. I worked for a print shop that had this little invoicing package. Spent some time hacking printer drivers to get it to print correctly because the manufacturer was out of business. Once they'd sold the software to every small print shop in the country they had nowhere to go. And the software mostly just worked, so no reason to upgrade. Yeah, eventually I had to do that printer driver hack, but that was 10 years after the company went belly up.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
not the former. They were intentionally slowing the device to make the battery last longer. This was done to minimize the negative perception of a non-replaceable battery. They avoided telling people about it because doing so would hurt sales (which, judging by the results of the iPhone X seems to have happened).
I'm with Europe on this one. Keep your junk with it's heavy metals out of my land fills and water table.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
and given them the option to buy a new battery.
The point of this was to hide the downside of a non-replaceable battery. A user replaceable battery is a competitive edge when you know it will impact performance over the life of the phone.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
These fines are all well and good. Maybe they will think twice before doing something like this again. (Probably wonâ(TM)t)
So, my question is: What about the fucking customers?? You know, the people that actually paid their hard earned cash for these devices? Why does the government deserve the money collected from these âoefinesâ? How did it hurt them in ANY way????
They did give you the option to get a new battery.
For the really defective models they offered a free battery replacement. I got one for my iPhone 6s.
For models that were less affected they offered battery replacement for $29 instead of the normal $79.
You can still claim these battery replacement offers at this moment too.
https://www.apple.com/iphone-b...
Yes this was offered after apples deceit was discovered.
Typical apple
Batteries. Batteries, batteries, batteries. Batteries.
STOP GLUING WEAR ITEMS INTO OUR DEVICES. IT IS NOT OKAY.
Seriously. It is NOT OKAY that a phone that should last 5-10 years malfunctions in 18 months.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Yes, I was also pleasantly surprised how IOS12 made my 4 year old 6 Plus run smoothly and quick enough. It actually makes me delay replacing the phone for at least another year.
surely it was a russian impersonating a republican operative impersonating a democrat
Exactly, they limited the performance. It wouldn't have been a problem if they told people about it, but instead they tried to cover it up. On a phone with a replaceable battery, the phone should have provided a battery warning saying it needed to be replaced. Instead Apple throttled the phone without telling anyone which provides a massive incentive for people to pay more money to Apple to buy the next gen phone so it'll run faster. Thus they engaged in deceptive, fraudulent activities.
what does this mean, that you can revert back to the initial state?
why would you want that? that image is out of date, including a lot of security problems.
the problem isn't the os (at least on android), but the crap vendors put on top of it.
my samsung phones include so much rubbish, battery life is limited to one day.
when i installed a clean custom rom on it, it lasted for days.
my S4 is still going strong, despite it being many years old.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Thank you,
My Motorola G4 is doing the same thing over time. Just freezes for like 5 seconds for no real reason.
This phone when new is all I needed. And that's still true today but frankly, the "freezes" are kinda annoying.
So can they slap the same crap on microsoft then for slowing my stuff to a crawl then?
Yes, I could always get a new battery, but I had no reason to think doing so would solve the performance problems and every reason to think I needed a new phone. I actually did this with my Kid's phone (for me I just got an Android).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Motorola & LG have no problem with this. I don't even mind if I have to take it to a repair shop so long as I get to pick the shop.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
How is this different from saying, "I want my cheeseburger to taste better, so I'm going to file suit against McDonalds"?