Apple, Samsung fined for slowing down device performance

Apple and Samsung have been fined in Italy after an investigation concluded that major software updates had a negative impact on their smartphones’ performance.

In a report from The Guardian, Each company was fined 5 million Euros (roughly Php307USD 5INR 443EUR 5CNY 38 million) after Italy’s Antitrust arm found that “Apple and Samsung implemented dishonest commercial practices” and that operating system updates “caused serious malfunctions and significantly reduced performance, thus accelerating phones’ substitution”.

Their investigation followed accusations of these companies deliberately slowing down old devices in an attempt to encourage these users to buy new ones. Furthermore, the updates were vague in description and have not fully disclosed to its users any effects in installing such updates.

This comes as a few users owning a Galaxy Note 4 phone complained when Samsung seeded a new version of Google’s Android operating system intended for the more recent Galaxy Note 7, but which users claimed rendered the old model sluggish. Likewise, iPhone 6 users who were seeded iOS 10, the mobile operating system of the iPhone 7, experienced significant slowdowns both in performance and battery life.

Apple has a well-documented history of battery life throttling issues with every new update and has since then taken steps to address it. Samsung, on the other hand, has not come under fire and it is the first time they have received such fine for performance throttling. Samsung intends to appeal the decision and is clearly disappointed with it: “Samsung did not issue any software update that reduced the Galaxy Note 4’s performance. In contrast, Samsung has always released software updates enabling our customers to have the best experience possible.”

It’s not only in Italy that these investigations are currently underway — there’s also one ongoing in France, where the country law states that one should not intentionally shorten the life of any product to promote sales.

Source: The Guardian