Apple and Samsung punished for slowing down old smartphones
26 Oct 2018 20 Android, Apple, Google, iOS, Operating Systems, Organisations, Samsung, Vulnerability
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As Apple and Samsung have just found out, to their cost, there is a right way and a wrong way to offer software updates to mobile customers.
According to Italy's AGCM antitrust investigators, the right way is for companies to provide iOS and Android updates that add new features and improve the experience of using a device.
The wrong way, by contrast, is to offer an update that slows it down or causes it to malfunction.
The AGCM claims that both companies served their customers too much of the wrong sauce, which is why it has decided to fine Apple €10 million ($11.4 million) and Samsung €5 million ($5.7 million) as punishment.
Small change for both companies, but the judgment nevertheless sets an extraordinary precedent that will likely unsettle device makers.
For the first time ever, a government organisation has found a computer maker guilty of using software updates to make their customer's device worse.
But why would Apple and Samsung want to do such a thing?
Apple's problems date back as far as iOS 10, developed for the iPhone 7, but made available for iPhone 6, 6s, and SE users as an upgrade from September 2016.
Owners started complaining about sudden shutdowns post-upgrade, which it later emerged Apple had tried to fix with updates that throttled CPU performance to cope with what it decided were ageing batteries.
Then the same thing happened for iPhone 7 users upgrading to iOS 11 in 2017, which led weeks later to Apple finally admitting what it had been doing while offering knock-down $29 battery replacements.
The charge against Samsung is a version of the same behaviour, this time relating to an update for Android 6 for the Galaxy Note 4, intended for the Note 7.
Unlike Apple, however, Samsung has not admitted to throttling, so it appears that the AGCM doesn't believe them.
From an engineering point of view what Apple did and Samsung is accused of doing made complete sense – allow older devices to run newer and more demanding OS versions by dialling back the CPU a bit to preserve batteries.
The wrinkle is that updates also upgrade security, including patching for known vulnerabilities. Knowing, or even suspecting, that an upgrade might negatively impact performance could have a chilling effect on users' willingness to apply updates.
In the judgment of Italian regulators and some customers, the companies' behaviour amounted to an unfair nudge to upgrade to a new device to escape the problems caused by the throttling.
They also argue that owners were not made aware of the implications of updating nor given any way to opt out or roll them back.
As to the longer-term implications, it's possible that device makers will start either encouraging battery upgrades or making updates advisory on some device models. Or they could follow Google's recent lead and separate security patches from general updates.
Apple's desire to upgrade as many of its users as possible to newer versions of iOS is generally seen as one of the platform's good points so it seems unlikely to go down that route.
Perhaps we simply have to accept that even with a new battery, every iOS device has a lifespan beyond which the accumulation of new features is going to affect the performance of something.
20 comments on "Apple and Samsung punished for slowing down old smartphones"
Good! They deserve all they get. Apple are a law unto themselves!
What a spectacular meltdown!
SumGuy says:
The few million dollar penalty is nothing compare the to the profit they gained by forcing purchase of new ones. A few million to make a few billion is an investment. They will surely do it again if that's all the punishment they will get if they get any.
Samsung Apostate says:
Well it stopped me ever spending anymore money on Samsung.
I used to be only buy Samsung. After having 3 phones I loved turn into phones I hated after updates, I decided to start testing the waters. I was never sure it was intentional or not, But I always suspected it was.
Bill G says:
Updates regularly make some things better (for example, by adding new features) and some things worse (for example, by removing the ability to run 32 bit apps). And for the most part, a newer OS is going to demand more resources which certainly will slow down older underpowered devices, intentionally or not. Trying to micromanage what updates are supposed to do seems like a bad precedent but I guess Italy needs the money.
Tony Gore says:
When buying (or building) a PC, I generally expected that OS patches and "improvements" would reduce the application performance by about 50% over its lifespan of 3-4 years. It is inevitable, as every security patch usually adds more checks, which is more code, and logic tells you that this is going to impact performance. Over 30 years of building my own PCs, I have generally found this general rate of performance reduction to be about right – it is not just the OS, but the apps, such as Office also require patches, and get "improvements". Not all of these play well with the system updates either.
Aron M says:
Correct. But difference being that in this case vendors (Apple and Samsung) are accused of deliberately slowing down performance of older devices. This is not the same as when your computer or device slows down due to OS growth.
Bigal says:
Have Apple confirmed that their current upgrades to all European users no long does this? Being fined is irrelevant if the practice simply continues!
I have always assumed that the initial designer of software has efficiency, footprint, performance, and elegance in mind. The product support team has no such goals in mind. "Quick and Dirty" are the watchwords of the programmer tasked with security fixes. If it means examining every packet with a crude search algorithm or adding huge lumps of code or data tables, so be it.
I've never changed any Android apps on my phone–in fact I've deleted a few–and I've gone from 2 GB free to 0.8 GB free, just with "updates."
The Italian government should include memory footprint as well as performance in their measurements.
David Brookfield says:
What a spin on this hey. Let's be honest about this, this isn't as the author says a way of getting people to upgrade to a new version of iOS so they get a new experience, it's a way of getting people to UPGRADE their phones, it's dishonest and as Apple and Samsung have found out illegal.
If it was really an honest attempt to stop the battery running out, then Apple should have been open and honest about this. As an "engineer" the author will know they could simply have put in a switch. Or allow someone to remove those extra features that cause the problem.
Having said this, I am writing this using a computer that was built in 2007, it's using Windows 10, Microsoft managed it but yet the worlds richest company couldn't?
But their again, they are so rich simply becuase so many millions of people upgraded their phones, and why did they do that?
On another note my iPhone 6s still dog slow despite a battery change. My Samnsung note 4 is quicker..
souls33k3r says:
Bring back the old Nokia 3310
Is anyone else concerned that this will cause Apple to shorten the supported lifetime of their devices? That's one of the reasons I prefer Apple over every other device, they support their devices for 5 years or more. It seems like if they were really sabotaging their own devices with these updates just to make you upgrade to the latest version they wouldn't be supporting the devices as long as they are.
The ultimate result of this will be more tiny print disclosures that no one reads before installing any update. "You agree to give us the right to do whatever we want to your phone [ACCEPT] [DECLINE]"
jazman1966 says:
Where does the collected fine money go? I didn't get any of it….
Quagmire Farshmelt says:
10 million euro is about 2 hours profit for Apple. Yes, I did the math.
Jeremy Ledis says:
Everyone knows computers become slower and slower over time as software advances, leading us to eventually purchase new machines that can handle increased software demands. Smartphones are more computer than phone. After 3 years you will start to see significant slowdowns. This is how technology works.
David C. says:
Not mentioned in the article is that Apple isn't slowing down old phones because they're old. They're slowing down phones whose batteries don't have enough power to produce a reasonable amount of uptime between charges.
What's the difference? You can put a new battery in an old phone and all the CPU limits go away. I experienced this on my iPhone 6+ – it was having performance issues after upgrading to iOS 11. Since it was over three years old and having a hard time maintaining a charge for a whole day anyway, I had Apple put in a new battery (for $30 – a special price they instituted after this scandal broke) and my performance suddenly went back to where it used to be.
In the article John says:
He later says:
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