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> Samsung told owners of its Galaxy Note 4 phone to install a new version of Google’s Android operating system intended for the more recent Galaxy Note 7, but w

> Samsung told owners of its Galaxy Note 4 phone to install a new version of Google’s Android operating system intended for the more recent Galaxy Note 7, but which rendered the old model sluggish. Likewise, Apple told iPhone 6 owners to install an operating system designed for the iPhone 7, leading to problems for owners of the older mode A bit of a scary precedent. The 5m fine on Apple for intentionally reducing resource usage to such a large extent without notification seems kinda reasonable. But the 5m fine for both Apple and Samsung for their updates causing slowdown on older devices is a different issue. If I were a company fearing that suggesting an OS upgrade for an older phone would cause slowdown on that older phone, I am now incentivized to not suggest that update. We might want companies to support old OSs forever or stop adding resource-intensive features or feature gate them or whatever. But short of legislating that specifically, all this does is make old phones even more of a liability than they already were.

kingnothing 8y ago
This doesn't seem that much different than Microsoft or any given corporate linux vendor continuing to provide security updates, but not new features, to older but still supported versions of their OS. Why should mobile operating systems not be held to the same expectation?
- kodablah 8y ago
  A few things here. First, as a consumer I might hold them to that expectation, but that is not the same as the law holding them to it. Second, it's a bit backwards to use Microsoft as an example of not sunsetting old versions or having newer versions that are slower or don't work [as well] on older machines. Third, this is about locked down software environments by hardware manufacturers, a completely different situation from software manufacturers providing the freedom to run on lots of hardware.
  - Aelius 8y ago
    This is just blither. They were right: Microsoft and corporate Linux provide security patches for older operating systems for quite a long time. Your obvious animosity for Microsoft has no bearing on that fact.
freehunter 8y ago
Yeah, you really have three options now. Either (1) never introduce features that require more processing power but newer phones are capable of handling, (2) have those new features but lock older phones out of being able to use them, or (3), stop supporting older phones with your updates. The problem with (1) is now you've completely stagnated the market, and if your competitors choose either of the other options you're left lagging behind and you lose sales. The problem with (2) is now customers of older phones will be upset that they didn't get the full upgrade for reasons they don't understand. The iPhone 4S and Siri or the iPhone X and Animoji show the reaction you should expect. The problem with (3) is now you have planned obsolescence and old phones just become throw-away leading to an ecological disaster. None of these are good options.
- simion314 8y ago
  2 is a good option, give users security fixes, if you promised to deliver new features to them then do so but make sure you did not made the OS and core apps worse.
- garmaine 8y ago
  Option (4): give the user a choice to opt into the new features. A checkbox isn't that hard.
  - kodablah 8y ago
    > A checkbox isn't that hard A naive assumption. In fact, each checkbox exponentially increases the number of possible runtime environments you have to maintain and test.
    - smichel17 8y ago
      Alternatively, a choice of whether to install the update. "Installing this update will give you access to feature X, but will slow down your phone." For comparison, my AT&T Samsung Galaxy S6 forces me to install updates, which I hate. Wasn't my choice to get this particular phone, wouldn't do it again.
garmaine 8y ago
> or stop adding resource-intensive features or feature gate them or whatever That's not what's at issue here though. The update was literally along the lines of "if (old phone) then { set_cpu_throttle_threshold(lower); }". Now the intentions were good, even if paternalistic in that the newer features were more demanding on older devices and throttling in theory was supposed to provide a better user experience with the device under high demand--freezing for 5s instead of crashing and rebooting. But still it was literally a patch to make old devices run slower, which regardless of intention should not be allowed.
- kodablah 8y ago
  > That's not what's at issue here though. The update was literally along the lines of "if (old phone) then { set_cpu_throttle_threshold(lower); }". If that's true, it reduces my fear. I know that's true wrt Apple's batteries. But what I read for the OS updates is that they suggested/shipped newer software they knew would degrade the performance as opposed to intentionally degrading it. As for intentions, while they may have been good (I think it's just easier maintenance to keep one running stable branch), if they were that consumer friendly they would have been more open to the user about the harms of upgrading.
  - larkost 8y ago
    It was not `if (old phone)` it was `if (worn out battery on specific phones with a problem)`, the specific models with the problem happened to be slightly older. They worked fine with new batteries (and did not throttle), including replacements. Apple obviously was not intending to harm users here (I don't know the Samsung case well enough to comment), they absolutely messed up the messaging by not making a notice about their work-around front-and-center, but I disagree with the precedent that this fine is setting.
    - garmaine 8y ago
      No, it was old phones in general. I had a brand new iPhone 7 that was gimped by the iOS 12 update and experienced 3-5s delays in user actions simply because it was older hardware. The crashes which were being avoided would only have happened on bad batteries. But the throttling happened in all instances, bad battery or not.
the_clarence 8y ago
The updates were not "suggested". They were quite forced on you.
hrktb 8y ago
I think making company think twice before offering the "update" is kind of the point. There is two parts to consider I think: - iOS updates are not reversible (technically it can be done, but for lambda users it's a lost cause). - Apple is very aggressive towards making users upgrade, nagging indefinitely if there is any available newer version So, users are very aggressively pushed towards the newer version, can't go back, but their phone becomes less useable, for new features they might not care about. As it is now, not offering the major update to old phones will be a grace in a number of cases. It would still be nice if users wanting to upgrade can have a path forward, understanding the trade-offs. But users should be less complaining if their device keeps working basically the same way as when they bought it years ago.
- Nullabillity 8y ago
  Also don't forget their SDKs' lack of compatibility in either direction.
  - FigBug 8y ago
    What do you mean by this?
- Fnoord 8y ago
  Not just that, often the new update is the only way to stay secure, at the cost of new interface/software/etc. Backporting security and reliability updates is all I expect; not new interface/software/etc. I didn't pay for these. I don't feel entitled to receive those to keep my device functioning. The precedent is neither scary nor controversial. The European law says a device should keep functioning for a reasonable amount of time. A car completely breaking apart after 25 months is not normal. A smartphone being insecure is not normal either. Especially not considering how much personal data these contain.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    The European law also states that general warranty of consumer electronics is 24 months. No court would rule that someone should support a device such as phone longer, the precedent (the law + previous rulings regarding consumer electronics all around EU) is too strong.
tw04 8y ago
>If I were a company fearing that suggesting an OS upgrade for an older phone would cause slowdown on that older phone, I am now incentivized to not suggest that update. We might want companies to support old OSs forever or stop adding resource-intensive features or feature gate them or whatever. But short of legislating that specifically, all this does is make old phones even more of a liability than they already were. You're leaving out the easy solution though - allow users to "downgrade"! The reason this is such a huge issue isn't that they're giving customers the option to upgrade, it's that they refuse to let you go back if you find out the new version is slow. Additionally, when they break functionality on the old version (looking at you facetime) they need to fix it without forcing you to upgrade to a whole new release. (Issue a patch for JUST THAT).
- azinman2 8y ago
  Which becomes a QA nightmare. What happens when you have new features that migrated all kinds of data, further adding new types of data, then go back to a major OS or two ago? And then if you want to go forward again because you’re missing said data? It also means you lose security updates, and generally hold your platform back. Part of what makes iOS so much better to develop for is the general availability of modern APIs to most of the user base. If you increase those on older versions, then you hold back development of the platform as a whole. iOS 12 was a major step forward in performance and battery consumption. Moves like that — making it a company priority - are a better way forward than allowing people to go backward.
  - tw04 8y ago
    I mean, that's a great argument if we pretend there's no way to save your data prior to upgrading. If you tell me to take a full backup prior to upgrade, and I take a full backup prior to upgrade, there is 0 reason to not let me go back. 0. This isn't a technology or a QA problem, it's vendors refusing to acknowledge that customers own their devices.
    - azinman2 8y ago
      So you as a user are going to take a backup of os version N, then upgrade to N+1, live on it for a long time, then both want to pay/keep the storage costs of N AND potentially months later downgrade and lose all new data to go back to N? It sounds like a terrible user experience. If you told me it was a fresh OS with no ability to recover your old data, then maybe I could see it. But even then we’re assuming you didn’t use any cloud services that migrated your data once all devices had been upgraded, which isn’t true for either major platform. We’re also assuming that you can downgrade all firmware that’s changed successfully (which is expensive new QA). I’d rather just have companies really prioritize performance to begin with.
solomatov 8y ago
I think deliberate slowdown is one thing but slowdown due to new features is another. I am okay with the latter but not with the former.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  But then you make a loophole - ah, yes we know we crippled all old phones but we found people wanted us to benchmark their system simultaneously with each user action. 90% of people asked wanted us to check their devices performance!

kingnothing 8y ago

This doesn't seem that much different than Microsoft or any given corporate linux vendor continuing to provide security updates, but not new features, to older but still supported versions of their OS. Why should mobile operating systems not be held to the same expectation?

kodablah 8y ago
A few things here. First, as a consumer I might hold them to that expectation, but that is not the same as the law holding them to it. Second, it's a bit backwards to use Microsoft as an example of not sunsetting old versions or having newer versions that are slower or don't work [as well] on older machines. Third, this is about locked down software environments by hardware manufacturers, a completely different situation from software manufacturers providing the freedom to run on lots of hardware.
- Aelius 8y ago
  This is just blither. They were right: Microsoft and corporate Linux provide security patches for older operating systems for quite a long time. Your obvious animosity for Microsoft has no bearing on that fact.

freehunter 8y ago

Yeah, you really have three options now. Either (1) never introduce features that require more processing power but newer phones are capable of handling, (2) have those new features but lock older phones out of being able to use them, or (3), stop supporting older phones with your updates. The problem with (1) is now you've completely stagnated the market, and if your competitors choose either of the other options you're left lagging behind and you lose sales. The problem with (2) is now customers of older phones will be upset that they didn't get the full upgrade for reasons they don't understand. The iPhone 4S and Siri or the iPhone X and Animoji show the reaction you should expect. The problem with (3) is now you have planned obsolescence and old phones just become throw-away leading to an ecological disaster. None of these are good options.

simion314 8y ago
2 is a good option, give users security fixes, if you promised to deliver new features to them then do so but make sure you did not made the OS and core apps worse.
garmaine 8y ago
Option (4): give the user a choice to opt into the new features. A checkbox isn't that hard.
- kodablah 8y ago
  > A checkbox isn't that hard A naive assumption. In fact, each checkbox exponentially increases the number of possible runtime environments you have to maintain and test.
  - smichel17 8y ago
    Alternatively, a choice of whether to install the update. "Installing this update will give you access to feature X, but will slow down your phone." For comparison, my AT&T Samsung Galaxy S6 forces me to install updates, which I hate. Wasn't my choice to get this particular phone, wouldn't do it again.

garmaine 8y ago

> or stop adding resource-intensive features or feature gate them or whatever That's not what's at issue here though. The update was literally along the lines of "if (old phone) then { set_cpu_throttle_threshold(lower); }". Now the intentions were good, even if paternalistic in that the newer features were more demanding on older devices and throttling in theory was supposed to provide a better user experience with the device under high demand--freezing for 5s instead of crashing and rebooting. But still it was literally a patch to make old devices run slower, which regardless of intention should not be allowed.

kodablah 8y ago
> That's not what's at issue here though. The update was literally along the lines of "if (old phone) then { set_cpu_throttle_threshold(lower); }". If that's true, it reduces my fear. I know that's true wrt Apple's batteries. But what I read for the OS updates is that they suggested/shipped newer software they knew would degrade the performance as opposed to intentionally degrading it. As for intentions, while they may have been good (I think it's just easier maintenance to keep one running stable branch), if they were that consumer friendly they would have been more open to the user about the harms of upgrading.
- larkost 8y ago
  It was not `if (old phone)` it was `if (worn out battery on specific phones with a problem)`, the specific models with the problem happened to be slightly older. They worked fine with new batteries (and did not throttle), including replacements. Apple obviously was not intending to harm users here (I don't know the Samsung case well enough to comment), they absolutely messed up the messaging by not making a notice about their work-around front-and-center, but I disagree with the precedent that this fine is setting.
  - garmaine 8y ago
    No, it was old phones in general. I had a brand new iPhone 7 that was gimped by the iOS 12 update and experienced 3-5s delays in user actions simply because it was older hardware. The crashes which were being avoided would only have happened on bad batteries. But the throttling happened in all instances, bad battery or not.

the_clarence 8y ago

The updates were not "suggested". They were quite forced on you.

hrktb 8y ago

I think making company think twice before offering the "update" is kind of the point. There is two parts to consider I think: - iOS updates are not reversible (technically it can be done, but for lambda users it's a lost cause). - Apple is very aggressive towards making users upgrade, nagging indefinitely if there is any available newer version So, users are very aggressively pushed towards the newer version, can't go back, but their phone becomes less useable, for new features they might not care about. As it is now, not offering the major update to old phones will be a grace in a number of cases. It would still be nice if users wanting to upgrade can have a path forward, understanding the trade-offs. But users should be less complaining if their device keeps working basically the same way as when they bought it years ago.

Nullabillity 8y ago
Also don't forget their SDKs' lack of compatibility in either direction.
- FigBug 8y ago
  What do you mean by this?
Fnoord 8y ago
Not just that, often the new update is the only way to stay secure, at the cost of new interface/software/etc. Backporting security and reliability updates is all I expect; not new interface/software/etc. I didn't pay for these. I don't feel entitled to receive those to keep my device functioning. The precedent is neither scary nor controversial. The European law says a device should keep functioning for a reasonable amount of time. A car completely breaking apart after 25 months is not normal. A smartphone being insecure is not normal either. Especially not considering how much personal data these contain.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  The European law also states that general warranty of consumer electronics is 24 months. No court would rule that someone should support a device such as phone longer, the precedent (the law + previous rulings regarding consumer electronics all around EU) is too strong.

tw04 8y ago

>If I were a company fearing that suggesting an OS upgrade for an older phone would cause slowdown on that older phone, I am now incentivized to not suggest that update. We might want companies to support old OSs forever or stop adding resource-intensive features or feature gate them or whatever. But short of legislating that specifically, all this does is make old phones even more of a liability than they already were. You're leaving out the easy solution though - allow users to "downgrade"! The reason this is such a huge issue isn't that they're giving customers the option to upgrade, it's that they refuse to let you go back if you find out the new version is slow. Additionally, when they break functionality on the old version (looking at you facetime) they need to fix it without forcing you to upgrade to a whole new release. (Issue a patch for JUST THAT).

azinman2 8y ago
Which becomes a QA nightmare. What happens when you have new features that migrated all kinds of data, further adding new types of data, then go back to a major OS or two ago? And then if you want to go forward again because you’re missing said data? It also means you lose security updates, and generally hold your platform back. Part of what makes iOS so much better to develop for is the general availability of modern APIs to most of the user base. If you increase those on older versions, then you hold back development of the platform as a whole. iOS 12 was a major step forward in performance and battery consumption. Moves like that — making it a company priority - are a better way forward than allowing people to go backward.
- tw04 8y ago
  I mean, that's a great argument if we pretend there's no way to save your data prior to upgrading. If you tell me to take a full backup prior to upgrade, and I take a full backup prior to upgrade, there is 0 reason to not let me go back. 0. This isn't a technology or a QA problem, it's vendors refusing to acknowledge that customers own their devices.
  - azinman2 8y ago
    So you as a user are going to take a backup of os version N, then upgrade to N+1, live on it for a long time, then both want to pay/keep the storage costs of N AND potentially months later downgrade and lose all new data to go back to N? It sounds like a terrible user experience. If you told me it was a fresh OS with no ability to recover your old data, then maybe I could see it. But even then we’re assuming you didn’t use any cloud services that migrated your data once all devices had been upgraded, which isn’t true for either major platform. We’re also assuming that you can downgrade all firmware that’s changed successfully (which is expensive new QA). I’d rather just have companies really prioritize performance to begin with.

solomatov 8y ago

I think deliberate slowdown is one thing but slowdown due to new features is another. I am okay with the latter but not with the former.

pbhjpbhj 8y ago
But then you make a loophole - ah, yes we know we crippled all old phones but we found people wanted us to benchmark their system simultaneously with each user action. 90% of people asked wanted us to check their devices performance!