Apple and Samsung fined for deliberately slowing down phones
> 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<p>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.<p>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.