Apple and Samsung fined heavily for deliberately slowing down their phones

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Do you have this feeling that every time Apple releases a new phone, the old iPhone you are using will slowly run slower and consume a lot of power?

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Today's news, according to the European Times, on the 24th local time, the Italian antitrust regulator's investigation confirmed that Apple and Samsung's "planned elimination" of their own smartphones was an unfair business practice, and issued fines of 10 million euros (about 11.4 million US dollars) and 5 million euros (about 5.7 million US dollars) to the two manufacturers respectively.

Apple was fined for two reasons. First, Apple prompted iPhone 6 users to download an operating system designed for the iPhone 7, which caused problems with the iPhone 6. Apple was fined 5 million euros for consumers complaining that software updates slowed down their phones. In addition, Apple did not tell consumers how to maintain or eventually replace the battery, which resulted in an additional 5 million euros in fines.

I believe many people still remember the "speed reduction incident". At the end of 2017, with the launch of iPhone X, iPhone 8, and iPhone 8Plus, Apple also officially launched the iOS 11 operating system. However, it was soon revealed that after users updated iOS 11, the iPhone 7 series and iPhone 6 had obvious system lag problems, and the running speed of the phone was significantly slowed down.

A week later, Apple admitted that its software updates would slow down older iPhones, sparking consumer dissatisfaction. Faced with the "slowdown gate" product scandal that was brewing around the world, Apple was forced to publicly apologize and release a statement on its official website, saying that it would not intentionally shorten the life of any product. It also proposed a solution to reduce the price of replacing batteries for out-of-warranty iPhone 6 and above models. This is not the first time Apple has been caught up in a storm. Previous incidents such as the "bend gate" and "antenna gate" scandals, as well as after-sales service being accused of being different between China and foreign countries, have led to Apple's failure to provide a "slowdown gate" product.

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Because of this incident, relevant departments in many countries including South Korea, Israel, and Japan launched large-scale product investigations into Apple's "speed reduction gate". At the same time, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission also questioned Apple. Apple was involved in at least 60 different lawsuits around the world because of the "speed reduction gate". These lawsuits were merged into a class action lawsuit at a legal conference held on March 29, 2018. More than 200,000 Apple users worldwide have filed lawsuits against Apple, including more than 180,000 in South Korea.

Samsung was fined because a software update caused the Note 4 to become laggy and slow. In the eyes of Italian regulators, this was intentional on Samsung's part, as slowing down the phone would allow consumers to replace it with a new one faster. Samsung was therefore fined 5 million euros.

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Note 4 is a mobile phone released by Samsung in 2014. At that time, Samsung launched this phone globally at the National Stadium, Berlin and New York at the same time. At that time, the phone integrated a fully upgraded S Pen and visual experience.

Samsung pushed the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update for the Note 4 in 2016, but the update was based on the Note 7. After installing it, many users said that the phone became slower and the battery life was reduced.

Italy's antitrust regulator found after months of reviewing customer service records and internal Samsung emails that a system upgrade launched in 2016 was not optimized for the Galaxy Note 4.

Italy's antitrust agency said in a statement that some firmware upgrades from Apple and Samsung "resulted in serious degradation of functionality and significantly reduced performance, thereby accelerating the process of upgrading to new products" and that the two companies did not provide customers with sufficient information about the impact of the new software "nor did they provide any way to restore the product's original functionality."

According to the French newspaper Le Monde, many investigations have been launched against these two companies around the world, but Italy is the first institution to issue such a fine.

Speaking of Apple and Samsung, this is not the first time that these two giants in the technology circle have been fined. The two companies occasionally exchange fire with each other, and the case lasted for six years.

In 2011, the appearance design of Samsung's first-generation Galaxy smartphone was accused of plagiarizing the appearance design of Apple's first-generation iPhone smartphone. Later, Apple directly sued Samsung. Until May this year, the six-year Apple-Samsung design patent case came to an end. The court ruled that Samsung should compensate Apple US$538.6 million.

Patent lawsuits are going back and forth, but the public seems to be more concerned about whether their mobile phones have slowed down. In addition to the mobile phone manufacturers, there are many other factors that cause the mobile phone to slow down. For example, when charging, you need to choose the right charging plug to charge the device. If you use the iPhone plug to charge the iPad, the charging speed will be very slow because the power of the plug is not enough. In addition, although the USB cables on the market look the same, they actually support different currents. Try to use the original charging cable to charge the device, the speed will be much faster. The charging port should also be checked frequently. Dust and dirt will also affect the charging speed.

There are many reasons why mobile phones freeze. Some netizens have systematically summarized the reasons:

1. The phone configuration is low, the Internet module is not working, and the phone needs to be upgraded;

2. The speed of the WIFI network hotspot is limited, or too many people access the same hotspot, and the bandwidth shared by individuals is reduced. In this case, you can try another network, or wait until there are fewer people to access the Internet;

3. The 4G network signal provided by the operator is not ideal, or the location is blocked by buildings, resulting in signal attenuation. In this case, you can try to find an open and unobstructed place;

4. If there are too many users using data networks (such as 4G) in the same area at the same time, the bandwidth shared by individuals will be reduced. In this case, you can wait until there are fewer people to go online;

5. The CPU and memory capabilities of the mobile phone are limited, and the speed of processing network interactions slows down. At this time, you can use security software to clean up the cache and applications running in the background to free up some resources.

How to solve the problem of slow mobile phone speed?

1. End background running: Background running programs are often a reason for the slow running of the phone. Solution: Turn off background running

2. Clean up garbage and installation packages: The more garbage there is, the more memory the system consumes. If it is not cleaned up for a long time, the running speed will slow down. Solution: Clean up installation packages and garbage regularly.

3. Restart your phone: If your phone is turned on for too long, it will also slow down. Solution: Restart your phone.

4. Uninstall unnecessary software: The mobile phone memory is limited. Installing too many software in the mobile phone memory will seriously affect the running speed of the mobile phone. Solution: Uninstall unnecessary software and install some commonly used software.

5. Antivirus for mobile phone: Some bound software or toxic files will cause the mobile phone to run slower. Solution: Use antivirus software to kill viruses.

6. Restore factory settings: If the above method does not work, then you should restore the factory settings. Note: Be sure to save your personal information before restoring.

How to solve the problem of slow iPhone speed?

1. Clear Safari cache

Frequent use of Safari to browse the web for a long time will generate a lot of cache data. You need to clear Safari's cache to keep it running smoothly. To do this, you need to go to [Settings] - [Safari], then click "Clear History" and "Clear Cookies and Data".

2. Turn off automatic updates and automatic downloads

If your iPhone freezes while you're using it, it could be because it's trying to update apps in the background, which can be done manually. To change the automatic app update settings, go to Settings > iTunes Store and App Store > Automatic Downloads, and turn them off.

3. Delete old useless photos and videos

Deleting unnecessary files is one of the main ways to speed up your phone. If your iPhone has hundreds or thousands of photos and a lot of videos stored in it, you can back them up to your computer or iCloud, and then delete them from your phone. After all, the phone's memory space is limited, and the phone is really not a good place to collect photos.

4. Delete apps that take up a lot of space

The more bloated your iPhone is, the slower it runs. You can check the space occupied by each app in Settings-General-Usage, and then delete those apps that take up a lot of space but are not necessary.

5. Delete old SMS conversations

A large number of text messages is also one of the reasons that slow down the phone. Sometimes when there are too many text messages, it takes a while to open the message application before it can be entered. You can delete those meaningless junk text messages in your phone.

6. Close unnecessary background apps

Frequently closing the "background" will only speed up the iPhone's battery consumption, but for some apps that you don't use very often, you can double-click the home button to close it and only keep the frequently used ones. For example, positioning navigation and music apps are resident in the memory, so it is best to close them when not in use.

7. Don’t enable automatic mode for operations that can be performed manually

Go to [Settings] - [Wireless LAN] - [Ask to join networks] and turn it off.

8. Restart your phone regularly

Most people leave their iPhones powered on all the time, but it's important to reboot them periodically. Turning off your phone can help your iPhone get rid of things that have been hogging system resources.

Editor: Aikimei