Samsung and LG Don’t Slow Down Older Phones Like Apple

BY Evan Selleck

Published 29 Dec 2017

Galaxy Note 8

Yesterday, HTC and Motorola weighed in on the controversy surrounding Apple and its decision to slow down older iPhones as their lithium-ion batteries degrade.

In the case of both companies, they said that they do not practice the same decisions as Apple. Neither slows down their phones based on the remaining battery life of their handsets, whether they are new or old. At the time, we were still waiting for statements from other companies like Google, Samsung, and LG, and now the latter two companies have said their piece, too.

As reported by Phone Arena, based on emailed statements from spokespeople for both companies, neither Samsung or LG practice slowing down their phones based on remaining battery life, either.

Here’s how LG put it, which definitely includes a not-so-subtle dig at Apple:

“Never have, never will! We care what our customers think.”

And here’s what Samsung had to say:

“We do not reduce CPU performance through software updates over the lifecycles of the phone.”

This isn’t an easy situation, especially not for Apple. The company’s goal, as it has stated repeatedly at this point, is to avoid random shutdowns of older iPhones as the battery degrades and the processor is overtaxed. However, based on comments from some of the major smartphone manufacturers out there, this is not a standard practice, and Apple may have overstepped its bounds by not only slowing down older iPhones, but also not communicating what they were doing to its customer base.

Of course, Apple also played right into the hands of conspiracy theories that have stated for years that the company slows down its aging devices in an attempt to get customers to upgrade their hardware sooner, which is an odd move to make.

Either way, if you aren’t a fan of Apple’s decision but you use Android, it appears you’re safe from that sort of methodology.

[via Phone Arena]