Samsung and LG say they don't slow down older phones, either

Following Apple’s admission that it deliberately slowed down older phones to allow the battery to continue to power the processor, the list of rival smartphone manufacturers announcing they don’t follow the same practice continues to grow.

Yesterday we saw statements from both Moto and HTC affirming that they don’t throttle their smartphones, and today Samsung and LG Electronics have both chimed in to report that they don’t either, reports PhoneArena.

LG kept it brief, saying, “Never have, never will! We care what our customers think.”

Samsung was more chatty, saying, “Product quality has been and will always be Samsung Mobile's top priority. We ensure extended battery life of Samsung mobile devices through multi-layer safety measures, which include software algorithms that govern the battery charging current and charging duration. We do not reduce CPU performance through software updates over the lifecycles of the phone.”

Revenge of the quick fix

Good to know, but these statements probably shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, considering that Apple’s practice grew out of a very specific response to the iPhone 6 last January after customers noticed that their devices were shutting down without warning.

With iOS Patch 10.2.1, Apple announced that it had “improved” the issue, but wasn’t upfront about the nature of that improvement, leading to the current backlash. It was a “quick fix” that unfortunately apparently became standard practice.

Apple has since penned a letter of apology, and also announced that it will start offering battery replacements for the iPhone 6 and above throughout all of 2018 for just $29/£25. That’s a significant drop down from the usual price of $79/£79.

The tech giant has also stated that an iPhone’s batteries drain significantly after 500 charge cycles, and that it plans to introduce more tools to better keep track of your iPhone’s battery life in iOS in 2018.