Spot the difference! These are the last 4 “Ultra” devices from Samsung, I certainly wouldn’t know which one was in your hand.
Just one short year ago the S24 series was released, and with it came a new promise of 7 years of OS and security updates. Fantastic news! Or so we thought. We are now a month after the release of the S25 series and starting to see the reality of this promise, and realising it might not be the deal we thought it was.
I’ve talked about planned obsolescence at length already (Read here) and did touch on the Samsung situation. However it is only getting worse as more time passes, I’m assuming this is due to the sales of the S25 series not being as good as Samsung had initially hoped for.
As it stands (Feb 25) OneUI 7.0 is currently locked behind a paywall. The paywall is that you must buy a S25 series device to access it. Samsung are claiming they haven’t got the operating system ready for their previous devices yet, I call “Bull Faeces” on that one. Surely porting a OS update to a device the in house developers are already familiar with would be quicker than making it for an entirely new device? At this point when OneUI 7.0 (Android 15) finally releases for the previous generations of devices that are still within their update promise, Android 16 will already be out and being pushed out on other manufacturers devices. It will be outdated from the day it releases.
We are reaching a point where I feel owners of the S23 and S24 series need to pool together and file a class action lawsuit against Samsung. How can it be legal that a key selling point of a device (staying up to date for x years) can be ignored within a year of release?! I would give more leeway if this were happening on year 6 of year 7 of updates, as the device gets older and more different from the current generation of devices, updates would become more difficult, working within hardware limitations etc. But no, this is 1 year from release, the first Android version the S24 series should have is being held back from them.
This is clearly an underhand tactic to try and push sales of their new devices, but honestly what impression does this leave on the owner of these devices? I certainly wouldn’t spend anymore money on a company that immediately breaks a promise and tried to extract more money from me. Thankfully I already personally boycotted all Samsung products for the release of substandard Exynos chipsets in our market, so this won’t have any effect on me, but I really feel for all the enthusiast owners of the S24 series that have been the victim of a very shady marketing tactic.
Samsung are also locking even the S24 Ultra out of certain software features the S25 series has, under a premise of the S24 Ultra not having the performance to handle these tasks. NONE of the AI processing is done on these devices, it is all handled on cloud servers (hence Samsung making their AI features a paid service in 6 months time, they have bills to pay!). In theory this means that even the A06, Samsung’s cheapest device, could run all of these AI features just as well as the S25 Ultra if it weren’t for the fact that Samsung don’t allow it. What hope do S24 owners have 5, 6 or even 7 years down the line through their software updates when 1 update in they are already being locked out of features?
Samsung need to go back to the drawing board, and fast because I am not the only one noticing this. If the only way they can differentiate their yearly releases is by which software features they allow access to then they clearly are not innovating enough. If progress has slowed down that much they either need to put more effort into their new devices or stop the annual release cycle. Selling essentially the same device and locking last years behind an artificial paywall is not a sustainable way of milking more money from their loyal followers. Loyalty only lasts so long.
Funnily enough I just checked Samsung’s website to make sure my facts were correct and stumbled upon the following banner:
This is clearly Samsung’s endgame that they are trying to make seem more appealing. You pay an exorbitant monthly to rent a device from Samsung. You will never own your device and you will be a guaranteed, regular and predictable income stream for them. Prices will increase whenever the Shareholders say so, and you’ll be able to do nothing about it other than cough up the extra because otherwise you’d have to purchase a phone you can afford in full!
People really need to start pushing back against this behaviour from companies. Yes it disgusts me, but can I blame them? Not really, we keep letting them get away with it.
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