I want to be clear that this is a lost cause for effectively everyone: I'm saurik, and, even with access to people like geohot and iH8Sn0w, if you give me a phone that is running a later version of the operating system and ask to downgrade, I'm going to say you need to lobby your congressperson to force Apple to allow that... the only thing that even sort of works is if you had a buggy version of the firmware to start with and did some prep work you can sometimes manage to get a downgrade to work if the firmware you upgrade to (or the bootloader itself) is also buggy... it isn't like it is "just really hard to do because it requires manual labor": it is only possible due to mistakes in Apple's attempts to make sure it can't be done.
The precedent is neither scary nor controversial. The European law says a device should keep functioning for a reasonable amount of time. A car completely breaking apart after 25 months is not normal. A smartphone being insecure is not normal either. Especially not considering how much personal data these contain.
I'd bought an iPad pro just a few months before, and suddenly I couldn't use apps I require (no updates available).
Instead of downgrading to the new-and-busted-iOS version I just sold the friggin iPad (not "fit for purpose") and went back to my ancient iPad (original model). Doesn't get used for browsing the net obviously, but at least that model still works.
My car costs multiple tens of thousands of euro and yet it's still only 24 months (people actually tried this one at a court, failed).
If you bought your Samsung phone in the EU, you will get the 24 month warranty automatically from all EU-native suppliers. Of course if you ship it from somewhere else like the US or Asia, it's very different. If it's from EU, send it in as non-functional.
There are many things that are counter-productive in the EU, this one is probably one of the smallest ones.
Here's a lawyer's take on it [1]. Although I'm not sure if its EU specific or NL specific. According to [2] [3] [4] there are some differences between NL and EU on this account. They specifically mention the car example in those sources, btw.
[1] https://blog.iusmentis.com/2018/09/27/honderden-klachten-ove...
[2] http://www.conformiteit.nl/conformiteit-conformiteitbeginsel...
But devices can never work the same as when they were purchased for two reasons.
1) Running an older OS with the originally shipped apps means that you are exposed to widely known exploits which weren't known when the device was purchased. You may counter that we could mandate security updates for older OSs for x years, but this raises all sorts of practical issues determining what bugs are serious enough for backports, and what effect fixing a security issue has on performance.
2) Third parties don't all have the resources or incentives to support older OSs, and app compatibility or usability is just as likely to drive people to upgrade as a slightly slower phone. This would be a big problem for smaller dev shops, and Apple largely solves it through its smooth but overbearing upgrade process, but even large and successful companies want to minimize the costs of supporting older OSs. MS Office apps for instance require iOS 11 and up. So your phone used to run an older version of Word ok, but 3 years after not upgrading the OS, it no longer does, or it is no longer compatible with MSs upgraded cloud services, or you restore but MS has stopped making a compatible version available on the App Store due to technical and security debt.
What sort of regulatory apparatus is going to adjudicate these issues, and wouldn't uncertainty around it place shackles on innovation?
Regardless, the relatively small fines levied are already behind the curve, and market forces have already pushed Apple to addressing the issue. iOS 12 had a large focus on speeding up older devices, and my soon-to-be 6 year old iPhone 5S seems to run nearly as well as it ever has. Lisa Jackson had a prominent spot during the last keynote declaring that Apple was focusing on increasing device longevity [1] . OS updates are the key to this.
There is two parts to consider I think:
- iOS updates are not reversible (technically it can be done, but for lambda users it's a lost cause).
- Apple is very aggressive towards making users upgrade, nagging indefinitely if there is any available newer version
So, users are very aggressively pushed towards the newer version, can't go back, but their phone becomes less useable, for new features they might not care about. As it is now, not offering the major update to old phones will be a grace in a number of cases.
It would still be nice if users wanting to upgrade can have a path forward, understanding the trade-offs. But users should be less complaining if their device keeps working basically the same way as when they bought it years ago.