Samsung has agreed to pay $10 to each Galaxy S4 purchaser, here is why
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Samsung has agreed to pay $10 to each purchaser of the Galaxy S4 smartphone, which was released back in 2013, in a class-action lawsuit alleging the smartphone manufacturer cheated on benchmark tests.
The mobile giant has settled [PDF] a long-standing class action lawsuit for $13.4m (two-and-a-half hours of profit), with $2.8m put into a settlement fund and $10.6m in injunctive relief, The Register reports.
According to the report, Samsung added source code in the S4 devices and the code was capable of detecting whether or not any benchmarking app was running in the smartphone. The source code helped the smartphone run at a faster speed only when a benchmarking app was in action.
The issue first came to the light back in 2014 and Samsung since then been arguing that it’s not legally obliged to tell consumers about the source code that allowed it to manipulate the benchmark results. While Samsung still holds on to what they have been saying for five years, the lawsuit claimed that Samsung negatively influenced consumers’ purchasing decision by making false representations.
The Korean manufacturer has agreed “to require the entity from which it purchases new Samsung smartphones to confirm that such smartphones have not been pre-loaded with software that detects and boosts the performance scores from benchmarking applications.”
So, if you’re one of those who purchased the Galaxy S4, Samsung will soon contact you via email to let you know about the settlement and how to apply to claim your $10.
