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Comment by dghughes | Hacker News Reader

> Now, I'm as frustrated as anybody else here that I'm forbidden to use whatever feature I want from MY phone, for which I paid, with MY MOENY

Samsung disabled the oxygen sensor (SPO2) on their phones for Canada. For other countries they moved access for the SPO2 feature further into the Samsung Health app. But for Canada SPO2 sensor access is gone not accessible.

No warning (probably buried in an email) just one day my SPO2 sensor stopped working. I suppose it was due to some legal thing but it certainly pissed me off. I'm never buying Samsung again why blow $1000 on a phone only to have physical hardware disabled?

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Same frustration with samsung, they always undo settings I customized buried deep in the settings menu somewhere and this constant cat and mouse game trying to figure out what has changed so I can change it back to my preferences is infuriating to say the least. Respect my menu settings Samsung, you lost a customer for life! I'm all in on Apple when the right black friday iphone deal drops later this month.

This is the same reason I dropped Windows completely recently. I kept having settings changed and would have to make group policy to get them to stick. Not allowing me to turn of automatic updates really grinded my gears too.

What happened to letting the user at the very least have the choice to just disable all of the hand holding?

This is precisely why I am a hardcore Mac user, the settings are straightforward and do not auto-revert and fail to stick anywhere close to the level of Windows.

Maybe some kind of patent infringement settlement in that area? Or liability? A specific region feels like an ip or legal issue...

I see this thread below and there is a phone number you could call to get answers. I believe there are legit sites with older versions of apks you might try as a test.

https://us.community.samsung.com/t5/Samsung-Apps-and-Service...

same with the Withings scale that suddenly disabled the Pulse Wave Velocity measurement (which was the only reason to buy the thing)

Seems to be something about Patent issues or the like.

I would certainly demand more information. Who actually opposed the sensor on phones, who actually sued whom, etc.

Why should you, as a consumer, care about internal legal issues between the manufacturer of your phone and some other company? If the manufacturer decides, for whatever reason, to remove features from the phone after you purchased it, I think it is reasonable for the transaction to be reversed, i.e. refund me the full amount for the phone and I will return the phone.

If a publisher is found to have published a book without license, would it be reasonable to find all who bought the book, break into their homes, take the book, and leave in its place the purchase price in cash?

If not, then why is doing the same, but on a computer, remotely reasonable?

If you’re geeking out on health data, would you entertain an Apple Watch? It features an O2 sensor which to my knowledge hasn’t been neutered. Do you think it’s a patent issue? I recall Apple modifying the active noise cancellation in the AirPods Pro.

Apple does the same thing with the ECG feature - it’s frustratingly disabled on my Apple Watch for regulatory reasons based on region.

They tell you up front though, as far as I know they’ve never sold a health sensor into a country and then disabled it later, which is what it sounds like parent comment is describing

I have a Samsung Galaxy S8+ I used the SPO2 sensor all the time. Then I think it was last year (2019) when it was removed without warning. But like I said Samsung probably buried that info in 5000 lines of an update notification.

I can understand new devices being sold would not have the device enabled due to some patent or legal issue. But to have Samsung disable a physical device on a two year old phone is frustrating. I bought the phone I own it Samsung shouldn't allowed to do such a thing or at least make it more obvious and give the option to opt out of the change.

Thats because of legal reasons. ECG is a medical feature that most countries require meets medical accuracy standards which it likely does not in many countries.

I'd love an Apple watch, but they don't support even basic functionality with Android (albeit maybe due to hardware incompatibility). Seems like they miss a market to be honest, Apple Watch is clearly the best on the market.

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