Galaxy S4 Smartphone

August 2015: A federal judge dismissed some of the claims in this complaint, including the storage capacity claims and some of the benchmarking manipulation claims (the storage capacity claims were dismissed without prejudice and the dismissed benchmarking manipulation claims were dismissed with prejudice). Other claims, including ones that the company failed to adequately inform consumers of benchmarking manipulation, will move forward. To read the full decision and learn more about the dismissed and continuing claims, click here.

2014: A class-action lawsuit was filed against Samsung for allegedly misleadingly marketing the speed and performance of the Galaxy S4 smartphone. Specifically, the complaint, which was originally filed in February and amended in November, alleges that the company falsely represents the speed of the Galaxy S4 smartphone by programming it to run at “higher-than-normal speeds” for benchmarking apps (which are used to test and compare the speed and performance of smartphones and tablets) when, according to plaintiffs, the smartphone runs at much lower speeds when performing real-world tasks. In addition, plaintiffs claim that the company advertises that the device has 16 gigabytes of storage capacity when, according to the complaint, preinstalled software makes about half of that memory inaccessible. (Norcia v. Samsung Telecommunications America, LLC and Samsung Electronics America, Inc., Case No. 14-cv-00582, N. D. CA.).