Free themes won't be so free after all
By Cohen Coberly,
It would seem that the high cost of Samsung's latest flagship devices
isn't quite enough for the company. As reported by Droid Life, Samsung
will soon be effectively wiping truly free themes from its store when it
rolls out Android Pie to its devices next year. Samsung will begin
informing users that they will only have 14 days to enjoy their free
theme before it automatically reverts back to the default Android skin.
This is puzzling news, and we don't know why Samsung is making this
decision, but many have speculated that it's an attempt to push
customers to buy paid themes; which Samsung receives a cut of. "We ask
for your understanding as we have changed the policy in order to help
our designers continue to create high quality products and also to
provide stable and satisfactory services for you," Samsung wrote in a
notification that's being sent out to its users.
"...we have changed the policy in order to help our designers continue
to create high quality products and also to provide stable and
satisfactory services for you."
It's not entirely clear how preventing designers from offering their
themes for free is going to "help" them create "high quality products,"
but in the minds of users, this decision will probably come across as an
overly-aggressive attempt to monetize what is ultimately a very minor
part of the Samsung experience.
There may still be hope, though. While investigating this topic, I found
an alternate theory from Droid Life user abqnm that seems reasonably
credible. If it's accurate, it would suggest this whole matter is just a
miscommunication on Samsung's part.
"There are people who were skirting the free trials of paid themes by
disabling the theme store and its support apps to keep it from reverting
after installing a trial, essentially stealing paid themes," abqnm
wrote. "So Samsung could be increasing the trial period to 2 weeks—but
also making them revert automatically regardless of what you disable—so
that people are less likely to refund a paid theme that they don't like
and they combat the trial abuse."
We'll let you decide what to believe, but for now, we'll be erring on
the side of caution by assuming Samsung means precisely what they wrote.
If you want to see the full notification for yourself, we've posted an
image of it below. We'll update this article if the company clarifies
its decision further.
https://www.geezgo.com/sps/47036
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