The awesome Samsung Galaxy S5 smart phone comes with an equally awesome feature called “Download Booster”.
In a nutshell, Download Booster does just as its name implies by using a cellular signal and Wi-Fi connection simultaneously to speed up large file downloads to your phone.
Sounds great, right? Well, it is. But don’t count on using it if your cellular provider is either Sprint, Verizon or AT&T.
Those spoil-sports have apparently instructed Samsung to disable the Download Booster feature on Galaxy S5 phones that will be used on their networks and completely remove the option from the phones’ settings menus.
The only possible reason I can see for them doing is to force you to use as much cellular data as possible, causing your monthly mobile phone bill to remain as high as possible (if you don’t have an unlimited data plan).
Personally, I think it’s terrible for a company to intentionally stifle innovation by crippling a product just to improve their bottom line by a few cents per month.
Of course it’s their networks, and if you choose to use one of them you’ll have no choice except to play by their rules. But this seems like a great opportunity for T-Mobile to pick up market share from the “Big 3” since they currently allow their customers to use the Galaxy S5’s new Download Booster feature.