It’s an interesting article but I think its more likely that the ratings are calculated differently. The title makes it sound as if there was some real-world data proving that Samsung is better, but the only data source is the number they put on the energy label.
You’re right. It’s still stupid though.
Companies should be at least as concerned with privacy and autonomy as individuals. Running everything on Microsoft Clouds, with Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office makes you massively vulnerable to the whims of Microsoft. And many of the potential customers are actually Microsoft’s competitors on some level.
Thin clients may be a good model for some businesses, but this device particularly seems to be tailored to use only Microsoft’s Azure cloud as opposed to self-hosting. Moving the computation to Microsoft’s cloud doesn’t make it inherently safer.
Sure, let’s just move your personal desktop to someone else’s computer where you don’t even own the data. What could possibly go wrong?
I don’t know, but even if they were I can’t imagine it’d be easy to prove that the labels are wrong. After all, I’m not aware of any data collection on degradation or failures of batteries at the required scale and precision. And I don’t think the ratings constitute a warranty, i.e. I don’t think you’re entitled to anything if your particular phone falls short of the after the 2-year warranty expires.
But I sure would like there to be some standard that allows collecting these kinds of metrics in a way that’s privacy-preserving and can’t be fudged by manufactureres.