This is an example of an interesting practice: put some hardware in the device, for which the user pays (the cost of the wifi chip was included in the price), and then increase the value proposition of the product (by enabling the feature) *after* the product has been sold (!)… or not.
I think this practice is not only dishonest, but also damaging to the client (who pays for a feature he may never see enabled in the end) and therefore should attract attention of relevant regulating bodies.
Sadly, examples of very similar practices start to pop out regularly (uncompressed hdmi in Canon 5d III, cropped hdmi output in Nikon D600), but this seems to be the boldest example to date. In case of Canon/Nikon it’s difficult to prove dishonesty, because they can claim genius, and incompetence of their engineers, respectively. Situation here is different, because there are physical chips that were obviously meant to be there from the beginning, but were intentionally not enabled.
Started out doing photography at the age of 6 using an uncle's old 1940 kodak brownie box camera. At 15 years of age, I decided to buy my very own 1975 Praktica SLR camera. I now shoot with a Nikon D850. I do unpaid TFP and commercial paid work.