78 More Customers Sue Apple Over 'Secretly Throttling' Older iPhones in Latest Class Action

[deviant]

No doubt. Painting it as a negative is ridiculous. It was by design to fix a problem people were having with their phone crashing when the processor requested more power than the battery could safely supply because of degradation. The pretzeled logic of “hey, let’s slow down everyone’s older phones to give them a reason to upgrade” would have been insane. How likely are you to upgrade to another iPhone after just having a very frustrating experience? It is inanity.

Your statement is ridiculous
I’ve NEVER, EVER had ANY device that shuts down itself because the battery is “old”. I have a PSP that’s 8 years old and it still works like when it was new. It hasn’t slowed down, it just works. If iPhones shutdown because of that it’s a design flaw of their cpu, because I repeat, I’ve never had any other device shutting down because of this.

 

[zarmanto]

I still don't understand why they can't fix the underlying problem when Android has.

They did. They throttled the phones to prevent crashes. That was the fix.

I would personally argue that Android simply doesn't attempt to push the envelope in the same way as iOS... essentially, they're always throttled. As such, Android handsets were never going to be affected by such issues to nearly the same degree as iPhones. (Feel free to lookup some benchmarks, to see what I mean.)

 

[TMRJIJ]

I still don't understand why they can't fix the underlying problem when Android has.

Android did not fix the problem. If the Battery degrades to the point where it can’t handle peak performance, it’s shutting off no matter what OS you use.

Apple and Google have the same ‘throttling’ solution but Apple is getting sued for not telling us they were doing it.

 

[DevNull0]

I thought Apple stopped slowing down iPhones after it became well known they were doing it...?

And what does that have to do with their liability. If a casino is ripping off customers with rigged games, then when it becomes public knowledge, all they do is stop you believe that is the end of it?

What about all the customers who replaced their phones after being told by Apple geniuses it's the only way to improve the speed? What about customers who suffered through months of a painfully slow phone because they didn't want to spend another $800 when all they really needed was a new battery?

 

[BigMcGuire]

These class action suits only benefit the lawyers. They get their 30% fee from the total settlement. Everyone else gets a pittance.

Tis true. I was part of a lawsuit against a credit card company that turned on that "credit protection" thing without letting us know. I got a check in the mail for $1.07. I'm sure the lawyers made much more.

 

[Garage Battle]

All batteries degrade over time.

Yeah, but my wifes did it from nearly day one. Never notified her onscreen, never put a bubble/system message up. She dealt with her new, crappy phone almost from day one never knowing any better. Got a new battery, and instantly brand new phone.

Apple wasn't being proactive in protecting phones because if it was it would have notified users immediately so they could correct the problem (many under 1st year warranty) and publicly documented the feature. Now all of the phones are out of warranty, so Apple doesn't have to replace the batteries at no charge - in many of those phones since they've been sold/traded/etc AND NOW with their new extended protection the user has to pay $30 - which the customer wouldn't have had to pay during the warranty period - and Apple is doing us a favor tho.

How much money will users get - class action lawsuits suck - but Apple needs the bad press because its forcing Apple to be a better company which in many ways it doesn't want to.

STILL WAITING ON ACTUAL PRIVACY SETTINGS FOR SAFARI BTW - NO RUSH YOU KNOW BECAUSE MY PRIVACY IS IMPORTANT TO APPLE AND SUCH.

 

[TMRJIJ]

Your statement is ridiculous
I’ve NEVER, EVER had ANY device that shuts down itself because the battery is “old”. I have a PSP that’s 8 years old and it still works like when it was new. It hasn’t slowed down, it just works. If iPhones shutdown because of that it’s a design flaw of their cpu, because I repeat, I’ve never had any other device shutting down because of this.

Good for you but your ‘personal’ experience doesn’t disprove facts. All batteries degrade over time, the way the device handles that though is a different story.

 

[NT1440]

Your statement is ridiculous
I’ve NEVER, EVER had ANY device that shuts down itself because the battery is “old”. I have a PSP that’s 8 years old and it still works like when it was new. It hasn’t slowed down, it just works. If iPhones shutdown because of that it’s a design flaw of their cpu, because I repeat, I’ve never had any other device shutting down because of this.

Ahem. What kind of battery chemistry does a PSP use and what kind does an iPhone use?

Are you under the impression these devices share any similarities in their engineering requirements given their use cases? If so....why?

 

[LordVic]

All batteries degrade over time.

This is a gross oversimplication that doesn't actually address the problem people have had with the battery.

The throttling issue wasn't implemented because of normal degradation. It was put in place because of a battery design issue in which the iPhones themselves attempted to draw more power from the battery than the battery allowed for, causing a shutdown.

the Throttling solution is a decent work around to the problem. But it's just a work around. Apple needed to be upfront and honest about it, which is the biggest gripe. Apple was NOT up front and honest. They got caught lying about it, after many people were either forced to pay for repairs out of pocket to 3rd party repair places (Apple refused to aknowledge this as a battery issue and refused repairs), or being told ot buy an upgraded newer device.

it wasn't until they were outright called to the carpet by numerous publications did Apple finally admit that they did in fact throttle devices.

as for battery degradation: there are two places batteries degrade. Apple's testing only accounts for 1 of those two methods. The phone shutdowns that led to the throttling was not a test Apple conducted. Historically, in virtually every single device (including most of Apple's others as well), the battery's capable load is more than enough to handle 2-5 years of this sort of degradation easily. However in the affecteed devices, margins of error were made so low that they started hitting this form of degradation behavior within 1 year. That's a design flaw.


CAR Analogy time:

Think of a phone battery like the Gas Tank + Fuel Pump combination in your car. Phone batteries perform both of these behaviours for electronics. They provide both the reserve power (gas tank) and flow of energy (Gas Pump) to the engine (CPU). When you press the gas pedal (or launch a program), the energy stored in the reserves (Gas Tank) needs to get moved from the reserve to the engine. This is what is flawed in the affected devices. So While Apple only tests how much fuel reserve the battery can hold, they didn't test for how well the pump is working to move energy to the engine. They ultimately provided a fuel pump that was inadequate for the engine with only 1 years worth of use.

Imagine if you bought a car that did that?

 

[spinedoc77]

Negative. They still throttle but give you a toggle if you would rather have that wonderful experience of your phone randomly crashing under load.

Meh, this happens on my iPhone X with the latest software.

 

[NT1440]

STILL WAITING ON ACTUAL PRIVACY SETTINGS FOR SAFARI BTW - NO RUSH YOU KNOW BECAUSE MY PRIVACY IS IMPORTANT TO APPLE AND SUCH.

Are you unaware of the engineering that’s gone into privacy in Safari since two years ago? Or are you mad that there’s no toggles for them? I can’t tell what you’re telling about here.

 

[farewelwilliams]

Hmmm. I have an iPhone 6s that I bought outright when it was the new iPhone. In the cold of winter it would constantly shut off (because batteries don't handle the cold well) when the battery was under 50%. That's because the battery couldn't handle the peak demand. It made going for walks or doing anything outside in the winter a crapshoot. I was going to replace it because I couldn't go another winter like that.

Then the "slowdown" software was released...and I now have a fully functional 6s that stays on even in the cold of winter.

I'll take the functional phone with the "slowdown" over the one that just crashes constantly. Apple LOST a potential upgrade by instituting this fix, which flies in the face of the claims people keep making here.

The constant with most people still weeping over this? They either willfully don't understand the technical aspects of what's going on (but still bleat about it anytime they can) or they tend to use this "Slowdown" as one of 30 rambling points in an anti-Apple screed. I have a lot of issues with Apple as a company, but giving me another 2 years of life out of a phone by throttling it when the battery chemistry can't handle the peak load is NOT one of them.
[doublepost=1530809678][/doublepost]
Android has the same functionality as Apple's "throttling" built right into the OS.

Also, what Android phone are you describing? There are thousands of different battery configurations in the Android world.

very much this, but where Apple failed was communication. i believe they snuck some sort of language into the release notes, but it was such a big change from the user's perspective that they should have made a bigger notice about it. i think they did this because it was around the time when the Note 7 batteries were catching fire so Apple wanted to avoid being part of that news story as much as possible

 

[deviant]

Good for you but your ‘personal’ experience doesn’t disprove facts. All batteries degrade over time, the way the device handles that though is a different story.

of course batteries degrade over time. the point it, is has to be calculated and taken care of by the software. and apple did it WRONG.

 

[DevNull0]

They did. They throttled the phones to prevent crashes. That was the fix.

The underlying problem is that phones well under a year old already have a battery that is so degraded they have to be throttled to prevent crashing.

Batteries degrade over time. If Apple defines a battery that is degraded but still above 80% of its original capacity as "good", then that battery at 80% must drive the phone at full throttle without shutting down the phone. Apple chose a battery that is so undersized, that at 100% it's just barely able to keep the phone powered at full throttle, and just a few percent degraded means the battery can no longer do the job. They should have chosen at a battery that at 80% capacity will equal the one they actually chose at 100%. But instead they shaved under 0.1mm off the phone thickness and caused all these problems for themselves and their customers.

 

[afinelion]

This has been a phenomenon since desktop computer upgrades were first commonly available. Suddenly, Windows would be laggy after the 300 MHz "top of the line" processor seemed to be running at a half a cycle a second.

Just because of that Apple VP's response though—which sounds laden with guilt—I'm interested in seeing the evidence. It only sounds ludicrous to you if you have never owned a "version minus one" iPhone and uncannily seen the performance take a deep **** a month before or two months after the latest hardware. However, software has scaled, more bits have clung to one another processing through the same processor, and developers can trivially employ underperforming methods for memory allocation (especially over the course of an app's development).

This may be a bona fide case of "lawyer land" vs. "reality", and I'd be willing to bet that this class action simply settles so that Apple doesn't have to invest ridiculous amounts in the discovery. Even if this becomes a class action, I cannot see it ever going to trial.

I wouldn't put it past me that Apple pulled a ghetto move or two along the way (look at their many walls and veils to see their ways), but I do genuinely think Apple knows that its version minus 2 phones need to be able to support the latest software without too big of a performance hit. This is sort of evidenced by the fact that they continue to sell these products and implement them as part of their pipeline for years down the road. But they would have a benefit in creating an illusion of "performance upgrade" to their new phones. So it isn't the "craziest type of thinking" (a construct that only a psychological manipulator would use).

What would really get Apple out of this light is to simply pull some phones and hard performance spec samples and do a document showing their findings.

But my official theory is that our consciousness is just getting too fast for the computers, so they appear slower to everyone on Earth.

 

[Naraxus]

Good. Apple deserves EVERY bit of this and more. They deserve to be taken to the cleaners over this.

 

[nvmls]

Hilarious the number of people still defending Apple on this. With customers like these, no wonder they are the richest company.

 

[zarmanto]

Meh, this happens on my iPhone X with the latest software.

(And directly below that, in his footer...)

Escapee from the dumbification (sic) of iOS.

I'm sure you'll understand if I'm somewhat skeptical of your assertions.

 

[NT1440]

very much this, but where Apple failed was communication. i believe they snuck some sort of language into the release notes, but it was such a big change from the user's perspective that they should have made a bigger notice about it. i think they did this because it was around the time when the Note 7 batteries were catching fire so Apple wanted to avoid being part of that news story as much as possible

Even after explaining a highly technical (with tons of variables at play) process the false narrative is still online and in pop culture. Let’s just face it, the majority of people can’t handle the technical aspects of the explanation and dumbing it down leaves the door open to willful misinterpretation (as we see in these very forums).

I don’t know what Apple could have done with a statement to explain it in a way that everyone could get, it would take at least a few paragraphs...and we kno this country doesn’t have the attention span for it (or these stories wouldn’t STILL be getting headlines, which apparently is all people read).

 

[Jaekae]

I thought Apple stopped slowing down iPhones after it became well known they were doing it...?

No they just have an option to choose if they want it slower and working on a poor battery or have it running full soeed and get crashes due to poor battery that doesnt manage the speeds reliably

 

[iBluetooth]

I still don't understand why they can't fix the underlying problem when Android has.

Android hasn't fixed the problem, the Android phones just turn off and the user has to start it up again.

Please understand that Apple didn't slow down the phones, they prevented phones with degraded batteries to request more power than the battery could support and thus the processor may not have gone to such high throttle as a new battery could support. This, did not affect day to day usage, but the phone shutting off does.

 

[BootsWalking]

Lawyers must sue to make money. Apple has money. So sue Apple to make money.

Apple avoids admitting issues to make money. Customers have money. So keep taking advantage of Customers to make money.

 

[lec0rsaire]

These are now just parasites. Apple remedied the situation by offering cheap $29 battery service and including a toggle to turn on peak performance.

Those expecting an iPhone 5/5s/6 to perform as fast as an A10/A11 powered device are crazy. One thing is reducing performance and another is old hardware performing worse than new hardware as it always has.

 

[deviant]

Ahem. What kind of battery chemistry does a PSP use and what kind does an iPhone use?

Are you under the impression these devices share any similarities in their engineering requirements given their use cases? If so....why?

the point is that the psp never started to lag after 2 years of degradation, like losing FPS in games. why? because sony optimized it in a right way. apple didn't. you can defend them all you want, i don't care. they are wrong in this, and they are wrong in how they handled it.
i'm a bigger apple fanboy than you and i probably have double their devices than you, but that doesn't keep me from calling it when i see it. actually it gives me more rights to do so, having spent a lot of money in their products.

 

[lec0rsaire]

If Apple really wanted to force consumers to upgrade they would only provide a single major OS update like most Android OEMs provide. What Android phone from 2013-2014 has the ability to run the latest Android without any modding? My guess is none.