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

[Trip Mitchell]

they can tie up the courts with the case and Apple can be required to let these individuals install iOS 12 along with everyone else

 

[NT1440]

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.

So the problem here is that you simply don’t understand the technical or chemistry differences in your comparisons. No amount of “fanboyism” is going to change that.

Your talk about optimization in a *single use case” device vs. a handheld computer pretty much sums it up. You don’t have an inkling of the technical arena you’re attempting to play in.

There is nothing about a PSP that is going to result in a sudden demand for more power from the battery, nothing. Once you’re playing a game that’s it. A computer (the phone) is doing far and away more second to second than a device that is simply playing a game, or not in use.

 

[christopherjac]

What Apple should have done:

1. Let the phone crash and restart under load on affected devices
2. When it reboots, throw up a dialog box that says "Your battery is old and needs to be replaced, which caused this crash. Do you want to A: run at full speed, but risk crashing or B: throttle to prevent crashing" and let the consumer decide.

So simple, easy, and very transparent about what was happening to consumers. They chose not to be transparent and are getting sued, justifiably, as a result.

 

[NT1440]

What Apple should have done:

1. Let the phone crash and restart under load on affected devices
2. When it reboots, throw up a dialog box that says "Your battery is old and needs to be replaced, which caused this crash. Do you want to A: run at full speed, but risk crashing or B: throttle to prevent crashing" and let the consumer decide.

So simple, easy, and very transparent about what was happening to consumers. They chose not to be transparent and are getting sued, justifiably, as a result.

But it’s not, because a user would then be under the impression that their phone is in a constant state of throttling rather than when the demands on the CPU trigger it which can change literally second to second depending on what you’re doing.

There are frankly too many variables at play to give an accurate technical explanation without it going for several pages. I don’t know how you boil that down to a notification that everyone can understand, I just don’t.

 

[thinkthis]

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

WHY WOULD THEY.

THE ALTERNATIVE TO SLOWING THE PHONE IS ALLOWING IT TO JUST SUDDENLY SHUT DOWN. WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD PREFER THIS?!?!?!? SLOWDOWN IS SLIGHTLY ANNOYING. RANDOM SHUTDOWN IS EXTREMELY ANNOYING.

HOW DO PEOPLE NOT GET THIS?!?!?!?!?!?!??

 

[TMRJIJ]

What Apple should have done:

1. Let the phone crash and restart under load on affected devices
2. When it reboots, throw up a dialog box that says "Your battery is old and needs to be replaced, which caused this crash. Do you want to A: run at full speed, but risk crashing or B: throttle to prevent crashing" and let the consumer decide.

So simple, easy, and very transparent about what was happening to consumers. They chose not to be transparent and are getting sued, justifiably, as a result.

Simple yet, ineffective. People blow through Notification and Location dialogs without reading. They’ll likely do the same with this.

 

[gnipgnop]

What Apple should have done:

1. Let the phone crash and restart under load on affected devices
2. When it reboots, throw up a dialog box that says "Your battery is old and needs to be replaced, which caused this crash. Do you want to A: run at full speed, but risk crashing or B: throttle to prevent crashing" and let the consumer decide.

Bad idea. Apple themselves listed THREE things that could cause shutdown: old battery, cold conditions, low charge. All three of those situations can cause voltage to be too low relative to system demands.

 

[zarmanto]

...THE ALTERNATIVE TO SLOWING THE PHONE IS ALLOWING IT TO JUST SUDDENLY SHUT DOWN. WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD PREFER THIS?!?!?!? ...

Apparently, Android users -- and of course, people who what to leech some money out of Apple's coffers.

 

[hirsthirst]

I wish these 78 a-hats would hold their (mandatory) Government to account to the same degree as their (optional) consumer-goods manufacturers.

What a pathetic waste of time & resources in the greater scheme of things.

 

[farewelwilliams]

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).

they could have done it like the privacy policy updates we saw. show a full page after updating to iOS 10.2.1 saying the CPU has been slowed down to prevent shutdowns due to the natural effects of aging batteries.

and in that same page, allow the user to toggle it off for full CPU performance.

 

[deviant]

So the problem here is that you simply don’t understand the technical or chemistry differences in your comparisons. No amount of “fanboyism” is going to change that.

Your talk about optimization in a *single use case” device vs. a handheld computer pretty much sums it up. You don’t have an inkling of the technical arena you’re attempting to play in.

There is nothing about a PSP that is going to result in a sudden demand for more power from the battery, nothing. Once you’re playing a game that’s it. A computer (the phone) is doing far and away more second to second than a device that is simply playing a game, or not in use.

you're still trying to defend them. i'm saying that there are other remedies to aging batteries. i understand that some things just happen and you cannot undo them, but you can MITIGATE them in the BEST POSSIBLE WAY. which apple HASN'T DONE EVEN IN THE SLIGHTEST. They could manage it more poorly even if they wanted to. Nothing more to say.
a psp game is a psp game, and no, it is not true that once the game is launched it's just that. a game might be very low demanding in certain areas and much more in others. if you think you're an expert... you're not.

 

[Jimmy James]

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.

Emphasis on secret. That makes it a negative.

 

[Radon87000]

It was planned obsolescence. Period.
[doublepost=1530815202][/doublepost]

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.

At least those phones aren't unusable. The iPhone 6 from 2014 is unusable on iOS 11. Load times are atrocious and a 6 hour battery life with 94% health

 

[Substance90]

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

Never had an iPhone crash due to an old battery. The only reason I've ever replaced a battery (in a 3GS and in my 5) was to get more hours of use during the day.

 

[Lappen71]

Americans.....a bunch of ❄️

 

[john123]

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.

You seem like a reasonable person, so I’ll be brief.

First, you have an excellent use case for why throttling makes sense. But the existence of that use case is not in dispute (well, except by people with an agenda), and it doesn’t inherently invalidate the complaints or arguments of those affected by the flip side of the issue. What is in dispute (by reasonable people) is:
— Whether Apple should have been open and upfront about the change rather than doing it silently
— Related but slightly different, whether throttling should have been a user specified option
— Whether Apple’s design and engineering choices made shutdown use cases (there are many) more likely

You mention how many people are ignorant with respect to battery technology and electrical engineering, but I’ve seen plenty of that ignorance on both sides. Gotta love the internet, right? Everyone’s an expert on everything!

 

[NT1440]

they could have done it like the privacy policy updates we saw. show a full page after updating to iOS 10.2.1 saying the CPU has been slowed down to prevent shutdowns due to the natural effects of aging batteries.

and in that same page, allow the user to toggle it off for full CPU performance.

Again, that’s not nearly a detailed enough explanation to satisfy the sue-happy. Your phrasing is misleading because it’s not comprehensive enough to describe what’s happening...but being more detailed will only confuse more people.

It’s a catch 22.
[doublepost=1530817423][/doublepost]

you're still trying to defend them. i'm saying that there are other remedies to aging batteries. i understand that some things just happen and you cannot undo them, but you can MITIGATE them in the BEST POSSIBLE WAY. which apple HASN'T DONE EVEN IN THE SLIGHTEST. They could manage it more poorly even if they wanted to. Nothing more to say.
a psp game is a psp game, and no, it is not true that once the game is launched it's just that. a game might be very low demanding in certain areas and much more in others. if you think you're an expert... you're not.

I didn’t claim to be an expert, but can you tell me under what scenario a PSP would be doing one function (gaming) then switch to another that has billions of calculations with dozens of sensor inputs (camera) and then switches to a CPU intensive task, then goes back to gaming?

What I’m trying to explain to you is that the under the hood actions of a PSP vs an iPhone is so night and day that your comparison of the two shows you really don’t get what goes into battery, cpu, and other I/O action engineering. If you did understand the dramatic difference between the two you’d stop with the *completely incomparable* example you’re STILL stuck on.

A PSP isn’t ever going to slow down due to degraded battery chemistry, it’s just not going to lay as long. An iPhone does literally millions of other actions in real time that spikes and sleeps the CPU thousands of times a minute. That’s an entirely different battery draw paradigm than a handheld gaming device.
[doublepost=1530817679][/doublepost]

You seem like a reasonable person, so I’ll be brief.

First, you have an excellent use case for why throttling makes sense. But the existence of that use case is not in dispute (well, except by people with an agenda), and it doesn’t inherently invalidate the complaints or arguments of those affected by the flip side of the issue. What is in dispute (by reasonable people) is:
— Whether Apple should have been open and upfront about the change rather than doing it silently
— Related but slightly different, whether throttling should have been a user specified option
— Whether Apple’s design and engineering choices made shutdown use cases (there are many) more likely

You mention how many people are ignorant with respect to battery technology and electrical engineering, but I’ve seen plenty of that ignorance on both sides. Gotta love the internet, right? Everyone’s an expert on everything!

Valid points. I do think the aluminum body (essentially a giant heat sink) greatly exacerbated the shutdown issue in the cold in particular.

I push back on user throttling options unless you make it mandatory to *actually* read a full explanation of the implications of doing so. There are dozens (if not more) variables at play *second to second* that will determine whether throttling will occur. I still don’t think there’s a good way to explain that to users.

 

[apolloa]

The lawsuits aren't necessary bad. Apple did something wrong, even borderline malicious to their users.

These lawsuits would be unwarranted if Apple didn't at first lie about it, while users who did complain about it, were told to buy new devices.

Apple throttling the devices themselves ot prevent unwarranted crashes and restarts wasn't the problem. It was the messaging and how they handled this.


First, they were asked outright did they throttle older devices? Apple outright said "NO"

When users took their slow devices to Apple stores to get inspected, These phones passed the battery test, which only tested retention capacity of the battery and not load. So devices would show up as 80%+ of their health left, but still cause crashes / throttling due to a faulty design. These users were originally tol they needed to replace their phone (at their own cost). Apple refused battery service on many of these devices.

Only after definitive evidence of throttling by 3rd parties did Apple finally admit that they had a battery problem that they secretly snuck in throttling to prevent. Again, the throttling itself isn't the problem here, it's that it was secretly implemented without user knowledge or option.


And then to top of all off, even AFTER they admitted to it, They're still charging $29 to replace batteries due to their faulty design.

anyone who doesn't think there's some merit to Apple being sued here is drinking the cool-aid. When companies behave in such anti-consumer behaviours, they should be held accountable for it.

The voice of reason... thank God someone in here isn’t drunk on the koolaid.... it is a design flaw and Apple is throttling to hide it, they don’t want to have to be forced to freely repair or replace millions of iPhones.
They have all the consumer or government investigations to conclude in this yet.. I’m hopeful for huge fines. Take them down a peg or two, not like they don’t need it!

In my room now I’ve got 8 devices with the same battery tech as my 6S, not ONE of them shuts down at 20 or 30% or dump 10% battery in under a minute and turn off! My 6S does though!...

I’ve never had ANY device do it EVER and I’ve been using gadgets with rechargeable batteries for 20 years plus!

 

[MauiPa]

Just a reminder on the whole Android throttling issue. I guess throttling might be bad when apple does it to keep phones working with degraded batteries, but android does it all the time, because they can't get the thermals right. For those of you Trolling and can't use Google for things like "Android throttling" or android benchmark throttling". I have referenced a few articles for your reading.

here is one to test throttling on your own phone. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=skynet.cputhrottlingtest&hl=en_US, Throttling, there is an app for that, now at your participating google play store.

https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/7n2s0n/apple_vs_android_and_cpu_throttling/

https://www.xda-developers.com/goog...s-analysis-a-remarkable-consistent-performer/

https://www.xda-developers.com/benc...ght-red-handed-and-what-theyve-done-about-it/

Bottom line, if a phone has a battery, a CPU, a GPU, a display and RAM, ("the stuff") it gets hot, it needs to throttle. If a battery cannot provide all the power the stuff needs, it needs to throttle. If it is bad that Apple communicated slowing things down on phones with older batteries, to keep them running instead of shutting down (from my perspective the shutting down thing is worse), then what do you call it when Android vendors slow down when you use the GPU, and knowing its bad, try to hide it? Read the article where the vendor uses the name of Geekbench to try to fool the benchmark, but running the same app with another name, causes serious throttling to occur. Sue them, sue them All!

 

[Beelzbub]

Apple knew what they were doing. They release a software update, list all the devices it is compatible with, and it slows down the oldest device to where it is unusable. And if you are lucky enough after you upgrade, you can switch back to the previous version of iOS as long as Apple is still signing it, and have a functional device again. So I call BS on the whole throttling due to aging batteries, that was a CYA statement and is why when iOS 12 was announced, they focused on performance, even on the oldest of devices.

I wish Apple would sign older iOS versions and let you downgrade and just put in a disclaimer about potential security issues.

 

[jimbobb24]

I think the author wrote incorrectly that the plaintiffs are seeking to represent that class. The LAWYERS dreaming of becoming billionaires are hoping that they can create a class action lawsuit by finding some people that were harmed by remembering that maybe their phone wasn’t as fast as they thought it should have been.

 

[groadyho]

I have a bunch of old android and windows phones with old batteries that don't hold a charge for long. NONE of them just shutdown or are even that slow. Heck my old Lumia 1520 is still pretty fast for what it is as well as my old LG G4. The only phone I had with random shut downs was my lg g5 because it fell in a cooler full of water and had water damage. It still worked though.

 

[genovelle]

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

They are giving users the option of just allowing their phone to spike power, causing shutdowns and possibly permanent end of life damage as the batteries naturally die out over time or turn on the throttling to preemptively slow the phone down when it senses the conditions that preceeds the spikes and extend the useful life of the product. These people will feel stupid when internal documentation and emails point to the reason for the update as extending the life of the device and protecting it from damage. The info listed in the original up date but not in extreme detail, because who would have thought people would prefer they let their 4 year old phones die naturally instead of extending their life.

 

[NT1440]

I have a bunch of old android and windows phones with old batteries that don't hold a charge for long. NONE of them just shutdown or are even that slow. Heck my old Lumia 1520 is still pretty fast for what it is as well as my old LG G4. The only phone I had with random shut downs was my lg g5 because it fell in a cooler full of water and had water damage. It still worked though.

...because Android has had throttling built into the OS for years. That’s why you don’t get shutdowns.

How would you measure slowdown on a device you don’t use every day?

 

[I7guy]

Like other lawsuits of this ilk, we'll see where it goes.