Apple Agrees to Pay Up to $500 Million to Settle Class Action Lawsuit Over 'Secretly Throttling' Older iPhones

[CWallace]

Looks like Apple's calculated decision to not recall the iPhone 6/6s for their power-system design defect has paid off.

Well we all know batteries do hold a full charge forever, so I see your point.

Speaking of which, I need to file a class-action against Microsoft this morning because I just noticed the "Low Battery" light on my wireless mouse is glowing and that's clearly a design fault since the AAA battery can't be drained after a year of daily use.

 

[QCassidy352]

I’d rather have my iPhone operating than shutting down randomly, so never had a problem with this.

I agree BUT they should have communicated better with the customers about what they were doing. The sin here isn’t the throttling (which was a good idea!) but the secrecy.

 

[agsystems]

On the Apple side they should have informed people and got off easy
But as usual the 'winners' here are the lawyers that will get 93M in 'reasonable' fees for their trouble

 

[konqerror]

This is sad. When a phone has an older battery and tries to pull more amps than the battery can provide, the phone has three choices. The first is, turn the phone off. The second is, slow the phone down a bit so it pulls less amperage. The third is, let the battery explode like a thermite grenade. Of the three, option two is the least disruptive.

And how does that preclude a dialog box from popping up that says "Your battery cannot sustain the power draw necessary for maximum performance so your phone is being slowed to prevent shutdowns. You can contact Apple Support for a battery replacement to restore original performance."

Unless you wanted people to buy new phones instead of new batteries, which is what many people suspected.

 

[SnarkyBear]

When my iPhone 6s started slowing down, I came this close (holds thumb and finger 1 cm apart) from buying a new iPhone. I thought my phone was in dying off. Fortunately, the news came out about the throttling and I kept my phone. I still use it today.

I am convinced that the prospect of people dumping their throttled phone and buying a new one factored into Apple's decision to keep quiet and not inform its customers of the intention slowdown.

 

[Chung123]

They will probably send you a check for 53 cents automatically.

More likely a credit to the Apple Store. Hehehehe. (From original iPhone owner that got that "rebate" after the substantial price cut)

 

[falainber]

I told you guys this would be a big nothing. Some people were saying this would be the biggest class action ever.

They will only pay "up to" $500M, or less than 3 days of profit for based on Q1 earnings.

Apple still wasn't really wrong in this, but probably should have communicated better. Again, class actions don't amount to anything. Lesson learned for those calling for doom.

Dude, they just admitted they were at least $500M wrong. What other proof do you need? Besides, speaking of "better communications". It was a stealth change. There were no communication whatsoever until people discovered the problem. Apple clearly hoped that they could hide the issue.

 

[Lucifer666]

I'm not sure the wording here is correct. I don't now the details, but what's implied and the realities may not be in agreement.

 

[nylonsteel]

fault or no fault
i applaud aapl for the apology and settlement

 

[cocky jeremy]

I’d rather have my iPhone operating than shutting down randomly, so never had a problem with this.

You forgot that people like to complain for the sake of complaining though.

 

[Chung123]

So how does someone sign up or is it too late?

I would assume they already know who you are, or there will be a website where you enter your serial number to see if you qualify?

 

[falainber]

This is sad. When a phone has an older battery and tries to pull more amps than the battery can provide, the phone has three choices. The first is, turn the phone off. The second is, slow the phone down a bit so it pulls less amperage. The third is, let the battery explode like a thermite grenade. Of the three, option two is the least disruptive.

You omitted the best option. The phone should be designed better so that it's power consumption spikes do not force it to shut down (or slow down) when the battery is still at >30% capacity. That's the problem with Ax processors that are very powerful but also have very high power consumption spikes for which the power delivery systems in older iPhone models were not properly designed.

 

[PlayUltimate]

Caught again but the penalty is a joke. These tiny penalties will not deter more sleazy actions. Sad state of affairs.

FWIW, this was not a penalty; it was an agreed to settlement. BIG difference.

 

[Edsel]

What does the plaintiff's law firm get in this settlement, one-third of $500million?

 

[justperry]

Silly...batteries degrade...I wouldn't have settled.

 

[falainber]

Silly...batteries degrade...I wouldn't have settled.

And then what? Get a $1B penalty? Have you seen the outcome of the court cases against Apple recently? It's a defeat after defeat after defeat for Apple. Obviously they did not want to risk it in this case.

 

[RalfTheDog]

And how does that preclude a dialog box from popping up that says "Your battery cannot sustain the power draw necessary for maximum performance so your phone is being slowed to prevent shutdowns. You can contact Apple Support for a battery replacement to restore original performance."

Unless you wanted people to buy new phones instead of new batteries, which is what many people suspected.

You want random dialog boxes popping up when you are playing a game? The slowdown mostly happens when the GPU is maxed out. (AKA, playing a game.) Honestly, most people never know it happened. A slight drop in frame rates is not that big a deal.

 

[Kagio]

I’d rather have my iPhone operating than shutting down randomly, so never had a problem with this.

Totally. This lawsuit is stupid. Even with the “non good communication” part.

 

[eoblaed]

This has got to be one of the most egregious cases/outcomes I've seen in a long while.

• Customers: "Our older phones keep crashing. Plz halp."
• Apple: "That's due to aging batteries and their inability to meet performance demand spikes, so, physics being what it is, those spikes will cause the phone to crash."
• Apple implements a fix that prevents the phone from demanding too much from older batteries. This fixes the crashes. It also slows the phone down in some cases, as one would expect if you're preventing the phone from demanding too much from the battery.
• Customers: "Our phones slowed down sometimes!"
• Apple: "But now they're running (ie. not crashing). We thought running phones are better than not-running phones, yes?"
• Customers: "But you didn't tell us how you were fixing the crashing! We are mad!"
• Courts/Arbitration/etc: Half a billion dollars, please.
• Apple: ...

Sure, they could've said how they were fixing the issue, and I think we all agree that would've been better from a PR perspective, but nothing nefarious was going on here. 500 million dollars because they didn't tell people that, instead of their phone crashing, it would instead be a little slower at times? That is an objective improvement over the previous state, and half a billion dollar penalty for not telling people how that improvement came to pass is ludicrous.

 

[falkon-engine]

Only an apple sheep would say apple did nothing wrong here. The company throttled performance. And didn't make it known. Period. The average user would've seen a sluggish phone, demonstrably worse performance than when the phone was new, and likely would've bought a new one. If they'd known the battery was the problem from the jump, this would've played out much differently. Apple could say whatever it wants, that they did this for user safety. But it also could've done this to induce upgrades. Bad optics. And that's why it settled. To stem the bleeding. A judgement against it could've been in the billions of dollars.

 

[konqerror]

You want random dialog boxes popping up when you are playing a game? The slowdown mostly happens when the GPU is maxed out. (AKA, playing a game.) Honestly, most people never know it happened. A slight drop in frame rates is not that big a deal.

You're being obtuse. Nobody said it has to pop up in the middle of a game. You can have simple return-to-homescreen logic or notify when unlocked.

In fact, today's iPhones do notify and put it up as a notification, so any arguments about it being intrusive are invalid. Simple UI design.

 

[Analog Kid]

Now, just to highlight the absurdity of this, those of us that had iPhone 5’s that shutdown unexpectedly as the battery aged should sue Apple making us think our phones needed to be replaced when we could have kept using them just fine if they gave us this feature.

I agree BUT they should have communicated better with the customers about what they were doing. The sin here isn’t the throttling (which was a good idea!) but the secrecy.

I’ve always found this an unreasonable argument. The iPhone is such a complex system that demanding this level of detail on one feature might seem obvious in retrospect, but on a feature by feature basis can be overwhelming. Not only are there a lot of changes happening, but in many cases they’re hard to explain to the average user with enough clarity to avoid misinterpretation. Suing Apple every time they make an engineering decision that tweaks performance or battery life or signal strength and didn’t explain it in a way everyone can understand is silly.

This is a direct result of Apple's sometimes opaque communications style.

Tell people what you're up to, and why, and maybe even have some arcane way of opting out of this throttling, and not only would most people not care, but they'd be appreciative of the effort.

Be sneaky and take a "my way or the highway" approach and this is what you get.

This isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. The reason I like Apple products is their ease of use, and they’re easy to use because Apple makes most of the decisions for me. I’m pretty technically competent, so I could probably understand features and select settings better than many, but I like that I don’t have to.

This has been core to Apple’s philosophy at least from the original Mac onward, and every generation has to deal with the fact the tension between control and ease of use.

 

[Kagio]

When my iPhone 6s started slowing down, I came this close (holds thumb and finger 1 cm apart) from buying a new iPhone. I thought my phone was in dying off. Fortunately, the news came out about the throttling and I kept my phone. I still use it today.

I am convinced that the prospect of people dumping their throttled phone and buying a new one factored into Apple's decision to keep quiet and not inform its customers of the intention slowdown.

What about the rest of the smartphone brands? Havent seen anyone informing anything to consumers,

Which one will increase your chances of wanting/buying a new phone?

1. Noticing your phone is slower than before

2. Your phone simply shutting down or just not turning on ever again earlier than if throttling?

2. the right answer is 2. To my eyes, Apple managed it in the most ethical way compares to the rest of brands.

 

[Breaking Good]

I'll take a $100 credit off of my next iPhone purchase within the next three years and a free battery replacement within the next five years instead.

 

[RalfTheDog]

I hate to tell you guys, even new phones do this. Not just Apple, Android too. Normally, it is thermal throttling. If you are outside and the temprature is 43c (110f), your phone will slow itself down to prevent damage. If it gets hot enough, it will even turn off. It can also do this if the voltage drops due to the battery being near empty. Again, if it drops further, the phone will turn off. This is the same thing.