Apple Being Sued for 'Purposefully Slowing Down Older iPhone Models' [Updated]

[Tiger8]

Nobody, you're making stuff up now. SAD

Really? iPhones released in September, next OS announced in June, and it already has the slowdown code in place for the then-new device.

The fact that they dropped the battery replacement program to $29 speaks volumes, it's their way of 'settling' AFTER they got caught.
[doublepost=1514566043][/doublepost]

Actually , I'm approaching this from a technical point of view . Throttling . I spent years building and overclocking my systems, a well designed and implemented system does not need to throttle.

Thank you! Fully agree.

Careful though: when I mentioned that Apple are rushing through software releass without spending time to optimize it for mobile device, the fanboys where all over it. How dare I question the almighty Apple?

 

[MH01]

Thank you! Fully agree.

Careful though: when I mentioned that Apple are rushing through software releass without spending time to optimize it for mobile device, the fanboys where all over it. How dare I question the almighty Apple?

Annual software releases is a failed concept that is not sustainable . A markerting dream that Dev cannot deliver. We are seeing the consequences year on year with buggy iOS and macOS, with this year being the worst by far. iOS 11 is terrible .

iMac i7 is poor design - machine throttles under load and in time cooks itself , to be honest I had to open my 2012 MacBook Pro, and repaste the CPU as it sitting on 100 Celsius was going to kill it , and I paid a lot for it , so had to take action

 

[ChrisChaval]

Actually , I'm approaching this from a technical point of view . Throttling . I spent years building and overclocking my systems, a well designed and implemented system does not need to throttle.

Same here , great experiences

Over clocking really teaches you some important practical lessons regarding the relation between cpu voltage , max obtainable cpu speed and our enemy no 1, heat

While we have had the advantage to attach some big tower thermal coolers to the cpu , apply thermal paste , get a liquid cooling system and did not have to rely on a battery to power our system , with the iPhone this is a completely different story

Limited power, space and a design (thinner!) and marketing department (more power!) both pushing the limits really makes this a walk on a tightrope

 

[MH01]

Same here , great experiences

Over clocking really teaches you some important practical lessons regarding the relation between cpu voltage , max obtainable cpu speed and our enemy no 1, heat

While we have had the advantage to attach some big tower thermal coolers to the cpu , apply thermal paste , get a liquid cooling system and did not have to rely on a battery to power our system , with the iPhone this is a completely different story

Limited power, space and a design (thinner!) and marketing department (more power!) both pushing the limits really makes this a walk on a tightrope

It's amazing when you hear people on here talking about "throttling" being okay.....lol....if I ever built a system that throttled, it was a massive screwup.

My view is that the throttling is a bandaid solution to get you to next garage to fix the issue .... never should it be allowed to be a permanent solution...iPhone should throttle, pop up a message that the battery needs replacement and that the iPhone will run slow to protect the system until such time that the faulty battery is replaced

 

[kdarling]

This throttling was present in android for almost 4 years.

It's in most mobile devices, but not usually in the rigid, simplistic way that Apple apparently did it.

Could somebody explain to me what the Battery Current Limit does in Android, then?

This is a great question, so I did some research into this today:

Battery current limiting (BCL) in both Android and iOS slows the CPU when the current draw goes too high. It's how it's enabled (and disabled) on each OS that's different.

BCL in Android is only enabled when a battery's State of Charge has dropped to a predefined voltage level (from 10-40% of full charge depending on phone, and some phones don't use it at all). Recharge the battery back above that level, or even put it on a charger, and BCL is instantly disabled and your Android phone is back at normal speed. Nothing else need be done by the user.

iOS apparently is instead doing something like counting charge cycles (AnandTech's guess) in order to estimate the overall battery state, and using that info to begin to always enable current based CPU throttling, with higher cycle batteries seemingly getting assigned ever lower CPU throttle speeds. Only a new battery with almost zero cycles can stop this... and it will of course eventually happen again with that battery.

 

[Michael Goff]

It's in most mobile devices, but not usually in the rigid, simplistic way that Apple apparently did it.

I did some research into this today:



Battery current limiting (BCL) in Android and iOS slows the CPU when the current draw goes too high. It's how it's enabled on each that's different.

BCL in Android is only enabled when a battery's State of Charge has dropped to a predefined voltage level (from 10-40% of full charge depending on phone, and some phones don't use it at all). Recharge the battery back above that level, or even put it on a charger, and BCL is instantly disabled and your Android phone is back at normal speed. Nothing else is needed.

iOS apparently is instead counting charge cycles in order to estimate the overall battery state, and using that info to begin to always enable current based CPU throttling, with older batteries getting assigned ever lower CPU speeds during such times. Only a new battery with almost zero cycles can stop this... and it will of course eventually happen again with that battery.

Thank you.

 

[Tiger8]

Annual software releases is a failed concept that is not sustainable . A markerting dream that Dev cannot deliver. We are seeing the consequences year on year with buggy iOS and macOS, with this year being the worst by far. iOS 11 is terrible .

iMac i7 is poor design - machine throttles under load and in time cooks itself , to be honest I had to open my 2012 MacBook Pro, and repaste the CPU as it sitting on 100 Celsius was going to kill it , and I paid a lot for it , so had to take action

Preach! Not just Apple. I am an enterprise software consultant, specialize in certain Oracle products. After facing stiff competition from cheaper and smaller cloud offerings, oracle came up with the disasterous annual releases policy, as a way to look hip and nimble.

I miss the days when they used to have one key release every three or four years with interim updates. Instead now we get annual releases (and trust me upgrading an enterprise application is no joke), most of them are rushed, buggy, and have trivial features. But hey! They get to boast to their shareholders with how many releases they offer, as if it's a good thing.

 

[deferredAnon]

It's in most mobile devices, but not usually in the rigid, simplistic way that Apple apparently did it.



This is a great question, so I did some research into this today:

Battery current limiting (BCL) in both Android and iOS slows the CPU when the current draw goes too high. It's how it's enabled on each OS that's different.

BCL in Android is only enabled when a battery's State of Charge has dropped to a predefined voltage level (from 10-40% of full charge depending on phone, and some phones don't use it at all). Recharge the battery back above that level, or even put it on a charger, and BCL is instantly disabled and your Android phone is back at normal speed. Nothing else is needed by the user.

iOS apparently is instead doing something like counting charge cycles (AnandTech's guess) in order to estimate the overall battery state, and using that info to begin to always enable current based CPU throttling, with "older" batteries getting assigned ever lower CPU speeds during such times. Only a new battery with almost zero cycles can stop this... and it will of course eventually happen again with that battery.

Where is the elusive proof?! Glad you did your research, but cite them! Otherwise, please back away from reckless, slandering iDefense.

Following Apple’s apology for its lack of communication over how it manages iPhones with older batteries, Samsung and LG have come out to say that none of their phones employ similar practices. Both companies emailed Phone Arena to say that they don’t slow down their phones’ processors as their batteries age. LG said, “Never have, never will! We care what our customers think.” Samsung said, “We do not reduce CPU performance through software updates over the lifecycles of the phone.”​

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbre...ung-lg-dont-slow-phones-older-batteries-apple
So, who to believe? A billion dollar company stating it doesn't slow down phones, or an iDefense expert saying they are lying?

 

[ablatt]

Good luck getting your battery replaced easily.

My daughter's iPhone was being throttled as proven by Geekbench4 and cpudasher64. Her battery was at or slightly under 80% on my tests (always over on Apple's tests) and her iPhone 6S still under Applecare warranty. She went to the Apple Store on the 27th and they refused to do anything. They were rude and said they don't look at 3rd party benchmark or CPU tests. I told her to just buy the replacement battery and she did which immediately restored CPU speeds to normal.

When I saw the announcement yesterday I called Applecare to complain and they authorized a refund which they said had to be done at the store. When I went to the store they refused to apply the refund. I had to argue for half an hour before they actually read the Applecare Case ID and agreed.

Two 'geniuses' told me they were dreading all the battery replacement visits they were going to get and said the battery would still have to fail some tests before they would replace it under the new $29 terms.

 

[pdoherty]

It's in most mobile devices, but not usually in the rigid, simplistic way that Apple apparently did it.



This is a great question, so I did some research into this today:

Battery current limiting (BCL) in both Android and iOS slows the CPU when the current draw goes too high. It's how it's enabled on each OS that's different.

BCL in Android is only enabled when a battery's State of Charge has dropped to a predefined voltage level (from 10-40% of full charge depending on phone, and some phones don't use it at all). Recharge the battery back above that level, or even put it on a charger, and BCL is instantly disabled and your Android phone is back at normal speed. Nothing else is needed by the user.

iOS apparently is instead doing something like counting charge cycles (AnandTech's guess) in order to estimate the overall battery state, and using that info to begin to always enable current based CPU throttling, with "older" batteries getting assigned ever lower CPU speeds during such times. Only a new battery with almost zero cycles can stop this... and it will of course eventually happen again with that battery.

Sounds like we need a software hack that resets the charge cycles on our existing batteries to get the performance we paid for. That, or this pressure on Apple will get them to remove the code and deal with the issue transparently as they should have to begin with.

 

[kdarling]

Where is the elusive proof?! Glad you did your research, but cite them! Otherwise, please back away from reckless, slandering iDefense.

Check out the Android source code link Michael Goff gave, check out the Anandtech link I gave, and go check out the source code that Samsung has released to the public. Heck, go search on a techie Android forum. The smart ones will know about the BCL driver.

So, who to believe? A billion dollar company stating it doesn't slow down phones, or an iDefense expert saying they are lying?

PR statements always have to be read carefully. Samsung, LG, HTC and Motorola didn't outright say, "We do not throttle."

That's because mobile devices do throttle their CPU and GPU, based on voltage and temperature. There's nothing wrong with doing it. In fact, it's necessary to keep running.

Instead, they carefully detailed that, "We do not throttle CPU performance based on older batteries”. They're explicitly stating that their throttling is not enabled simply because of a battery's calculated age, as Apple's throttling is. No more, no less.

This is basic reading comprehension, yet some people have assumed more than was actually said.

(lol! You must be really new here. Although I do defend Apple's engineers on occasion, most people here would be quite amused at your calling me an iDefense member! Yet they also know I strive to present factual info, same as I've done for forty years online.)

 

[macdragonfl]

This is such a simple solution. Before two years replace for free, after two years, just inform user battery is inadequate. Offer battery management windows style which includes user selected throttling. After two years, a deprecated battery is expected and nobody will complain about shutdowns. Replace battery or implement power management.

The longer Apple stays silent on this, the longer the damage to its brand. Everyday, there’s a lawsuit and the EU didn’t even get involved yet. Even if Apple loses all the lawsuits, the damage will not outweigh the damage to its brand. That will seriously cause financial damage.

If Apple thinks staying silent and waiting for the masses to forget throttlegate, Apple is sadly mistaken. As times goes by, more and more batteries will degrade and throttlegate will magnify. Come clean, pay up, make the fan base happy again.

I definitely think your solution is a great one. But don't be assume that Apple will lose any lawsuit in the U.S. At this point there are no indications they broke any laws. Their ULA and the battery setting notification is defense. You also have to prove harm to the customer. Defense will be they did not replace their battery and Apple designed software to keep their phone running. There are no laws dictating they disclose anything about changes in every detail about the behavior of an operating system. What laws apply they have you sign away in the ULA. So yes it's a trust issue and a lot of assumptions by many. Any court would have to have access to a smoking gun like a email chain or report proving that Apple did this to encourage people to upgrade. It would also have to be proven that the genius' and the sales staff were trained to shift you into a upgrade knowing that you needed a replacement. That's a really hard thing to prove. Unless you have that kind of evidence it's not against the law to break your trust. Other than that it's heresay and will be thrown out of court.

 

[Kmart9419]

I definitely think your solution is a great one. But don't be assume that Apple will lose any lawsuit in the U.S. At this point there are no indications they broke any laws. Their ULA and the battery setting notification is defense. You also have to prove harm to the customer. Defense will be they did not replace their battery and Apple designed software to keep their phone running. There are no laws dictating they disclose anything about changes in every detail about the behavior of an operating system. What laws apply they have you sign away in the ULA. So yes it's a trust issue and a lot of assumptions by many. Any court would have to have access to a smoking gun like a email chain or report proving that Apple did this to encourage people to upgrade. It would also have to be proven that the genius' and the sales staff were trained to shift you into a upgrade knowing that you needed a replacement. That's a really hard thing to prove. Unless you have that kind of evidence it's not against the law to break your trust. Other than that it's heresay and will be thrown out of court.

Win or lose, doesn’t matter. The money paid out is pocket change to Apple and immaterial to earnings. But Apple will lose in the court of public opinion. That will hurt Apple’s brand and premium pricing. Takes a very long time to earn reputation. Only takes a second to lose it all. Still within the realm of repairing the damage. But as more countries like France and South Korea get involved, that will only put out daily negative headlines for Apple. Losing a few billion to rid of this problem is worth every penny.

 

[macdragonfl]

Win or lose, doesn’t matter. The money paid out is pocket change to Apple and immaterial to earnings. But Apple will lose in the court of public opinion. That will hurt Apple’s brand and premium pricing. Takes a very long time to earn reputation. Only takes a second to lose it all. Still within the realm of repairing the damage. But as more countries like France and South Korea get involved, that will only put out daily negative headlines for Apple. Losing a few billion to rid of this problem is worth every penny.

I totally agree with you on reputation, and brand name. They will as before when they have the issues, rectify the problem. They will change the software to let you know, and of course the battery replacement has been discounted most likely they will go to free replacement. It's a cost of doing business and they will absorb it.

 

[Kmart9419]

I totally agree with you on reputation, and brand name. They will as before when they have the issues, rectify the problem. They will change the software to let you know, and of course the battery replacement has been discounted most likely they will go to free replacement. It's a cost of doing business and they will absorb it.

Look at the Apple apology thread. It’s massive. Clearly fans are not happy with the remedy. Fix the battery and fix the throttle. All will be forgotten. But do it quick. Apple is now forever stained with planned obsolescence. Every argument will point to it. Every bit of slowdown will bring up accusations.

 

[chatin]

The batteries have to be changed by their robots. Opening sealed phones by hand is an art not a science. New AI can speed the process.

 

[Shanghaichica]

Check out the Android source code link Michael Goff gave, check out the Anandtech link I gave, and go check out the source code that Samsung has released to the public. Heck, go search on a techie Android forum. The smart ones will know about the BCL driver.



PR statements always have to be read carefully. Samsung, LG, HTC and Motorola didn't outright say, "We do not throttle."

That's because mobile devices do throttle their CPU and GPU, based on voltage and temperature. There's nothing wrong with doing it. In fact, it's necessary to keep running.

Instead, they carefully detailed that, "We do not throttle CPU performance based on older batteries”. They're explicitly stating that their throttling is not enabled simply because of a battery's calculated age, as Apple's throttling is. No more, no less.

This is basic reading comprehension, yet some people have assumed more than was actually said.

(lol! You must be really new here. Although I do defend Apple's engineers on occasion, most people here would be quite amused at your calling me an iDefense member! Yet they also know I strive to present factual info, same as I've done for forty years online.)

I know android phones are notorious for thermal throttling once they reach a certain temperature. Usually when they are doing power hungry tasks like playing games. This is common knowledge.

 

[SL0PPY]

Feels like having a straight jacket on using anything to do with Apple and now they admit to squeezing it's users on purpose, seeing it's the best selling tech only leaves me scratching my head why people buy into these products because honestly I wouldn't have one given to me.

 

[Shanghaichica]

Feels like having a straight jacket on using anything to do with Apple and now they admit to squeezing it's users on purpose, seeing it's the best selling tech only leaves me scratching my head why people buy into these products because honestly I wouldn't have one given to me.

Why are you on an Apple forum if you despise their products?

 

[emulajavi]

Good luck getting your battery replaced easily.

My daughter's iPhone was being throttled as proven by Geekbench4 and cpudasher64. Her battery was at or slightly under 80% on my tests (always over on Apple's tests) and her iPhone 6S still under Applecare warranty. She went to the Apple Store on the 27th and they refused to do anything. They were rude and said they don't look at 3rd party benchmark or CPU tests. I told her to just buy the replacement battery and she did which immediately restored CPU speeds to normal.

When I saw the announcement yesterday I called Applecare to complain and they authorized a refund which they said had to be done at the store. When I went to the store they refused to apply the refund. I had to argue for half an hour before they actually read the Applecare Case ID and agreed.

Two 'geniuses' told me they were dreading all the battery replacement visits they were going to get and said the battery would still have to fail some tests before they would replace it under the new $29 terms.

Hi. Happened to me the same. I replaced the battery on Wednesday 27th. What was your case ID? Thank you!

 

[44267547]

Tim Cook’s Apple has grown so tonedeaf and arrogant in the past few years.

Which reportedly doesn't seem to be affecting their success at all. Given their growth and overall popularity with some of the latest products, it doesn't seem to be making them fail anymore than you want them to based of your post on a tech forum.

 

[SL0PPY]

Why are you on an Apple forum if you despise their products?

Yeh I know it's a little odd but my daughter insists on having a iPhone mainly because her friends have one, often she comes to me with various issues such as greyed out wifi connection button, will not update via pc and syncing music is a nightmare, all on different phones over the years. The phones themselves admittedly look the business but as far as being user friendly my personal opinion is that other products are a better option but I accept others don't agree. When I seen the news about apple slowing the phones down to (caugh) improve performance on older iPhones I'm thinking lol are you sure it's not because you want your loyal users to upgrade I mean it does beg the question doesn't it? And so I felt compelled to join in and say something.

 

[sentential]

very good posts from this member

let me quote both of them here

like the explanation AND the conclusion
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did not multiquote

here is the first one

I appreciate it! I saw what had been speculated and quoted on the news and it made me furious. This is just so obvious (at least to me) and everyone is focusing on the wrong thing. Yes batteries degrade but if you build your plant correctly it doesnt become a problem. Hell ours at the office right now has half a dozen bad cells we've strapped out to bypass the bad ones to prevent what I stated earlier. But again unlike Apple we way over-do things because our clients can't afford a snafu like this. Our policy is at 50% capacity upgrades are investigated and are required at 80%. Most of the offices are sitting in the low 20s and 30s with some in the upper 40s so even if we have to strap out half the batteries in the plant we'd still be OK (which is what the engineers design for)

If you're building something properly things like this don't happen. What caused this was some beancounter at Apple thought they could save a buck or two on the BOM if they skimped on the ancelliary components like the battery citing that it only needed to last 2 years and that most would simply upgrade their phone if it became an issue. 100%

The fact that they're now offering to replace the battery for $30 is laughable. It'd be way cheaper if they just did it for free. Once discovery goes forward and they start sopenas this thing is going to look way worse. Ask yourself, does Apple REAAAAALLLY want the public to know how the sausage is made? Hell no, the only reason why they havent budged is because they think they're untouchable. Right now Xiaomi and Huawei are in talks with all the major carriers (according to the press) and if true Apple is screwed if they keep this nonsense up.

This might change things and once all the facts are known it will be far more damaging to their reputation in terms of cost than replacing a few batteries

 

[rjp1]

Which app takes over one minute to open ?

Pokemon Go. On a 5S it opens and logs in in seconds. On a normal 6 it takes the same. A degraded/unusable mode 6 it takes over a minute.

 

[A MacBook lover]

It's in most mobile devices, but not usually in the rigid, simplistic way that Apple apparently did it.



This is a great question, so I did some research into this today:

Battery current limiting (BCL) in both Android and iOS slows the CPU when the current draw goes too high. It's how it's enabled (and disabled) on each OS that's different.

BCL in Android is only enabled when a battery's State of Charge has dropped to a predefined voltage level (from 10-40% of full charge depending on phone, and some phones don't use it at all). Recharge the battery back above that level, or even put it on a charger, and BCL is instantly disabled and your Android phone is back at normal speed. Nothing else need be done by the user.

iOS apparently is instead doing something like counting charge cycles (AnandTech's guess) in order to estimate the overall battery state, and using that info to begin to always enable current based CPU throttling, with higher cycle batteries seemingly getting assigned ever lower CPU throttle speeds. Only a new battery with almost zero cycles can stop this... and it will of course eventually happen again with that battery.

Do we know how Apple implemented it? By time, or battery reduction %?