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

[Treyhunna]

Exactly the reason why I have my signature the way it is. Once again...shame on Apple. I remember my Note 4 staying speedy for like four years.

Funny the note 4 has only been around for 3

 

[JM]

The use of the word "bug" in all these articles is wrong, a bug is a problem in software, in this case, the "bug" is hardware related, which sure, can be worked around with software, but if it is negatively impacting the user's experience and not meeting the advertised expectations, the software patch does not suffice and you have a product design flaw.

Also, my iPhone 6s still running iOS 9 (yes, i've been dealing with those stupid update messages all this time), in all its lifetime (2.5years), has't had this "shut down" bug once...

Thumbs up for resolve and dedication! I'm on 10.3.3 with my 7. Think I'll try to join you and never update to 11....
[doublepost=1513923926][/doublepost]

I'm still on 10.3.3 on my iPhone 7 Plus. Does that mean my phone is going to shut down periodically? Also, what if we didn't abuse our phones and the battery is still in great shape? Does my iPhone get to be slowed down because other people abuse their batteries?

EXACTLY what I've been wondering.

 

[617660]

Thumbs up for resolve and dedication! I'm on 10.3.3 with my 7. Think I'll try to join you and never update to 11....
[doublepost=1513923926][/doublepost]
EXACTLY what I've been wondering.

Install tvOS beta, guys. No more update message.

 

[Abazigal]

I never said Apple slows down products just so sell new phones. What I said was Apple didn't tell the truth when asked if phones were slowed down. All Apple needed to say was the truth.

Because there’s really no way to nuance it without the news outlets twisting their words and going “aha, Apple does slow down our phones”. Which is precisely what is happening now.

 

[pran76]

All this crying and complaining is just none sense. Next you’re going to sue them for throttling your MacBook Pro? There is virtually no difference in throttling a MacBook Pro and an iPhone performance, and Apple have been doing the former for as long as I can remember.

The only mistake I see here was not giving a toggle option in setttings for this.

This is an easy win for Apple, but a waste of time and money.

I disagree that it’s clear cut. If the Apple store tells you your battery is FINE above 80% and they don’t allow you to replace it, then there should absolutely be no throttling. If there is throttling, then the battery is shot. They should be mutually exclusive but they are not, in so many cases including my own. My phone was throttled down to slower than my wife’s 5s. That’s acceptable to you? That’s utter garbage that any company focused on the user experience would resort to stupidity like this.

Everyone is stating battery Chemistry blah blah. Yes in testing, you assume worst case scenarios for the expected life of the battery(80%). Anything beyond that is up in the air. Requiring any changes to clock rates etc before this 80% means that testing was shoddy, planning was garbage and the engineering behind it was nonsense and this is just a band-aid.

 

[JM]

I have had issues non-stop with my old iPhone 6 battery ALL THE TIME! It was extremely frustrating. I’d go from 100% to 60 to 15% to off in a matter of me being on my phone for maybe 20 minuets, 30 at the absolute most. Sometimes I wasn’t even using my phone and if it wasn’t plugged in, would drop to 30% or turn off. I think the battery drainage started when the 7 came out and about a week or two after the 8 arrived, my phone died unexpectedly without even using it. Was sitting in my handbag and I went to google something and it shut off. WTH!? I went home plugged it in. An hour later of playing with it, nada. Got my moms phone and was basically forced to go to the Sprint store and get the iPhone 8. I was personally waiting for the X, but now they’ve been having issues with the facial recognition software, I’m kinda glad I was stuck to get the 8.

I’ve had iPhones since the 4, iPads, iPods...the whole 9. I’ve never had a problem like I had with anything other than the iPhone 6. Tho my mom has an older iPad that’s EXTREMELY slow. I wanted to throw it out the window! POS! It works for her tho, but personally I couldn’t deal with that crap!

There’s definitely something off with all of this. We shouldn’t have to be forced to buy upgraded electronics, some of us can’t afford to do that all the time. And their AppleCare...way too pricey. At least if anything, let us pay in installments, just like everything else. It’s impossible for me to purchase a new phone or pad and have to pay in one lump for AppleCare the same day. Not cool. I refuse to go to Android for a number of reasons, but if push comes to shove, I may have to do that one day.

Welcome! You being a new member, I think, says something about how much attention this issue is getting. Apple has better products, but there's a breaking point for everyone to try something else.

 

[lapusan2011]

huge disappointment

 

[ersan191]

Not to derail the thread but whats the probability that Apple has something similar implemented on their Macbooks? I have a 2009 15" MBPro and it has been a work horse. I switched over to a 2013 MB Pro for a few months then went back to the 2009 model and it is now so slow that it is unusable.

MacBooks are not throttled and you can tell easily by running a program such as Intel Power Gadget. The 2009 and Core2Duo are just very old, with the 5400rpm hard drive probably slowing it down the most. macOS reads and writes from disk drives a lot more in the newer versions because Apple doesn't sell spindle drives any more.

 

[holysmokes]

I am sorry but there in no true merit in this case. If their phone ran out of power they might have frozen on the side of the road. Then people would be suing for the battery failure. Waste of webspace.

 

[pran76]

I am sorry but there in no true merit in this case. If their phone ran out of power they might have frozen on the side of the road. Then people would be suing for the battery failure. Waste of webspace.

Have you experienced this issue of slowdown? Do you seriously think that if they told us that the slowdown was caused by a worn out battery, that people wouldn’t change their battery?

I am truely puzzled as to those who are supporting this behavior.

 

[JM]

Such a BS and you know it. The reason why iPhone's are usable for years is because they get supported.
But that is America, where people sue over a hot drink being hot, What can you expect! There is one thing on peoples mind.... SUE SUE SUE

USA hate empathized

But,
Interesting story the McDonald's coffee: the woman asked McDonald's to pay for her hospital visit for the second degree burns she sustained. McDonald's refused, so she sued for only the hospital bills.... not millions.

The jury and judge made the award in the millions to make a statement about how corporations should think twice about screwing over customers because they think they're bigger and untouchable.

 

[Beaubarre]

I don't understand why Apple don't tell us the odds.

I mean what are the odds my iphone is going to shut off unexpectedly when they slow the iphones:
1) it has happened already once
2) 10%
3) 1 %
4) 0.1 % or less

If it's 1% AND they don't tell us they are slowing the iphone because of the battery, 99 times out of 100 we will be forced to buy a new iphone whereas it was not warranted, a new battery would be enough and even not necessary, and that's plain dishonest.

And I'm sure most of the third party batteries will not reset the performance it needs a new good quality battery (ifixit or Apple).

This coupled with that they refuse to change the battery most of the time (say 75 out of 100) makes sure 75 new iPhones sold even if we were aware of the need of a new battery !

That's my case, i went from iPhone 6 to iPhone X because of slowing down especially when typing, i don't need the features of iPhone X.

The odds can sort out whereas Apple is just a bit conservative or running an arson operation here !

 

[averysanov]

Why do people on here with iPhone 4S and a battery that’s 50% degraded still have full speed?

Looks like this wasn’t an issue before the iPhone 6, and all previous iPhones also used batteries.

The iPhone 4S doesn’t support iOS 10, which is the version of iOS that introduced throttling. The only devices that support iOS 10 are the iPhone 5S and newer, so only owners of those devices experience throttling. The only factor in what devices slow down is battery degradation, not age — so if you get a new battery, your iPhone’s processor will run at 100%. Of course Apple wants you to buy a new phone, but it’s not forcing you to buy one by slowing down your old phone. You can replace the battery if you want, but it’s easier to get a new one — and you get new features and better performance overall.

 

[thomasis]

Yeah, that excuse can work on the 6S and below. But for those 7 users who bought their iphones just a few months ago, then get throttled down right around the same time the new phones come out, that excuse don't work. Unless lithium ions just magically lose holding power around the last quarter of the year...

EXACTLY

 

[pran76]

The iPhone 4S doesn’t support iOS 10, which is the version of iOS that introduced throttling. The only devices that support iOS 10 are the iPhone 5S and newer, so only owners of those devices experience throttling. The only factor in what devices slow down is battery degradation, not age — so if you get a new battery, your iPhone’s processor will run at 100%. Of course Apple wants you to buy a new phone, but it’s not forcing you to buy one by slowing down your old phone. You can replace the battery if you want, but it’s easier to get a new one — and you get new features and better performance overall.

Absolutely not correct. My 6s was 1 year newer than my wife’s 5s with less charges and mine was running at a lower clock speed. There is a lot more to this. Yes the 6s has more RAM, faster chipsets etc, but the batteries should have accounted for that. That’s what engineering is all about. You plan for worst case scenarios - never best case scenarios. This shows that Apple really has shoddy planning and testing and this is a cover up for their screw ups.

Also APPLE IS TELLING EVERYONE THEIR BATTERIES ARE FINE AND WILL NOT REPLACE THEM. That is a critical part of the issue here.

 

[JM]

Install tvOS beta, guys. No more update message.

Until we discover that TvOS profile secretly slows our device down

Kidding aside, surely Apple one day will take away this trick to avoid the update notification. It's a bit of pride in an honest day work of making sure that I delete the auto-download every so often. Makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something. Haha

 

[bushman4]

Apple, we're your loyal customers, we buy your products because they are top of the line. As customers we expect Apple to give us the same respect and loyalty we give to Apple.
Customers should be given the option to have their iPhone throttled or not.
Apple should have given customers the option to buy a new battery to improve performance rather than
using deception of slowing peoples iphones down. And yes this is deception as Apple calls this an Update and an update is synonomus with improvement.
Enough said.

 

[thomasis]

Then I'd need to take more OCD pills to help me overlook apple's constant nagging to update.

Or jailbreak it to prevent it from being updated

 

[thadoggfather]

The use of the word "bug" in all these articles is wrong, a bug is a problem in software, in this case, the "bug" is hardware related, which sure, can be worked around with software, but if it is negatively impacting the user's experience and not meeting the advertised expectations, the software patch does not suffice and you have a product design flaw.

Also, my iPhone 6s still running iOS 9 (yes, i've been dealing with those stupid update messages all this time), in all its lifetime (2.5years), has't had this "shut down" bug once...

So even though apple says its to mitigate shut down bug, its conceivable many and Maybe even most users on old non throttle iOS even with a worn battery, are smooth sailing ?

Hmmm, that’d be a HUGE problem for them. I think your experience isn’t a rare one

And why would they implement throttle on newer iOS for older hardware specifically? Surely they must know some, even if a minority, stay on older version because they’ve been burned and want the same performing device as it shipped with and that’s exactly what they’re getting

 

[tylerthomas28]

This comment from /u/Ggjvhhggggg on reddit sums up the apologists perfectly

To the apologists:

Apple gives you no option to not download the latest iOS where they start disabling features on your property.

Apple does not explain they are disabling features on your property.

Apple does not give you a choice in what you want to do with your property.

When they kick you in the balls with a new OS it is difficult to impossible to revert. Your choices are taken away.

People have been complaining about this slowdown problem for years right here on Reddit and posted many times that they are upgrading because their phone is slow.

If your ISP started slowing down your internet to make your router last longer or Ford removed 40 percent of the horsepower in your truck during servicing to extend the engine life you'd freak out.

It's something you bought. Apple does not get to start disabling features on it without involving you in the decision or at lest disclosing the practice so you can make an informed choice to upgrade, replace the battery or change to an Android.

Before even getting into motives the entire problem is a stealth downgrade of one part of your phone because another part is not performing well that can be fixed easily.

It is deceptive at best and malicious at worst. The lawsuit will force Apple to disclose internal emails which will show their full intents. If even one marketing person made a joke about how this is going to increase sales of new units then Apple is going to lose this. Even if they were honestly trying to be helpful it doesn't matter because they caused real harm by disabling people's performance without telling them.

They will lose this one or settle.

Cry as much as you want but if you changed this to a different company the same practice wouldn't be tolerated.

Furthermore marketing departments for decades have been pushing to take choice away from consumers as it's on the interest of the company.

I want to run an old iOS that works fine on my old phone. This shouldn't be a war of cunning with Apple to find ways to stop them downloading a gigabyte of OS on all my devices then harassing me to use it.

These are mine.

I paid for them.

I shouldn't be locked in a perpetual struggle with the manufacturer over how I want to use them. If it means no cool features or security problems so be it that's my choice as the device owner.

Opt out is something corps don't want you to have. It's been ignored and this whole thing has gone into the ******* in a world of forced upgrades.
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[fairuz]

You weren't trying out a Pixel if you went to the AT&T store. You were probably using a Samsung, which is far from stock Android. Android isn't laggy out of the box. My old phone, a OnePlus 5, is the smoothest phone I've ever used. iPhone's included

You're probably right about the AT&T part. I know for sure it was the Pixel because I tried both the small and large ones and compared them to the even laggier Samsung phones, but I don't remember which store it was. Could've been T-Mobile.

 

[csi24]

I'm still on 10.3.3 on my iPhone 7 Plus. Does that mean my phone is going to shut down periodically? Also, what if we didn't abuse our phones and the battery is still in great shape? Does my iPhone get to be slowed down because other people abuse their batteries?

No, you'll be fine because you won't have iOS 11 draining your battery faster.

 

[thadoggfather]

No, you'll be fine because you won't have iOS 11 draining your battery faster.

Is iOS 11 not worth it on 7 plus over iOS 10? It’s my secondary, i think ill keep it where it is.

 

[AeroZ]

Apple: if you don’t want to or you don’t have the money to buy a new iPhone every year then you’ll have to pay a minimum of $80 every year to get a new battery or we’ll slow down your device.

 

[csi24]

You're probably right about the AT&T part. I know for sure it was the Pixel because I tried both the small and large ones and compared them to the even laggier Samsung phones, but I don't remember which store it was. Could've been T-Mobile.

It had to be Verizon. They are the only carrier that sells the Pixel here.

I had an S8+ before the OnePlus 5. Nice display, and pretty quick. But I still can't tolerate Samsung's crappy version of Android. OnePlus is the only Android phone I can use these days. Because there's no way I'm paying iPhone prices for a Pixel