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

[Mascots]

Not buying Apple's excuse.

Why is it that iPhone 5S and all the ones before never have this problem of just turning off? Something else is going on...

Well, newer phones can draw much more power than existing phones could on a single cycle. And also, models before the 6 certainly turned off randomly all the time with age - dying around 20% or high on an old battery was so common it became a joke around my circles. Not saying it is that necessarily of course, but there's a lot of variables to juggle.

 

[squirrrl]

About time. What they are doing is highly unethical. Their involvement with my property stops after payment.

so you rather have your iPhone restart 10x a day? Awesome.

Also, if you don't want your iPhone to slow down, pay the $70 for a new battery install.... its like saying... "I drove my car 100K miles and now my transmission just stopped working. PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE!! They just want me to buy a new car. Instead, my car should last forever."

 

[Will.O.Bie]

Batteries degrade after a while with any rechargeable device but Apple should have been more transparent and informing the consumer about future updates, that they were looking to install some type of throttling software to prevent overloading the old battery.

 

[Sparky2012]

Good. No sympathy for Apple in this situation. They brought it on themselves by hiding the truth, and then forcing the throttling on us.

 

[Jmausmuc]

I'm not giving Apple a pass, but this lawsuit states that Apple is slowing down older devices when new ones come out, and that's not true.

I think MR could be a little more critical and ask questions like:
- why are only phones 6 and up affected?
- why is the iPhone 7 already affected even thought it is just a little more than a year old?
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so you rather have your iPhone restart 10x a day? Awesome.

Because the choice for a year old phone (7) is binary: either turn off or be slowed down, right?

 

[noslenam]

Simple. dont upgrade the software.

Of course Apple could implement a "Turn of battery management" switch, then all the complainers can complain their iphones shut down instead.

If it was only that easy to not upgrade! Some of the apps I use are updated by the vendors we use and without keeping your phone up to date the apps won’t function. I do think that Apple needs to keep signing older versions of iOS so that many can go back to versions that gave them better battery life and performance.

 

[JPack]

Seriously. if the phone had a popup that sdaid something along the lines about "Your battery is not operating at proper levels, your phone will be in low power mode until a battery replacement is done", sure, some people would grumble. But the outrage wouldn't be here.

Instead, it feels like Apple tried to sneakily hide a battery design issue. Probably because for Apple, putting out the software patch secretly to do this was overall cheaper than a battery recall / replacement program.

The phone doesn't need to be in low power mode. Period.

A simple warning is good enough. Let the consumer decide what to do. Tesla doesn't lower the performance of the car once the batteries are old.

Such an idiotic decision could have only been invented at Apple.

 

[falainber]

Simple. dont upgrade the software.

Of course Apple could implement a "Turn of battery management" switch, then all the complainers can complain their iphones shut down instead.

Indeed the lawsuit is misguided. They should sue Apple for actual problem which is a design flaw in iPhones and/or batteries. Throttling the phones is just a way of coping with the problem.

 

[BaltimoreMediaBlog]

I have an iPhone 5S and it would randomly shut off (and don't power back on because it says it needs power) at anywhere between 10% and 40% charge. So this doesn't seem to help me, at all... but yes, it's slow as f*

Exact same thing happened with my iPhone 5s. Apple declined to replace the battery. They must have known this was brewing though because they replaced my 5s with a brand new one. I didn't even know they were still manufacturing them or keeping them in stock. They did charge me $79.99 plus tax & shipping, but I expected that. The new phone doesn't experience any of these troubles. What ticked me off though is they forced IOS 11 on the phone against my will even though I had a complete backup of 10.3.3 from my old iPhone so the phone is still slower overall. I think Apple is also deliberately slowing down phones they wish would be replaced by another purchase based simply on model, not just battery life.

 

[Jmausmuc]

Also, if you don't want your iPhone to slow down, pay the $70 for a new battery install.... its like saying... "I drove my car 100K miles and now my transmission just stopped working. PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE!! They just want me to buy a new car. Instead, my car should last forever."

You do realize, that people on here were denied battery replacements, because their battery was still above 80% health on the diagnostics even though they were throttled, right?

And yes, I would complain if my transmission stopped working after just 100.000 miles.

BTW: why are so many people on here always resorting to car analogies?

 

[itsmilo]

so you rather have your iPhone restart 10x a day? Awesome.

Also, if you don't want your iPhone to slow down, pay the $70 for a new battery install.... its like saying... "I drove my car 100K miles and now my transmission just stopped working. PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE!! They just want me to buy a new car. Instead, my car should last forever."

For me its more about the lack of communication. If they had mentioned it before getting called out, it would have been a different story. Now it makes them look like they were trying to hide something and hold their customers for stupid

 

[joonyaboy]

Sounds like proper lawyer chum

 

[2807]

I think Apple will need to disclose and display the minimum battery power needed to run the phone fast and flawless in the manner that they market it.

If the battery falls below that capability during the Apple Care warranty, then you get a new free battery.

And, after Apple Care, you have to pay for a battery, but at least you can see on your phone if you need one or not for the "peak" as-new capabilities.

 

[Lone Deranger]

As many people have suggested, Apple has done a poor job of explaining why it has implemented these power feature management and how the state of the battery ultimately affects iPhone performance. More transparent information about battery health should be provided, and customers should be better informed when their batteries start to degrade so they can choose whether or not to pay for a replacement. Apple may also need to relax its policies on when customers can pay for a battery replacement, as currently, a battery can't be replaced unless in-store equipment registers it as near failing.

For a company that's renowned the world over for having the most powerful and influential marketing, they sure did a piss poor job on this one.

Furthermore, as their products are increasingly more reliant on battery technology (that isn't easily user replaceable) they'd better do a better job on servicing times. I don't know how fast their iPhone/iPad battery replacement is (never made use of it), but Apple are quoting me a wait time of 2-3 weeks for a battery replacement for my rMBP. That is unacceptable from my stand point. The reason given is that Apple no longer provide the service in-store. Instead it has to be sent back to a repair center because... you guessed it... glue! So disappointing.

 

[tito2020]

About time. What they are doing is highly unethical. Their involvement with my property stops after payment.

one more thing guys lol

 

[hvfsl]

Good. No sympathy for Apple in this situation. They brought it on themselves by hiding the truth, and then forcing the throttling on us.

At the moment we don't know how much of a difference this throttling makes. I suspect you will only notice it in apps that max out the cpu/gpu like some games.

But I think people are getting this battery throttling confused with Apple releasing a new iOS update which runs slower on older hardware because it requires more resources and isn't as optimised. If Apple turns this throttling off, it won't suddenly make peoples 5S's run like it did on iOS9 or 10 (especially as iOS 10 had this throttling too).

 

[LordVic]

The phone doesn't need to be in low power mode. Period.

A simple warning is good enough. Let the consumer decide what to do. Tesla doesn't lower the performance of the car once the batteries are old.

Such an idiotic decision could have only been invented at Apple.

absolutely. THere are about 100 different better ways of handling this than what Apple did.

As I said in another post. What Apple did was the cheapest rout to hide and mask the problem to their benefit, which is highly unethical.

it was nothing more than a work-around solution for them, and not a true solution.

They will need to be held responsible for such decision. It should be pretty damn clear that Apple knew they were doing something wrong when they felt the need to lie and hide what they were doing.

 

[Mascots]

You do realize, that people on here were denied battery replacements, because their battery was still above 80% health on the diagnostics even though they were throttled, right?

How many of these people's phones have been confirmed throttled with a battery health level above 80%?

Here's my deal: beyond people freaking out and people just exclaiming otherwise in the anonymous waves, the only true examples that I've seen were trying to confirm the throttling by using examples of bad health batteries. If we're getting floods of reports stating people with health levels above the serviceable cutoff being throttled, then there's a problem. But I've seen little evidence of this other than people saying it's happening.

 

[BeamWalker]

Maybe Apple should offer a battery replacement for less money than an entire entry level android phone. I thought about a replacement for my old iPhone 6, than I saw the price.

 

[Michael Goff]

About time. What they are doing is highly unethical. Their involvement with my property stops after payment.

Not really. Their involvement in your property continues as long as they update the software on the phone and you continue to update.

I’m sure they’d be alright if everyone thought how you did, though. They could save a lot of money if they didn’t have to care about phones after they’re bought.

 

[UL2RA]

The phone doesn't need to be in low power mode. Period.

A simple warning is good enough. Let the consumer decide what to do. Tesla doesn't lower the performance of the car once the batteries are old.

Such an idiotic decision could have only been invented at Apple.

Yeah, this is absolutely ridiculous.

 

[RowellE]

I have an iPhone 5S and it would randomly shut off (and don't power back on because it says it needs power) at anywhere between 10% and 40% charge. So this doesn't seem to help me, at all... but yes, it's slow as f*

Same. My 5S will especially shut off once it reaches 30% when it’s out in cold weather. And since I live in Seattle, that’s all the time.

 

[gladoscc]

Who said they were doing it only when newer models came out???

Apple did; did you read? They introduced throttling to the iPhone 7 when the iPhone X and 8 came out, and they said they plan to enable this for future devices.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

Does Samsung, Pixel, Motorola, etc., all degrade speed as the battery gets older? I've not heard of it, nor have I heard of issues with "aging" Android phones shutting down during "peak workloads". Is this just Apple? I've not heard of laptop computers slowing down the CPU when the battery reaches 50% or gets aged. Sure, battery LIFE declines, but it doesn't affect performance. What Apple is doing sounds "not right".

If the iPhone can't stay performing at full speed when the battery is a year or two old, then Apple should replace batteries FREE OF CHARGE instead of throttling the performance.

 

[ikir]

As many people have suggested, Apple has done a poor job of explaining why it has implemented

Users are just ignorant. Apple are doing the right thing. Otherwise we would have continue shutdown on older iPhones.
A recent real life benchmark showed most model running better with lastest iOS. Apple is doing the right thing