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Apple Being Sued for 'Purposefully Slowing Down Older iPhone Models' [Updated]
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Thank you for the info.
To your best knowledge has Apple improved the design yet for iPhone 8, 8 plus and X? Since Apple already admitted the 7 is also subject to the same throttling treatment I will have assume it is also using the defect design.
Am I missing something or is the following the only official response from Apple in those links?
Issue: accidental physical damage - device has been presented with multiple cracks to the display as a result of accidental damage. customer has declared that no other known issues are present with the device.
Steps to Reproduce: All issues reported by customer have been validated and are present.
Cosmetic Condition: Internal battery is third party. Proceed with display repair.
A since we're talking about personal experiences, at least with my MacBook, not only tdid they repair my out of warranty macbook with 3rd party parts but they also replaced my 3rd party battery with an OEM battery for free.
So 2 truths based on customer experience?
Anyhow getting off topic.
If I wanted third party, I would have done that before seeing Apple.
I don't have much confidence in local third parties after seeing their work and there's always the chance of Apple messing it up down the line like with TouchID.
Not necessarily an "older" product. You can go online now and buy a 6S or a 7 that will get throttled with brand new batteries as soon as iOS updates are done - boom, on brand new phones.
Or, and I'm talking crazy here, Apple could have designed the phone to operate reliably on the existing battery technology. Apple has enough experience to know what the power outputs of a battery are at various temperatures after a thousand charge cycles or more. Why in the world would they design a phone that has no safety margin in its power supply?
I checked my wife's 6s a few days ago and found that it is one of the phones being throttled. I just fired up CoconutBattery in an attempt to see how much it has degraded. It is currently able to hold 89% of its original capacity. WTF Apple?
That's because throttling is not tied to a truly 'degraded' battery. It is tied to iOS version + iPhone hardware version. You can buy a brand new 6S or 7 from Apple today on their own website, and yet get throttled.
I thought it had to do with battery health. People who have throttled phones are saying if they replace the battery it works fine again. So wouldn't a brand new phone even if it was an older model be fine?
This is crazy. I knew they were doing this ******** but now we know. I hope this lawsuit goes through.
The logical answer is to make the batteries accessible to average folk.
Except it's a mis-characterization: If the phone is very cold or the battery is putting out low voltage that would indicate danger of accidental shutdown or excessively rapid decline in voltage, then the software slows down the processor. I replaced the battery on my 3 year old 6 plus and it runs at the rated 1400 mhz... except when I left it sitting outside in 30 degree weather... an hour later when I checked... the phone was running at 1100 mhz... Prior to changing out the battery, my phone was running at 600-839mhz typically, maybe 1100 when fully charged... but that battery had about a thousand charge cycles on it! Should apple have explained how they addressed sudden shutdowns in older phones? Yes, I think so. Is it expected behavior from older Lion batteries? Yes. Could a new iphone 7 be throttled? Yes, but ONLY if the battery is faulty, is near dead, or the temp is very low causing sub-optimal voltage off a healthy battery. Is that a diabolical scheme? No, I think that's absurd. So please, debate the merits of the choice apple made but don't throw out nonsense about brand new phones being throttled. I'm on a 3 year old phone with a new battery... and no throttling.
The thing is that the marketing team did the design so there was not much room for the properly sized battery. For thinness sake.
I’m an app developer. I have to know how fast some of my code runs. I just tested that code on an over 2 year old iPhone 6s after updating it to 11.2.1. My code ran as if the CPU clock was just the same as when the 6s was brand new. So the reported slow iPhones here may have some other issues other than pure processor clock slow down due to the new iOS install. Maybe something to do with temperature, memory, storage, or background processes.
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I don't know if the lawyers who filed the lawsuit are coming at it from the best angle. Apple essentially did three things wrong:
1) it didn't disclose that they were intentionally slowing down older phones;
2) it didn't disclose that there was a way to get a faster phone other than buying a new model (i.e. it didn't disclose that replacing the battery might give sufficient performance and would cost way less money than buying the new model); and,
3) it falsely advertised the tech specs of the older models in their ads and marketing (especially under the "Power and Battery" details on their website).
Regarding the last point, Apple is still selling the older models (e.g. 6s) and is advertising them as if they'll have the performance that is shown on the website, which is false. It's not like the software "feature" only affects older models that have degraded batteries...it will affect all units of the older models running the software, whether their batteries are old or new.
Nice "feature" Apple.
1) it didn't disclose that they were intentionally slowing down older phones;
2) it didn't disclose that there was a way to get a faster phone other than buying a new model (i.e. it didn't disclose that replacing the battery might give sufficient performance and would cost way less money than buying the new model); and,
3) it falsely advertised the tech specs of the older models in their ads and marketing (especially under the "Power and Battery" details on their website).
Regarding the last point, Apple is still selling the older models (e.g. 6s) and is advertising them as if they'll have the performance that is shown on the website, which is false. It's not like the software "feature" only affects older models that have degraded batteries...it will affect all units of the older models running the software, whether their batteries are old or new.
Nice "feature" Apple.
Key problem: According to many posts in this thread and others, Apple is likely to deny you the opportunity to purchase a battery replacement. This is what IMHO is what this suit needs to be about, and what Apple apologists ignore. Many iPhone owners (notable iPhone 6) have gone into the store, and asked to purchase at full replacement cost (not Apple Care) a new battery. Apple denies them this option via the Genius test software. Pure, unadulterated corporate greed-based setup given that while denying consumers the opportunity to replace a part everyone knows degrades, Apple at the same time is forcing them to buy a new phone to get BACK to the performance levels promised when the now software-degraded phone was purchased. I simply cannot see how this can be rationalized. Hard to believe Apple legal let them do this. Tim and his accountant buddies (who is likely behind this) need to be slapped very, VERY hard. This really is why class actions need to exist.
The point of VW's shenanigans was to produce great emissions and fuel consumption results on a test, so the car looks efficient and clean on paper, but then drive much faster (while being less clean and efficient) when in the real world to make the owner believe VW's claims that the car was clean, efficient AND high performance. Apple are selling a product that has a blazing fast processor for a phone, but then throttle it back because it doesn't have the fuel necessary to perform. Both are about power management.
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Anytime a full update comes out, whether it’s a cell phone or computer, older processors have a hard time going through the thousands of lines of code added plus any new feature to compute. No need to complain here as these fanboys who drink the apple cool aid will defend Apple regardless of issues. Best thing to do is to quit buying these iPhones and move onto something else. My iPhone 6 Plus runs like crap. Didn’t do it until I moved up to iOS 11. Time to move on to another phone. Just like allot of others are doing. No sense bitching. Move on.
We may not be on the same page but isn't this exactly what Apple did? If you define "reliable" by making sure a phone doesn't crash, then throttling does that.
Are you saying the hardware should've been designed to handle different temperatures without any impact? I honestly don't know if this is actually an issue for all phones.
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They did this to hide the design problem on iPhone 6->8. The batteries are too small (and probably not excellent quality). The phones work fine with new batteries, but as the battery capacity goes down, they can't give enough juice.
Every other device in the industry, Apple's other devices included, will lose battery life with time, but they don't have to be slowed down to keep working. Shutting down will only happen when batteries get very old, not after one year of regular use.
So they only recalled a small batch of iPhone 6S, and slowed down everybody else with software to hide their defective design.
But the shareholders are happy!
Every other device in the industry, Apple's other devices included, will lose battery life with time, but they don't have to be slowed down to keep working. Shutting down will only happen when batteries get very old, not after one year of regular use.
So they only recalled a small batch of iPhone 6S, and slowed down everybody else with software to hide their defective design.
But the shareholders are happy!
Hey... just trying to help out and suggest a solution to a problem apple never actually said they'd help fix and technically isn't their problem to fix unless they actually manufacture the batteries themselves which I don't think they do.