Apple Now Faces 26+ Lawsuits for 'Purposefully' or 'Secretly' Slowing Down Older iPhones

[Puddled]

And so am I.

That's why I am calling your bluff.

No matter what typical engineering theory and practice says, you can't deny the fact that something as popular as an iPhone, with millions upon millions of users doing WAY different things with it, and with millions upon millions of those users' batteries experiencing almost as many different charge/discharge cycles and habits (some people tend to always deep-cycle their batteries, some people tend to always top-off their batteries every night, etc.), are going to form a dataset that has millions upon millions of statistical outliers, with every ONE of them thinking that THEIR experience is THE one that should be "designed-for".

IOW, there is literally NO WAY that Apple (or anyone) can design a secondary-battery-powered device that has consistent, unit-to-unit performance, especially over-time that will "please" everyone, regardless of their usage or charging habits (or the luck of the draw of their particular battery). The statistics are just too "noisy".

And ESPECIALLY not with the variability of batteries. We just aren't that good at controlling all the factors that determine EXACTLY how a particular battery will perform, ESPECIALLY OVER TIME. It's at best a statistical crapshoot.

Garbage in, Garbage out. Not that Apple has Garbage batteries; but that our collective understanding of batteries in general is pretty much Garbage, when it comes to predicting what YOUR battery will do, ESPECIALLY OVER TIME.

Battery technology is fairly well established. You seem to be refering to data as a range rather than limits. In engineering, the bit in the middle is largely irrelevant. It is the 5/95 percentiles you design for.

I dont think you fully grasp the issue at hand here.

The proof against your stance here is in front of your eyes. If Apple didnt know about battery tech and had no idea what usage pattern to aim for, they couldnt have seeded this "feature" could they?

 

[bladerunner2000]

People go on, companies do not. Consumers always win, because they move on to other products. Always.

Good luck with a company that's sort of got a monopoly on the market.

 

[617660]

And so am I.

That's why I am calling your bluff.

No matter what typical engineering theory and practice says, you can't deny the fact that something as popular as an iPhone, with millions upon millions of users doing WAY different things with it, and with millions upon millions of those users' batteries experiencing almost as many different charge/discharge cycles and habits (some people tend to always deep-cycle their batteries, some people tend to always top-off their batteries every night, etc.), are going to form a dataset that has millions upon millions of statistical outliers, with every ONE of them thinking that THEIR experience is THE one that should be "designed-for".

IOW, there is literally NO WAY that Apple (or anyone) can design a secondary-battery-powered device that has consistent, unit-to-unit performance, especially over-time that will "please" everyone, regardless of their usage or charging habits (or the luck of the draw of their particular battery). The statistics are just too "noisy".

And ESPECIALLY not with the variability of batteries. We just aren't that good at controlling all the factors that determine EXACTLY how a particular battery will perform, ESPECIALLY OVER TIME. It's at best a statistical crapshoot.

Garbage in, Garbage out. Not that Apple has Garbage batteries; but that our collective understanding of batteries in general is pretty much Garbage, when it comes to predicting what YOUR battery will do, ESPECIALLY OVER TIME.

This is wrong.

We know what battery will do over time. It degrades. What we didn't know is that Apple added salt to the wound by slowing down the device in the name of "preventing unexpected shutdown".

 

[nebo1ss]

Is there a list of all the cases world wide? Is there one in Germany?

The case in France is very different to the others. They are being sued by the Government. Apple apparently broke the law in France.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...olescence-legal-challenge-crime-a8132371.html

 

[deferredAnon]

The case in France is very different to the others. They are being sued by the Government. Apple apparently broke the law in France.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...olescence-legal-challenge-crime-a8132371.html

Not a government agency.

 

[apolloa]

You are correct.

I am judging by apparent technical knowledge-level of the online posters on several forums.

You mean you are being judgmental and consider your technical knowledge to be far superior to those who don’t agree with your side of the argument, right?

 

[617660]

I wonder why EU hasn't got involved with these lawsuits.

 

[firewood]

I had a throttled phone, have you tried one yourself firewood ??

A slowed-down iPhone? Yes. Two. And I fixed my friend's 5s after the 11.2 update by rebooting it again, and having the owner turn off iCloud till night time, when iCloud could do it's thing while the phone sat on its charger. No more slow down the next day. Another person had to factory reset and set up as new. Then the slow down disappeared. So they weren't throttled, just busy with who knows what.

 

[Wildkraut]

There is literally nothing they can do about these batteries degrading over time.

Yep sadly not anymore, because the iPhones has been already produced and sold with ****** batteries, and a lot of people already has been fooled to upgrade their phones due to slowness. In my opinion a phone battery should support the device speed specs (per design) at least for 2 years without problems.

Well, they could have made the iPhone thicker to achieve this, and give a bit up of their fanatic thickness obsession.
They could also have writen on the package something like:
Dear customer, because of our obsession with device thickness, we decided to design the batteries of this 1319Euro iPhone to last only a year. To avoid misbehaviors of this iPhone due to our design decision, we trottle it by approx 30-50% after a year.

In other words, your lovely 1319Euro iPhone which used to outrun all other phones on the marked, will become a slow mule after a year.

 

[JCandle]

Macrumors carrying water for Apple again

“It may, at times,” = Apple does

“dynamically manage the maximum performance” = slow down

“of some older iPhone models” = All iPhone models 99% people still use

“with chemically aged batteries” = crap batteries

“in order to prevent the devices from unexpectedly shutting down” = said nobody ever

“an issue that can be made worse by cold temperatures or a low charge.” = normal conditions all phones have to deal with


Go back and read that one paragraph again. It’s literally ONE sentence, and it’s nothing but talking point after talking point

The mental gymnastics MacRumors is making to justify this slow down is hilariously pathetic. I use to trust MacRumors to give a critical and independent voice, I guess that is gone.

 

[MacsRuleOthersDrool]

Fact you want to hear?

Fact is that my 6s+ started having crappy battery life after 6 months. From 75% left in battery life to 20% when I get home.

Guess what Apple did in my case? "Oh wait, you are experiencing crappy battery life? Let me slow down your device and please allow me to call it a "feature" too."

Apple: "We take care of customer."

Funny, my 6 Plus seems as snappy as ever. Maybe I just haven't noticed it.

 

[617660]

A slowed-down iPhone? Yes. Two. And I fixed my friend's 5s after the 11.2 update by rebooting it again, and having the owner turn off iCloud till night time, when iCloud could do it's thing while the phone sat on its charger. No more slow down the next day. Another person had to factory reset and set up as new. Then the slow down disappeared. So they weren't throttled, just busy with who knows what.

So you have to go to that length to avoid the slowdown? And you are saying there is no slowdown?

 

[apolloa]

The case in France is very different to the others. They are being sued by the Government. Apple apparently broke the law in France.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...olescence-legal-challenge-crime-a8132371.html

Of course they did!, they broke EU law I think you’ll find, good grief no one gets how big this is.

The EU took Microsoft to court so many times, fined them so much money, just because they would not remove Internet Explorer as the default browser, MS removed Internet Explorer from all Windows copies sold in the EU! And when Microsoft broke its agreement in the EU 4 years later, by mistake... the EU fined them 561 million dollars..

And that is not including the US government threatening to rip Microsoft in two just because of the monopolistic position it had gained and Internet Explorer.

That was over an internet browser...

Apple will find a very tough next few years over this.. it remains to be seen how the different laws will come into play, but the EU has very strong consumer protection.

 

[chatin]

Steve Jobs was in on this!

Steve is spinning in his grave. He would just let the phones shut off. As the consummate salesman, he could work with the truth.

 

[mamaway]

Most will go nowhere.
[doublepost=1515173713][/doublepost]

These aren't issues you're going to be able to file a suit over.

Not sure if that's what justperry's comment was referring to. It could have just meant that Intel et al. added insult to injury, or vice versa.

But that does raise a good point. Given that the patches for those bugs might also slow down the phones of those who were affected by these battery "optimizations", it kinda casts more doubt over Apple's malfeasance, right?

 

[617660]

Funny, my 6 Plus seems as snappy as ever. Maybe I just haven't noticed it.

Well, so it's all based on personal experience. Don't give me crap about how you are an engineer and others are not. Apple controls the hardware and software, if there is a problem, my finger is pointed right at them.

There is something called "Accountability" btw.

 

[TomMcIn]

Class Actions - The Shysters will stop at nothing to get their fees. 26+ and likely growing as more law firms see the fake upset people complain about the science of batteries. The whiners should just get their batteries replaced or go buy a Droid that might really blow up.

 

[sundog925]

Sue because of what? You decide to buy that phone? You should check the battery capacity.

You're SO RIGHT omg, the capacity isn't found out until a teardown, apple never discloses it! Wow!!

 

[firewood]

In my opinion a phone battery should support the device speed specs (per design) at least for 2 years without problems.

Apple never stated an exact speed specification number. People just made up their own false expectations. And for the tiny percentage of batteries that do fall below the typical statistical range regarding lifetime performance, Apple should just replace those under warranty (whose number of years varies by country legal jurisdiction).

 

[AFEPPL]

Will the next iOS update just reduce (sorry, "set", as reduce kinda implies you are losing something) the performance of new devices to the same level of those with older, or degraded batteries to ensure parity for all?

How many new owners would be happy with the reduced performance?
It's not like you are buying that new hardware for better performance after all is it..

 

[pdaholic]

You say this as if it's always been a reality of iPhone ownership. It hasn't been. For some reason around the time the iPhone 6 arrived Apple suddenly seemed to have issues and concerns about battery degradation. What exactly caused this is unclear, but I'd love to get the answers one day.

Did they start using cheaper batteries? Did they realize they shipped a lot of faulty batteries, and instead of owning up to it they tried to fix it via software?

Exactly. And if you hadn't known, you might have thought, "eh, my phone is 3 years old, that's why it's slow, might as well plop down a grand on a new phone" instead of simply replacing the battery.

 

[Arbuthnott]

It's nauseating to realize how many people here said it DIDN'T HAPPEN! Countless people and posts screaming that Apple was being needlessly burned at the stake for something that literally WAS NOT HAPPENING... Yet, surprise, surprise, it was!! I think Apple even denied it at one point - surprise, surprise, they lied! Now, watch the magic of the chorus turning from it never happened to, it did happen and thank god it did! All hail TC!

Ah, the Schadenfreude brigade. Yesterday my iPhone (the old one I use as a GPS on my motorbike handlebars) refused to show me its screen, after I'd left it parked in the sun for a couple of hours over lunchtime on a very hot day in sunny Australia (silly me - something of an oversight) - some message like "Temperature - your display will return when the temperature returns to normal". And then I though, wow, maybe I could get a new iPad or something if I mount a class action against Apple for preventing my iPhone from exploding in the sun when I want it to? Seems only fair.

Less tongue in cheek, this phone I use as a GPS is a 6 Plus. It is an old one of mine that my youngest daughter finished up with, which I gave her when her 5S began unpredictably shutting down at inopportune moments - and then showing 45% charge when she plugged it in. She uses her phone a lot for her work, and it was easier to give her my old one rather than her have no phone for a few days while she replaced the battery. When I recovered the 6 Plus, now a couple of years on, she had cracked the screen, and I arranged a replacement with Apple at the same time as asking them to replace the battery. The 6 Plus was always my favourite for battery life, but it was by then down to less than a day. Apple replaced my battery for free (early November 2017). I don't know if the phone is any faster now - probably not, because the battery behaviour was not aberrant in a way that suggested it was close to end of life.

My daughter would have been very grateful for Apple providing a tweak that would have prevented her 5S from randomly shutting down - often in the middle of an important call. And maybe then her 5S would have continued to work until the end of the contract with her service provider.

One thing is for sure. My iPhone X is very much faster than the 6 Plus. And both leave my 3GS (that I use to drive the digital clock thing by the bed) for dead. I guess that must be because Apple has done something to the old phones to make them go slow? Otherwise why would a new generation phone be any faster than an old one, hey? /sarc

 

[posguy99]

All I want to know is, do I actually have to make my own list of idiots so I can opt out of the class(es), or will someone eventually consolidate these so I only have to opt out once?

Do me a favor, don't bother with anti-Apple-whine in my direction (or pro-, for that matter), I couldn't care less about your opinion and I'm not sharing mine. I'm anti-class-action lawsuits in general, all they benefit is lawyers.

 

[stevet]

It didn't DEGRADE QUICKER; it just Degraded normally. However, what was perfectly acceptable to a newish battery was UNEXPECTEDLY a problem for an older one.

As I said, it is not in the mindset of Product Design engineers to think about how a product will perform multiple-years down the road, unless they are designing a product like a switch or connector, where "number of operations" is a universally-considered spec.

Yes, everyone knows that batteries wear-out over time; but I can also easily see how exactly "how much" was overlooked, or not "weighted" enough, by the iPhone's Design Team. It's actually probably pretty difficult to accurately "model" or "simulate" EXACTLY how a aged LiOn battery will act. All you can do is build-in a fudge-factor and hope for the best.

No it didn’t degrade normally. It degraded much quicker than the specified number of full charges specified by Apple. To be honest I didn’t read the rest of your post after that..

I still have a 4s that operates normally under all conditions.. it doesn’t last as l9ng but it sure does meet the same standard it did when it was released.

 

[Arbuthnott]

The mental gymnastics MacRumors is making to justify this slow down is hilariously pathetic. I use to trust MacRumors to give a critical and independent voice, I guess that is gone.

How different we all are! I found the explanation clear and reasonable. Apple clearly already manages performance, because it has high powered cores and low powered cores. So all it has done is to change how the use of these is managed. Because it was certainly already managed in the past. Now, if you had read any of the literature about the Apple chips that drive these iDevices, you would already have know that. And the rest is pretty obvious.

The traction control on your car/motorbike limits wheel slippage, reducing the power delivered to the wheel below the rated engine power of the car. Perhaps that should be the basis of a class action as well?