Either way it is a design flaw, that needed corrected with a "power management" update over year since phone was released. Should have been provided from the day the phone was released. None of those high paid design engineers thought of this when designing the chip/phones??? Makes me think something else is going on, this isn't new science.
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Apple Now Faces 26+ Lawsuits for 'Purposefully' or 'Secretly' Slowing Down Older iPhones
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Either way it is a design flaw, that needed corrected with a "power management" update over year since phone was released. Should have been provided from the day the phone was released. None of those high paid design engineers thought of this when designing the chip/phones??? Makes me think something else is going on, this isn't new science.
I agree! reducing the performance by a huge factor is crippling the phone. Pop up mentioning this or inform the user. Not mentioning this and the fact it happens after a year is hiding the fact the batteries suck!
Mass recall avoidance that's now going to damage the brand!
yea but they advertised a certain speed percentage over the previous generation without a disclaimer or a notification that they would purposely throttle the phone's CPU over time.
That is probably where they are going to get screwed IMO.
Yup! that's the problem!
If they did a disclaimer do you think they would have as many sales as they got? Nope!
Apple are a big company, they know exactly what they are doing! They got caught!
Or proof that a Genius declined to replace the battery (because it passed their test), and instead suggested upgrading to a new phone.
I suspect that's the most common situation people who are suing ran into.
The throttling isn't permanent. It's only used when needed to prevent the phone from shutting down. And like I've said, the argument that a non-functional phone would be preferable to one that still functions sounds like a loser in court.
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That's not going to cut it in court. You would need to prove that Apple itself directed the Genius Bar to do that. These lawsuits aren't being filed against specific employees. From what I've heard, the typical approach the Genius Bar used when the battery passed a test is to suggest the customer follow standard troubleshooting steps for performance issues. Those are more likely to fix problems if the battery isn't EOL.
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They don't promise you'll get that speed forever, though. If you got it when it was new and under warranty (not the AC plus warranty one buys to get repairs for a longer period, but the original 1-year, manufacturer's warranty) it would be hard to fault them and call them liars, wouldn't it? They DID sell you a faster phone. It was faster until the battery began to degrade. As batteries do. What they didn't do is tell people that, due to NORMAL battery degradation, they were throttling their phones. In my mind, they should have done this and then forced people to replace batteries. Battery replacement is cheaper under AC plus than it is if you don't have AC plus so this could've sold more AC plus.
Apple is liable under EU Consumer law for device to operate for at least 2 years without any faults - if they slowed it down to HIDE a flaw and they know that.
If the OS told you battery is flawed and/or phone would shut itself off randomly before being 2 years old, they would have a lot of free batteries+service to hand out. Now they don't.
The phone did NOT operate properly for two years and they would be liable for that. unfortunately its very hard to prove when did the phone start throttling ...
You would expect better quality from Apple things have really gone down the toilet since little Timmy took the reigns.
[doublepost=1515422271][/doublepost]This all could have been avoided if they were honest upfront or just make the batteries able to be replaced by the end user.
[doublepost=1515422271][/doublepost]This all could have been avoided if they were honest upfront or just make the batteries able to be replaced by the end user.
Batteries are not going to be replaceable by end users anymore. They lose their water resistant claims with people cracking open phone cases. Not gonna happen. That's really last decade stuff.
And quality? Steve "you're holding it wrong" and "it's not a defect, it's a feature" Jobs' era was hardly flawless.
I work with laptops!Brilliant. Who needs all the fancy lawyers when they can simply send you in to clear away any confusion. It would only take 5 minutes.
Another option is to review the current power management algorithms to work with all of the components in a more efficient manner than they do currently and if necessary, give people at least some control over aspects of it. Obviously, no manufacturer would ever want power management turned off completely, so a line would need to be drawn somewhere. Not sure where that would be, but I'm sure there are plenty of people here to provide an opinion.
Conclusion: Tempest in a Teacup.
Some old (over 5 years old) some new (less than 1-2 years old). New batteries and really old beaten up ones. Set the CPU to maximum performance and guess what? Does the CPU/GPU become throttled? does it turn off? nope. They all run at maximum performance with the battery depleting quickly. That's it.
Surely, the Apple iPhone should do this also?
Big power drain from battery = battery drains quicker
The symptoms from these iPhones would indicate a dodgy battery. Apple knows they are dodgy but won't admit it! We'll find out soon anyway
Bruh...the lawsuit is about the lack of transparency from Apple regarding the slowdown of their phones that resulted in lots of consumers buying expensive new iphones instead of getting a battery replacement, not that their batteries are degrade over time.
They forget to mention this fact!They don't promise you'll get that speed forever, though. If you got it when it was new and under warranty (not the AC plus warranty one buys to get repairs for a longer period, but the original 1-year, manufacturer's warranty) it would be hard to fault them and call them liars, wouldn't it? They DID sell you a faster phone. It was faster until the battery began to degrade. As batteries do. What they didn't do is tell people that, due to NORMAL battery degradation, they were throttling their phones. In my mind, they should have done this and then forced people to replace batteries. Battery replacement is cheaper under AC plus than it is if you don't have AC plus so this could've sold more AC plus.
A phone with a non-removable battery with better performance has to be replaced (not by yourself because it's sealed in the iPhone but at a cost) with a new battery to keep the same performance otherwise is will degrade to less then the phone you replace it with.
An awesome USP if ever I saw one!
Yes, but there's a big difference between the liability for warranty and what Apple is being accused of here. No one is suing Apple because they refused to replace EOL batteries under warranty, or that what Apple considered to be EOL for lithium ion batteries was unusual or changed in some way. These are lawsuits that really have nothing to do with the warranty at all. Did the 10.2.1 update remove the ability to get the battery checked by Apple or an authorized 3rd party to see if it was EOL? No. Did it ban apps that give you an estimate of what remaining capacity is? No. So nothing really changed about how a customer could get information or service in regards to their battery health with 10.2.1 and later.
CPUs do not run at top speed all the time even when connected to a constant current supply. They change speeds based on what is necessary for the function. With a laptop, that's going to become more exaggerated as soon as you disconnect the charging cable. Power management becomes even more important at that point. So, yes, a laptop that's disconnected from power is going to make certain processes slower than what they normally would be when connected. You might notice and you might not depending on how intensive the function is.
For a phone, CPU performance is going to be predictable within a certain range of battery discharge. 100% down to around 20% is typically going to provide nominal voltage or higher. Below 20% is when voltage starts to drop steeply below nominal.
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You can run something like CPU burn to push all CPU cores at 100%
https://patrickmn.com/projects/cpuburn/
Same for the GPU. You can monitor the clock speed as well showing the speed of each core. Again, I tested a few laptops and CPU speed was at the maximum clock speed on battery.
The only thing that happened was the battery died quicker!
If the CPU overheated (which none of them did) thermal cutout would have switched off the laptop. None of them did. But, on a test one I removed the thermal cooler/fan, and it cut out.
And these are newish and really old batteries (I checked and one of them was 7 years old) which has been charged constanting every day for 7 years!
7 years!!
Oh, there's definitely something else that happened: higher heat levels. Guess what higher heat levels are bad for? The lithium ion battery.
The temp of the battery was pretty much the same (+a few degrees higher) so it's definitely thermal cut out protecting the CPU rather than the battery. CPU's can go quite hot before they die!
I had a Mac Mini I changed the CPU on. Only 3 of the clips were holding down the heatsink and that went up to 230c without any issues for a few weeks. It never turned off either, so i have no idea what temp apple specifies as hot before switching off the computer. The case was also hot, but again it never switched off (obviously, it's not battery powered but just an example for the CPU thermal cut out).
Anyone have an old laptop give it a go. Push the CPU to the max, GPU to the max, monitor the temp of CPU/GPU and battery.
Apple! grr!
Does anyone think this “throttling” to prevent unexpected shut down can somehow cause unnecessary battery drain at the same time? Because I never experienced shut down on my iPhone 6s Plus bought on 9/30/2015, but I remember so clearly that it started draining battery after a few updates towards the end of the year 2015. What was the first iOS that did this throttling and when was it released?
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I hope whoever in the court will read this forum!
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But they should make it even lower or free if this was the hardware design issue to begin with..
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So why did Apple offer $29 replacements so soon? I’m still lost..
And many people chose to equip their phone with a case that kept the heat higher than it would be otherwise. The batteries didn't stand a chance.
Another obtuse response.
The issue with this is that users weren't informed about Apples "benevolence" in kindly slowing down the phones to prevent shutdowns. Why not inform users that a reduced capability battery is being detected and the phone is being managed to keep it safe and operational UNTIL the battery can be replaced. Can you not SEE this is the issue?
WHY were people not bring informed by Apple support when reporting their phones were running slow. Surely a diagnostic would readily see that this condition was invoked.
SURELY if the power management feature was being invoked by the phone, a flag can be set for Support to diagnose this condition is occurring and give advice on that basis!
So your saying that Apple is using a battery that cannot power the phone properly after 1 year. And you ok with this?
They slowed down the phone deliberately to cover a battery malfunction, because if they'd given us a choice, many of us would opt for a battery replacement instead of either a new phone, or a gradually slower old phone.
Randomly dropping in apple centers because battery MIGHT be shoddy is ridiculous.
Apple should've popped a "your phone is not working optimally, because your battery needs servicing" notification when this happens, just like they do on Macs (which arent even slowed down when it happens).
I really don't care, because people like you were telling everyone that apple DOESN'T slow phones down (even I did). They do. And an average user doesn't think "oh my it might be battery, let me check some prosumer app for checking battery/cpu performance" if they don't have a clue whats going on.
They buy a new phone.
If it shutts off, they go to apple store and they tell em "battery needs replacement" and phone works again, or they buy a new one.
If the phone cannot work at full capacaity for more than 10 months, its a design flaw. Make a bigger battery that has enough charge after dropping to 80% to still power the phone. (make 25% bigger battery).
Would you be okay with your tesla car
a) randomly shutting off in the middle of highway
b) gradually losing power and only going 50mph after a year, without telling you your battery needs servicing
no you wouldnt. nobody is okay with this. they screwed up.
This apologetic crap is pissing me off, it really does.
Ironically I got rid of my 3, 3G, 4S, 5S because they just got too slow after each successive iOS update (which the OS would nag to death until you updated).
Not an excuse. People have been using cases since the first iPhone.
Personally I don't think there was an initial plot. I think it was simply that engineers were stuck with Ive demanding a certain thinness, and ended up putting in a battery that's essentially too small for the latest CPUs, and hoping no one would notice for a while.
Then as problems arose, they began to think of ways to make it look like the phone was still working correctly, without having to do a mass recall.
Just as with AntennaGate and BendGate, we will know in a year or so if they acknowledge it was a design problem... because they'll quietly change things. Apple hates taking outright public responsibility for a mistake. Everything is usually a "misunderstanding" instead.
I think the Genius test will come under scrutiny. They had customers coming in complaining of slowness (throttling because the battery was no longer up to snuff) and yet the official test said the battery did not need replacing.
So, at the least, there's apparently a disconnect between the parameters used by the throttling and the parameters used by the store test.
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