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

[indychris]

In an alternate universe...

“My two year old mobile phone keeps shutting down!!!”

“Did you activate the setting to slow down the phone when your older battery does not have not enough voltage to run at full speed, or gets too hot?”

“Apple should do all that automatically!!! I’ll sue!”

You mean they actually COMMUNICATED the option? Problem solved!

 

[BaltimoreMediaBlog]

Apple replaced my iPhone 5s with a brand new one but forced IOS 11 on it even though I still have a full backup of IOS 10.3.3. Now the camera hesitates on pics, sometimes producing horrible blurry responses. It's not just the batteries and people know it now. I will join in any of these lawsuits gladly. Timmy is not fooling me. Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field is dead. Timmy has failed to realize that.

 

[DevNull0]

And what is that period of time? Believe warranty is 1 year...Also, please refer me to an Apple literature/web link where it says they guarantee the battery will last a specific period of time.

Phones we are taking about are what, 3+ years old?? Well outside normal and extended warranty, if you purchased one.

That period of time is up to the courts to decide and thanks to these lawsuits they will decide it. The warranty is irrelevant in deciding. Products get recalled outside the warranty period all the time.

Apple's promise of battery life is also irrelevant; we are fortunate enough to live in countries were consumers have certain rights.

The oldest phone this issue affects is barely past 3 years old. It also affects the 6s and 7 which is barely over a year old. Every iPhone larger than the 5/SE has an underpowered battery.

 

[Popeye206]

Class action status is the way to go...

Yup... Lawyers get millions and the public gets $25 battery replacement. Pretty much what we have today. Apple has already provided a solution and is going to change the OS... all these class action cases do now is make our iPhones 3% more expensive next year.

 

[mi7chy]

Nobody asked for anorexic phones. Apple went that route fully aware that aging on an undersized battery would lead to early obsolescence and drive new phone sales. Hardly anybody can tell the difference between 7.7mm and 8.4mm without a measuring tool but they'll surely notice the difference in battery life and stability between 2,675mAh and 4000mAh.

If given a choice anyone with common sense would go with the 0.7mm thicker battery which is less than a credit card thickness.

 

[sinsin07]

snip...And how do you know that phone is still running at the same speed?

Wouldn't bother, one user anecdotal experience while meaningful to that user has no value as proof of anything.

 

[ronno]

The above is exactly why the plaintifs will lose. They will make these claims, without having an engineering lab that can make all the actual power measurements. Then Apple will show up with the actual measurements as witnessed by an independant 3rd-party professional power management engineer, and these cases will be thrown out for making false claims.

I can't make sense of your argument there.
Apple stated that many different areas will be affected by the throttling, not just the "peak usage" cases which MR keeps stating.

Regardless, it seems that Apple will have lost whether they prevail or not in court.
So much negative press about this, and much doubt about trusting the company has been fostered here.

 

[MH01]

Why are no such lawsuits being filed against Microsoft, Dell and other companies who have been implementing same feature to prevent unexpected laptop shutdowns?

Or Apple for their laptops ? I'm not aware of a laptop manufacturer that has implemented this type of throttling.

For one , you would need to own the hardware and software .

You have a lot more luck trying to prove android has been doing the same.

 

[MacRazySwe]

Yeah, not sure Apple will get away so easily on this one.

I don’t think the subsidised battery replacement is enough for people to let this one slide.

 

[itguy06]

So those folks are all OK with their phones instantly shutting off when they open Facebook?

YES. Then I'll know it's time to fix something!!!

 

[DevNull0]

Their phones aren’t that much thinner than most Android phones, though.

You're arguing in circles now.

iPhone is more popular because it's thinner
iPhone has this problem because the battery is too small to fit the thinner phone
well iPhone isn't that much thinner.

So if Android phones aren't that much thicker then:
a) Why do you think that difference in thickness will make people choose the thin iPhone over the thick Android? and
b) Why is Android able to give you a much larger battery (nearly double the capacity for most flagship models) without being much thicker?

You keep flip-flopping back and forth to always make Apple seem right even when the cases are mutually exclusive.

 

[Mac-lover3]

Maybe this will push them to maybe exert some more QC over their batteries.

Im surprised people don't sue for them putting smaller batteries in newer phones, IE the iPhone 7 Plus Vs iPhone 8 plus.

So annoying. hope they lose them all.

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

 

[Henrar]

Where are the threads with people complaining about their phones shutting off? There isn’t any because it wasn’t a problem.

Except phones weren’t shutting down.

Except they did, which can be easily verified using Google search.

Like here

 

[DevNull0]

They'll join in one year from now when the 30 - 40% reduction kicks in!

Nah, the iDefense people will use the iPhone upgrade program to get the new phone next year, not quite understanding how stupid it is that they're paying $500 a year to rent a phone while at the same time they continue to blindly defend Apple while pretending they don't understand the problem.

 

[acblue94]

You can pry my iPhone 4 from my cold dead hands!

You still own a VHS don't you? Welcome to 2018.

 

[Michael Goff]

You're arguing in circles now.

iPhone is more popular because it's thinner
iPhone has this problem because the battery is too small to fit the thinner phone
well iPhone isn't that much thinner.

So if Android phones aren't that much thicker then:
a) Why do you think that difference in thickness will make people choose the thin iPhone over the thick Android? and
b) Why is Android able to give you a much larger battery (nearly double the capacity for most flagship models) without being much thicker?

You keep flip-flopping back and forth to always make Apple seem right even when the cases are mutually exclusive.

No. I was arguing that if you sit a thin phone next to a thicker version of the same thing that the thinner version will sell.

 

[CombatCaptured]

Again: I was reacting to a comment of Leman which had nothing to do with the point you are making. But if you want to take ik totally off track I rest my case. No point in having a discussion with you.

And I’m reacting to a comment you made, you can react to comments, no one else can?
My points had to do with your statement, not off track, you’ve yet to try and discuss anything, you went straight to being evasive and dismissive and then right to “no point having ...”

I just thought it was odd that your points were your device has a replaceable battery, that the replaceable battery is so cheap and that even though you have to charge it 2x a day, you’ve yet to replace the replaceable battery with its cheap replacement.

Cheers!

 

[abbymtl]

That's just silliness. No one is okay with a phone that is randomly shutting down, but neither are most okay with their phones being forcibly SLOWED down with absolutely no explanation to the cause. Even more, many of those people INQUIRED of Apple regarding the phone performance only to be told that there was nothing wrong.

Remember VW's lawsuit about secretly altering emissions stats? Are you okay with that? What if a car company advertised a certain level of fuel performance, but as the car aged it no longer met those levels. So the next time you take your car in for an oil change, they tinker with you car and put a governor on the motor that impedes performance, but increases your mileage to their advertised standards. They don't tell you, and when you asked about a certain 'lag' as you push the accelerator, their service underwriter gets in the car, drives it, and says, "Hey, everything seems fine to me."

Are you okay with that? Consumers just want honest, upfront communication, and they are due that as a paying customer.

Well said!

 

[deanthedev]

That’s 23 lawsuits that will go nowhere.

 

[Tubamajuba]

The oldest phone this issue affects is barely past 3 years old. It also affects the 6s and 7 which is barely over a year old. Every iPhone larger than the 5/SE has an underpowered battery.

This is potentially the real issue here, if it can somehow be proven. If Apple knowingly placed batteries in phones that would quickly become incapable of providing the necessary power to the phone, they've got some monumental issues down the road.

 

[stevet]

The onus is on the plaintiffs to prove that Apple deliberately slowed down phones to force upgrades, and that the throttling led directly to people buying new phones.

actually, thats not necessarily true. They have to prove that apple's slowing down the phones led people to upgrade their slow phones.

The fact that they issued a battery program for the 6s in a limited serial number range is the denial. they had to have known they had a bigger problem.

 

[DevNull0]

Exactly right. If cars were skidding and crashing due to the promised active traction control not throttling the power to the wheels enough in certain situations, consumer protection agencies would likely require a recall so that the traction control throttling can be adjusted to a more safe level to reduce the likelihood of crashes. Your vehicle might not even be able to pass a state safety inspection unless you complied with such a recall.

If fixing the traction control involves decreasing the power of the high performance sports car we were talking about in the analogy, you better believe that carmaker is going to be sued for everything they're worth. If they sell a 300HP car and getting it street legal means they have to throttle it back to 200HP, they will be refunding the purchase price to every owner who wants it.

 

[longpath]

So let me see if I got this straight. Apple comes up with a solution to keep iOS devices with partially or fully depleted batteries from kernel panicking under heavy loads, and this is grounds for 23+ lawsuits.... Is that about right?

 

[DevNull0]

This is potentially the real issue here, if it can somehow be proven. If Apple knowingly placed batteries in phones that would quickly become incapable of providing the necessary power to the phone, they've got some monumental issues down the road.

I don't think it even has to be shown that Apple knowingly provided underpowered batteries. It's enough to convince the court they're underpowered at all and then Apple is on the hook to fix or refund the phones.
[doublepost=1515179363][/doublepost]

No. I was arguing that if you sit a thin phone next to a thicker version of the same thing that the thinner version will sell.

But then you said the Android isn't much thicker.

So then what is the point in saying getting the phones thinner justifies a smaller battery?

Circles.

 

[johnnygee]

Didn’t used to happen. They skimped on battery quality from iPhone 6 up.

My iPhone 4s was nearly worthless because it became so slow. Facebook was barely usable and the battery life sucked, even after I replaced it.