Apple Now Faces More Than 60 Class Actions Over iPhone Slowdowns, Consolidation Likely Next Month

[TiggrToo]

I don't think hard evidence is going to be difficult to come by for some claimants. I imagine it would be fairly easy with a list of Apple ID's, registered iPhone serial numbers, and battery test records to construct a comprehensive list of people who had their phone battery tested by Apple, indicated passed, and then registered a new phone to their account shortly thereafter. That list would almost certainly be admissible as parties who may have suffered a loss, and just like the iBooks conspiracy case compensation could be automatically given to the identified parties without any action on their part.

There will be another category of claimants who had their battery tested, told it was fine, and then bought an Android phone. Again, it will be pretty easy to document the date of the battery test and the date and amount of the subsequent purchase to establish the potential loss once the identified group of consumers is notified.

I would also want the records generated during the iOS 10.2 test phase that showed the number of random shutdowns and after iOS 10.2.1 was released that showed what percentage of phones were throttled.

If I were an attorney that is where I would start, with a set of records provided by Apple that would lead me to identifying as many documentable claimants as possible. If it is high enough percentage of devices I can see Apple offering a settlement where any original purchaser of an iPhone 6 or 6S is entitled to compensation.

This is why you'd be eaten up by the lawyers.

Remember, what's at play is NOT that the alternative was 'random rebooting', but that 'People where not told'.

So, one of two things was going to happen to these old devices: 'Random Reboots' or 'Slowdowns'.

Now each litigant is going to have to prove that, given that an Apple battery at the time was priced at $99, how many of them, when faced with one of those two outcomes, would have ONLY brought a new phone if the 'slowdown' was a factor.

This is why this is a veritable minefield for the litigants - they have a huge hurdle to overcome - show that they purchased a new phone ONLY because the device was throttled, but they would NOT have done so had it been rebooting at 40% battery.

Good luck with that.

Even then, they'll not get the money they paid for the new device - that'll not make them whole - it'll make them more than whole. Making them whole will be giving them the cost of the battery cost - so, the chances are, for the litigants who make it through to the final round, a MAXIMUM of a $99 check (or, more likely, an Apple Gift card to the value thereof) awaits them.

This being the case, it leaves the 'People were not told' argument. And for that, Apple have the EULA as the Ace in the pocket. Bad PR, yes. Legal - very probably.

 

[Altis]

Because there's another issue with it...?

Nope. That's how the throttling works.

Starts well into the "Healthy" state of the battery, and applies when fully charged and plugged in.
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This is why this is a veritable minefield for the litigants - they have a huge hurdle to overcome - show that they purchased a new phone ONLY because the device was throttled, but they would NOT have done so had it been rebooting at 40% battery.

Easy, considering the phone shutting off at 40% would have been a slam dunk indicator that a new battery was in order.

However, Apple deliberately removed battery info and withheld throttling information from users, and apparently their own technicians.

There are certainly enough reports of people having throttling, going to Apple to be told their battery is "Healthy" and would not replace it (neither under warranty OR even if they offered to pay), yet still throttled... and Apple employees simply advise to get a new phone if it's slow since there's no reason to even suspect the battery as causing performance issues.

 

[Blaze4G]

Care to tell me EXACTLY where I stated that? This should be interesting...

"If it hadn't been for that Geekbench measurement going viral, I doubt many customers would have noticed a huge difference. But they DEFINITELY would have noticed their phone shutting down."

Very interesting, I agree!

 

[Phonephreak]

Wrong. A defective battery can have 100% of its capacity but still cause a random shutdown.

So now an iPhone battery at 100% capacity isn’t capable of suppling enough power to prevent a crash

 

[Phonephreak]

And that was your choice. The fact that you apparently did no investigation nor did you take your iPhone to an Apple service center for diagnosis doesn’t prove Apple forced you to buy a new phone. Your logic was probably, “Oh crap, my iPhone is wonky when it gets near 50% charge. I better buy a new one.”

Well when you bring you crippled phone to Apple and they tell you your battery is fine. Do a clean install. I offer to pay for a battery. I’m told no. Apple wouldn’t sell me a battery. Why? They were hiding something.

 

[TiggrToo]

"If it hadn't been for that Geekbench measurement going viral, I doubt many customers would have noticed a huge difference. But they DEFINITELY would have noticed their phone shutting down."

FAILED - That was NOT me - it was the following post...

If it hadn't been for that Geekbench measurement going viral, I doubt many customers would have noticed a huge difference. But they DEFINITELY would have noticed their phone shutting down.

I await your apology @Blaze4G, for confusing MY post with @jayducharme's.

Very interesting, I agree!

One should be very careful about being smug - it makes the embarrassment factor so much higher when it turns out you totally missed the ball...

 

[Phonephreak]

Meaningless. You can't be (successfully) sued for that.

Still show apples true colors. All about the $$$. Not the customer snymore

 

[TiggrToo]

So now an iPhone battery at 100% capacity isn’t capable of suppling enough power to prevent a crash

It's not charge - it's impedance - when a battery chemically ages, it's impedance increases. A battery with high impedance may not be able to provide enough 'burst' power when certain applications request it (the voltage drop will be significant enough), thus resulting in a temporary loss of power, and a possible sudden shutdown.

 

[christophermdia]

Only in America! Bogging down our legal system because Apple made system processes easier to handle a free upgrade. I hope Apple will replace everyone’s battery ... and charge for future iOS upgrades. New features should only come with new phones. It’s only fair ...

 

[JosephAW]

It's time to drop the battery and use a fuel cell for 20+ hours of use.

 

[Bawstun]

“Keep in mind that Apple is not permanently or persistently slowing down older iPhones. Even if your iPhone is affected, the performance limitations only happen intermittently, and only when the device is completing demanding tasks.“

—————-

Stop saying this. It isn’t true. Multiple people have shared screenshots of an iPhone at 100% charge, connected to a wall charging, doing absolutely nothing and are still throttled.

 

[I7guy]

“Keep in mind that Apple is not permanently or persistently slowing down older iPhones. Even if your iPhone is affected, the performance limitations only happen intermittently, and only when the device is completing demanding tasks.“

—————-

Stop saying this. It isn’t true. Multiple people have shared screenshots of an iPhone at 100% charge, connected to a wall charging, doing absolutely nothing and are still throttled.

On the other hand this is not an absolute truism. Your battery has had to deteriorate first. With 11.3 that is now anyway a thing of the past.

 

[netslacker]

Anyone that believes Apple had your best interest in mind when they rolled out throttling is naive. I have a 6S that became obviously slow after I installed iOS 11 last fall. It really bugged. CPU DasherX never once showed the CPU running at anything higher than 1200mhz (most commonly at 911 or 600mhz) despite my repeated attempts to get it higher (playing games, whatever). Even Geekbench4 only showed about 1/2 of performance at peak.

When the battery debacle came about I was very intrigued but bought into Apple's "excuse" and figured I needed a battery replacement. I was getting ready to do the replacement but I had Apple analyze the phone beforehand and they said it's fine. It's not being throttled. Battery replacement not needed. So, I didn't do it. ugh. Still dealing with a phone that jittered on fast app switching or page scrolls and painfully slow app loads and was obviously slower that my wife's SE (same processor but hers always read the correct cpu speed) I gave up and lost interest in pursuing it further. There's more to life than phones.

Fast forward to iOS 11.3 public beta. WHATTAYAKNOW.... install the public beta which adds the battery health check and removes all throttling and now the phone always reads 1800 or 1848mhz and is noticeably much faster. Oddly, the battery health says it's good, 92%. So, what gives? Clearly throttled for no reason despite having a perfectly fine battery.

Sorry, but for those of you naysayers that don't believe there's an issue here or believe Apple can do no harm my case proves to me that Apple was doing something and it wasn't completely in my best interest. I find it very hard to believe that my case is unique and that massive amounts of phones aren't being throttled despite having perfectly fine batteries. Mine was.

 

[john123]

Agree they should be consolidated. Then, they should be dismissed a frivolous.

Love Apple much?

 

[Tech198]

Erase all content & settings firs on iOS

We're the type of people who load up our Windows PC's full of malware, complain that their slow, and do nothing to resolve it.

Its unthinkable to the length users will go to to put the blame on Apple.

 

[skinned66]

Anecdotally my phone is at 516 days of ownership and 495 cycles and my battery is 94%. Is that better than expected? About par? Or worse?

I really cant say for certain obviously, I only have personal experience to go by. But based on your cycle count I think you're doing okay. Each cycle increases the wear more than the last but maybe you'll end up being better off than I am in 70 or so cycles. I had a precipitous drop on my battery between 519 and 526 of around 12% only to have it creep up again 8% after the next full cycle a week later. It's been going down ever since. I'd be interested to hear if you had a similar experience around that zone.

 

[deanthedev]

So now an iPhone battery at 100% capacity isn’t capable of suppling enough power to prevent a crash

Not what I said.

A battery can be defective yet still have 100% capacity. Batteries can have numerous different faults. A fault in one area doesn’t mean that other areas are also faulty.

 

[TiggrToo]

Anyone that believes Apple had your best interest in mind when they rolled out throttling is naive. I have a 6S that became obviously slow after I installed iOS 11 last fall. It really bugged. CPU DasherX never once showed the CPU running at anything higher than 1200mhz (most commonly at 911 or 600mhz) despite my repeated attempts to get it higher (playing games, whatever). Even Geekbench4 only showed about 1/2 of performance at peak.

When the battery debacle came about I was very intrigued but bought into Apple's "excuse" and figured I needed a battery replacement. I was getting ready to do the replacement but I had Apple analyze the phone beforehand and they said it's fine. It's not being throttled. Battery replacement not needed. So, I didn't do it. ugh. Still dealing with a phone that jittered on fast app switching or page scrolls and painfully slow app loads and was obviously slower that my wife's SE (same processor but hers always read the correct cpu speed) I gave up and lost interest in pursuing it further. There's more to life than phones.

Fast forward to iOS 11.3 public beta. WHATTAYAKNOW.... install the public beta which adds the battery health check and removes all throttling and now the phone always reads 1800 or 1848mhz and is noticeably much faster. Oddly, the battery health says it's good, 92%. So, what gives? Clearly throttled for no reason despite having a perfectly fine battery.

Sorry, but for those of you naysayers that don't believe there's an issue here or believe Apple can do no harm my case proves to me that Apple was doing something and it wasn't completely in my best interest. I find it very hard to believe that my case is unique and that massive amounts of phones aren't being throttled despite having perfectly fine batteries. Mine was.

Come back to us in a around abouts a couple of months after you've had several phone shutdowns after firing up something like Apple Maps or Waze...

 

[Nunyabinez]

Did you have a device that could experience an unexpected shutdown and possible data corruption if its workload got too demanding 50 years ago?

You can't have it both ways. The phone continues to request power as if the battery hasn't aged and occasionally shuts down unexpectedly, or it smooths instantaneous peaks in power needs by throttling the device's hardware during peak workloads to avoid those shutdowns.

Those are the only two options here. Both are unpopular but Apple made a bet on which would be more unpopular. Had they communicated it more clearly, none of this would be an issue.

Turns out users experiencing data corruption due to these unexpected shutdowns is a bit worse than people whining about their 3-year-old phones being slow on a current operating system.

What about the option of not introducing a CPU that current battery technology can't support. The Apple apologists on MacRumors are ridiculous on this issue.

And apparently this was a surprise to Apple as well or they would have designed the OS with this throttling when the phone released.

But instead they throttled the phone, and removed the ability of users to see what they were doing. That shows consciousness of guilt.

I'm sure that will be a part of this case when the plaintiffs point out that Apple obfuscated what they were doing. So claiming they were just trying to help people while hiding what they were doing is not going to play well.

 

[MiamiC70]

I think Apple will be fined big time and will have to make restitution to millions of users.

The "fix" was made to avoid having to recall millions of iPhones that were defective.

A phone that crashes because the battery is aging is a defect in design and/or manufacturing.

That was mistake number 1.

Then they tried to cover up the defect by slipping some software that prevented it by reducing performance.

That was mistake 2.

Then they didn't tell anyone about mistake 1 or 2.

That was mistake 3.

No way they are coming out of this unscathed.

This is the correct assessment. I’ll wait for my compensation

 

[iName]

I think it's more about them not telling anyone they slowed down people's devices.

I understand that but batteries are not meant to last forever. Every battery have a lifespan, there’s no battery in the world that simply works perfectly forever and ever and that’s why people are suing. They think the device they’ve been using and abusing for 2+ years should work the same since the day they purchased it without any type of maintenance.

 

[I7guy]

Love Apple much?

It's not about loving apple or hating apple. It's about what may be fair compensation to those who believe they are aggrieved. Compensation could be $0 or it could be more than $0. Either way, if this isn't dismissed and goes to trial, we will all have to wait for the outcome.

Either way we are entitled to our opinions and shall see how the case ultimately turns out.

 

[jonblatho]

What about the option of not introducing a CPU that current battery technology can't support. The Apple apologists on MacRumors are ridiculous on this issue.

And apparently this was a surprise to Apple as well or they would have designed the OS with this throttling when the phone released.

But instead they throttled the phone, and removed the ability of users to see what they were doing. That shows consciousness of guilt.

I'm sure that will be a part of this case when the plaintiffs point out that Apple obfuscated what they were doing. So claiming they were just trying to help people while hiding what they were doing is not going to play well.

At what point did Apple ever expose such information to the user for it to be removed? (You don't have to answer. iOS 11.3 marks the first time ever that Apple has exposed information on battery capacity themselves in Settings.)

They have, for a long time, allowed users to see this information through third-party apps. Same goes for the processor's clock speed, though they don't expose that in Settings in iOS 11.3. To my knowledge, users could always download Geekbench. They've never advertised iPhones' clock speed or battery capacity (or any specific level of performance) at the time of purchase, so that alone knocks out a lot of civil cases.

Battery technology can support the CPU except in peak workloads as a battery ages, which is why Apple sets a cap on how hard the phone is able to work, thereby setting a limit on power needs, thereby avoiding unexpected shutdowns. Important point: the "slowdowns" affect only peak workloads. It doesn't affect switching between apps or the Control Center animation, sorry. If that's your complaint, your phone's just old.

They could put batteries in with higher voltages, but they'd still decline eventually and it'd mean shorter battery life. Holding the energy stored in the battery constant (W·h), higher voltage (V) means less charge (mA·h).

Doing some math on the iPhone X battery, then, we see that increasing the 10.35 W·h battery's voltage from 3.81 V to 4 V drops the charge by about 120 mA·h (about 5%). You’d get shorter battery life across the board but…the voltage would take a little bit longer to decline to where the shutdowns would begin. Huge win, except it's not because then you'd probably be whining about wanting longer battery life.

I've said multiple times that Apple should have been more transparent on this, but not being transparent isn't something that'll lead to a successful class-action suit. It's easy to sue Apple, but it's hard to see the inside of a courtroom doing so and far harder still to win. Sorry if you're hoping to score all of 37 cents on a class-action settlement because it's not happening.

 

[trifid]

Anyone that believes Apple had your best interest in mind when they rolled out throttling is naive. I have a 6S that became obviously slow after I installed iOS 11 last fall. It really bugged. CPU DasherX never once showed the CPU running at anything higher than 1200mhz (most commonly at 911 or 600mhz) despite my repeated attempts to get it higher (playing games, whatever). Even Geekbench4 only showed about 1/2 of performance at peak.

When the battery debacle came about I was very intrigued but bought into Apple's "excuse" and figured I needed a battery replacement. I was getting ready to do the replacement but I had Apple analyze the phone beforehand and they said it's fine. It's not being throttled. Battery replacement not needed. So, I didn't do it. ugh. Still dealing with a phone that jittered on fast app switching or page scrolls and painfully slow app loads and was obviously slower that my wife's SE (same processor but hers always read the correct cpu speed) I gave up and lost interest in pursuing it further. There's more to life than phones.

Fast forward to iOS 11.3 public beta. WHATTAYAKNOW.... install the public beta which adds the battery health check and removes all throttling and now the phone always reads 1800 or 1848mhz and is noticeably much faster. Oddly, the battery health says it's good, 92%. So, what gives? Clearly throttled for no reason despite having a perfectly fine battery.

Sorry, but for those of you naysayers that don't believe there's an issue here or believe Apple can do no harm my case proves to me that Apple was doing something and it wasn't completely in my best interest. I find it very hard to believe that my case is unique and that massive amounts of phones aren't being throttled despite having perfectly fine batteries. Mine was.

I had the same experience, and same 911mhz or 600mhz on my SE, and the throttling was permanent, it was not 'temporary' like Apple and its apologists try to justify and sell the amazing throttling. Clock speed never went up. My battery had only about 330 cycles. The phone was so slow I was hoping Apple would release a new SE model thinking iOS11 had made all SE phones obsolete already.

Once I changed the battery, clock went immediately up to 1800-1848mhz and NEVER ever goes down.

Phone is mileages more usable now, I'm no longer desperate to get a new SE.

There is definitely something wrong with what Apple did, I hope the 60 lawsuits can uncover the truth.
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Battery technology can support the CPU except in peak workloads as a battery ages, which is why Apple sets a cap on how hard the phone is able to work, thereby setting a limit on power needs, thereby avoiding unexpected shutdowns. Important point: the "slowdowns" affect only peak workloads. It doesn't affect switching between apps or the Control Center animation, sorry. If that's your complaint, your phone's just old.

Unfortunately this sounds great and it's what Apple wants you to believe but it's not what's happening in reality, like I said in my post the way Apple is doing the throttling, it reduces clock speed permanently for all tasks, in my case the phone was entirely operating between 600-911mhz instead of the normal 1800-1848mhz. This made the phone very slow for simple things like swiping down to search via spotlight, launching apps, scrolling, multi-tasking etc.

This is not what the future of battery/smartphones should be like, so trying to justify it is wrong. In fact there is better battery technology available that degrades far less than what Apple is currently using.

 

[TrowaNY]

Keep in mind that Apple is not permanently or persistently slowing down older iPhones. Even if your iPhone is affected, the performance limitations only happen intermittently, and only when the device is completing demanding tasks.

So pretty much whenever you were using it