I just noticed that my iPhone 4S has split open due to the battery swelling. Might be time to part ways.
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Apple Reaches Settlement to Pay $15 to Some iPhone 4S Owners Who Experienced Buggy Performance After iOS 9 Update
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I don't think it's as impossible as you imply, especially nowadays. The 2016 SE and 6s are blazing fast on their 6th and 7th iOS versions compared to the 4S with iOS 9 which was only its 5th.
I had this same problem with my 4s but it was iOS 8 that did it. It ran great with iOS7. I actually thought it was slightly better (but still poor) with iOS 9 compared to iOS 8.
The iPhone 4S was pre battery throttle. This is about general poor performance regardless of battery. The thing you're talking about was introduced on iPhone 6.
What do you think Apple was “trying to do”? They were trying to extend the hardware to new features.
The lesson most companies would take from this is…don’t update old hardware.
I never meant to imply that it was impossible. But why bother if there is some level of degradation and people will use that as an opportunity to sue.
That's always going to be Apple's choice as they weigh pros and cons regarding profits versus customer experiences versus reputation versus potential legal consequences, etc.
It appears this case was more about deceptive marketing/advertising which Apple can easily "adjust" in the future without having to change their practice regarding support of older devices.
Apple (and other companies) can still do what they want regarding older devices. It appears this case was more about deceptive marketing/advertising which Apple can easily "adjust" in the future without having to change their practice regarding support of older devices.
So if you bought a new iPhone today and three years from now Apple pushes on you an iOS update that bricks your phone you would be OK with that? Just C’est la vie.
I mean the iPhone 4 was practically unusable as early as ios6. The leap in processing power from 4 to 4s was so huge, yet they couldn’t be bothered to give the 4 a version of io6 that it could reasonably run. Where’s the settlement money for that?
slowed down / throttled ≠ bricked
In fact, the whole point of the throttling was to AVOID the phone becoming unusable do to power draw spikes.
Cool now do iOS 13, 14, and 15 next. Bricking devices, making safari unusable due to massive memory leaks in 13. Messages keyboard that would not work when launching the app in iOS 14 that affected every person I knew on the software. Now we have iOS 15 with all sorts of random little bugs. Safari tabs crashing, frequently visted sites not working.
$20 million settlement while they made billions on iPhone 5 sales from disgruntled 4S users.
But hey, we get $15 seven years later
But hey, we get $15 seven years later
There should be some cutoff for attorneys' fees in cases like this. Even if it's "only" $1 or $2 million - plenty of class action lawyers would find it worth their while to litigate, while most of the money would actually go to the litigants.
This would garner more results if it was just a bad publicity campaign. Asking for money mostly the lawyers get is a waste when forcing Apple to change bad public opinion is the way to go. Apple isnt going to avoid doing this again if it didnt cost them very much to do it in the first place. But having your customers lose confidence in you means they have to try harder to win them back. That is more effective. It does look like they are doing something about that image by giving the outdated iPhone SE design the fastest chip available. I don't think they would have gone that far if not for their reputation of ripping off old users with unoptimized updates. They certainly don't bother updating any of the other outdated phones they still sell as new. But at least you have one option to keep up speed wise without buying the flagship every time. Which was a real problem back when Apples way of getting you to upgrade was making your phone terrible to use over time.
The slowdown was a byproduct of a more advanced operating system with more advanced features that wasn't optimized for the hardware of the 4S. So yeah, old devices are subject to limitations as technology progresses. The alternative is to not service those phones, but then everyone would complain about that. I'd rather have a "slow" phone that has the latest updates (security, features, etc.) than be left behind completely after a couple years. I say this as someone with an almost 5-year old iPhone 8 running the latest and greatest iOS 15 release. Is my phone slower than it used to be. Yes! But I don't see how I'm injured in this scenario. It's unreasonable to expect a phone to be continually supported with updates and also never see any performance loss as new features and technologies are added.
