Apple's Plan to Pay $500 Million to Settle Lawsuit Over 'Secretly Throttling' Older iPhones Gets Preliminary Approval

[ani4ani]

On the other hand, I think it’s naive of people to believe that Apple could think they could fleece their customers and get away with it.

They continually get away with it; they have the most forgiving customer base on the planet.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news; I believe this is modus operanadi for Apple, if its not this type of approach, it is the years of denying issues exist, charging their customers extroidinary amounts of money for "waranty claims" which are really latent defects. When they finally acknowledge an issue exists, it is years down the line when the majority have folks have either disposed of, replaced or paid for the fix themselves; the rest who can be bothered get the fix for "free," the world gushes about what a wonderful company they are; rinse and repeat.

 

[ani4ani]

...until your phone died and you’d complain Apple built phones to expire and there would be a class action lawsuit for that.

I agree they should have been forthright about it... but please don’t claim you’d prefer a phone to die after a couple (even a few) years. My wife got 6 years out of here 5s. I think pushing people onto new phones is the last thing Apple was doing in this.
But that’s just me.

So here it it, the 5S was an older phone than the 6 etc, and would by fact have acquired a greater battery degredation and yet that phone was not shutting down or being slowed down in software and indeed no phones before the "6 generation" had needed this software update.

For interest, I purchased a refurbished 6S around 13 months ago [I have just traded it in for an A71], but when I received it, it had 99% battery capacity [as you would expect]. I never implemented the option to slow the phone down, but at the same time, I never ever had a shutdown either. When it was sent to Samsung as part of the trade-in deal, the battery capacity was 72%. So basically, with Apple's software games, that phone would have been "slowed down" within one year of a brand new battery. The reality is, the phone was designed with an under-sized battery and Apple tried to use software [secretly] to overcome that fact. It is no coincidence in my view that the iphone 7 had a 15% bigger battery despite having a more efficient processor?

 

[Alenore]

And still to this day, people are alarmingly misinformed about this simple issue.

It's not just having the battery die a little earlier. Either the phone randomly powers down at any battery level under sudden loads (like launching an app) since the aged battery can't sustain voltage spikes like it could 500 cycles prior, or it throttles back slightly to allow for you to not lose everything you were doing and 90 seconds to reboot. Apple chose not to allow the phone to power off. You've got the choice now, I hope you're now using it with the setting in the "will randomly turn off" position.

And yet, in all my years using phones and working on app dev, I've never had a device powering down because of battery drain. I still use a Blackberry Bold (2009), a Blackberry Z10 (2013), iPod touch 5 (2012), Xperia Z1 (2013) almost every week at work to maintain old apps / websites compatibility on legacy devices.
- Battery dying super fast? Yep!
- Battery dying at 25% instead of 0%? Yep!
- Phone shutting down because RAM usage is too high and causes issues on the OS? Yep!
- Phone shutting down because battery is unable to follow? Nope!

 

[Hieveryone]

It's a Drop in the Bucket of what it should be !

I agree.

Apple May have made billions from customer upgrades due to slow iPhones

Then gets caught slowing iphones

Pays a nominal fee (for them)

Savvy business move no?

If so, Good For them, bad for us

 

[sofila]

You were able to replace iPhone degraded battery even before the discounted program. Stop spreading lies.
It WAS fundamentally a communication issue.

No. It is not true. Apple employees at the desk kept on refusing replacements "because our tests say it is not degraded enough. You may want to buy a new iPhone instead". It happened to me and several people I know. It happened to users on this forum. It happened to users on other forums. You may point out it is "anecdotal" but you may want to stop calling it a lie. Sounds offending.

 

[IG88]

great engineering feature that Apple just wasn't forthcoming enough with.

Great engineering feature? You seem to be under the impression that throttling was something new or novel at that time?

People were going to Apple stores and telling them their phone was noticeably slower. No battery replacements were offered, the only solution was new phone.

In your eyes, that's Apple being "just wasn't forthcoming enough."

Really don't consider myself a fanboy..

Mkay.

 

[k1121j]

I have frequent gripes and a love/hate relationship with Apple. Really don't consider myself a fanboy....but this is one of those things where this was actually a great engineering feature that Apple just wasn't forthcoming enough with. Most phones would just start flaking out when their batteries start to degrade....this actually allows you to get much longer life out of a battery by compromising cpu voltage to prevent failure. The huge push to accuse Apple of malice on this is a perfect example of the scourge that is ignorant populism.

it would have been a great feature if it was not paired with Apple denying battery replacements to those who wanted to pay for them. This happened to me on multiple phones.

 

[bobob]

No. It is not true. Apple employees at the desk kept on refusing replacements "because our tests say it is not degraded enough. You may want to buy a new iPhone instead". It happened to me and several people I know. It happened to users on this forum. It happened to users on other forums.

So, there are users with paper work verifying it? Case solved.

 

[IG88]

No. It is not true. Apple employees at the desk kept on refusing replacements "because our tests say it is not degraded enough. You may want to buy a new iPhone instead". It happened to me and several people I know. It happened to users on this forum. It happened to users on other forums. You may point out it is "anecdotal" but you may want to stop calling it a lie. Sounds offending.

Yeah. Apple's "tests" somehow magically missed that the CPU was throttling because of the battery. Yet we have people apologizing for Apple, saying nah it wasnt malice, they just forgot to mention the throttling, and oh yeah great engineering feat lol.

 

[wood1208]

Apple, learn. Doesn't get paid be nice !! iPhone behaviour when gets older is not different than any other phones on market. Just put in writing and give customer choice in "settings" to slow it down or not to extend battery life.

 

[PortoMavericks]

While Qualcomm uses a technology called aSMP embedded on the Snapdragon, probably since 2013, Apple had to throttle on the software side because the A Series was lacking a kind of advanced controller on the system until the A9 came out with the iPhone 6s.

I’m sorry, but no, this feature is not a “great thing”, it’s just a mitigation of an issue that they couldn’t solve because of hardware.

aSMP:

Power vs. Performance Management of the CPU | Qualcomm

This blog installment continues our series on smartphone power and dives deeper into the power and performance management of Krait CPUs inside Snapdragon processors.

www.qualcomm.com

 

[magicschoolbus]

Interesting - I have had two iPhone 6, two 6s, a 7 and a 7 plus. The battery on the 6s was the worst.

The 6 and 6s had the worst power management. Random shutdowns were notorious on those models.

 

[Picard J.L.]

Two sentences missing from the release notes cost them $500 Million. Probably should learn a lesson from that.

Them? I pretty sure that Apple customers will pay or that, not Apple.

 

[flehman]

Would someone who owned more than one of the affected phones stand to receive multiple $25 payouts? In other words are the payments one per affected device or one per affected user?

 

[sracer]

I have frequent gripes and a love/hate relationship with Apple. Really don't consider myself a fanboy....but this is one of those things where this was actually a great engineering feature that Apple just wasn't forthcoming enough with. Most phones would just start flaking out when their batteries start to degrade....this actually allows you to get much longer life out of a battery by compromising cpu voltage to prevent failure. The huge push to accuse Apple of malice on this is a perfect example of the scourge that is ignorant populism.

This has nothing to do with ignorant populism. What you are missing is that Apple store employees didn't explain to customers that replacing a battery would restore the phone to its original performance. Instead, they recommended to the customer that they buy a new phone.

 

[617660]

All completely untrue.

And you know the truth?

 

[Randy Darnell]

I have frequent gripes and a love/hate relationship with Apple. Really don't consider myself a fanboy....but this is one of those things where this was actually a great engineering feature that Apple just wasn't forthcoming enough with. Most phones would just start flaking out when their batteries start to degrade....this actually allows you to get much longer life out of a battery by compromising cpu voltage to prevent failure. The huge push to accuse Apple of malice on this is a perfect example of the scourge that is ignorant populism.

this is the dumbest logic I've ever heard. since when is it ok for a company to basically downgrade your phone just because they want to? the fact you agree with letting them do it is the perfect example of scourge that is ignorant populism.
would it be ok if GM and Ford decided to make your car get less performance and worse fuel economy when they release a new car? that's basically what you are defending here.

 

[I7guy]

They continually get away with it; they have the most forgiving customer base on the planet.

You're correct, they continually screw over their forgiving customers, who continually beg for more. /s That's a sure-fire recipe for success for any company. Out of the hundreds of millions of customers, most of these customers must be forgiving.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news; I believe this is modus operanadi for Apple, if its not this type of approach, it is the years of denying issues exist, charging their customers extroidinary amounts of money for "waranty claims" which are really latent defects. When they finally acknowledge an issue exists, it is years down the line when the majority have folks have either disposed of, replaced or paid for the fix themselves; the rest who can be bothered get the fix for "free," the world gushes about what a wonderful company they are; rinse and repeat.

Hey if this is the way Apple operates and their customers are forgiving of being screwed over and don't mind forking over money, a few lawsuits here and there, a few billion here and there and life goes on. Who are we to complain? There are alternatives for those who don't.

 

[needsomecoffee]

Everyone seems to forget: Apple knowingly RIGGED the Genius battery test software to avoid offering battery replacements. Undoubtedly there was an email found in discovery that revealed this.

 

[I7guy]

...

• We end up with these articles and people still defend it as innocent and altruistic behaviour on the part of Apple.

It's really tough to understand who is more out of touch with reality sometimes. People who believe screwing the customer is a viable business model, or people who believe Apple customers are mindless drones who believe everything they are feed in adverts and on-line.

That this could be an internal screw-up by apple, is not a possibility in some people's mind...what happened in this is case was to screw the customer and sell more phones must be the way apple planned.

 

[nicho]

This was specifically the statement made by Tim Cook after the issue broke on an investor call, i.e. folks with 6 & 6S phones were taken advantage of the battery replacement program rather than buying new phones. Given the option had not existed before, their option by implication before that was replacing their phones instead.

Again... it's a bit "chicken or egg" but feel free to blindly ignore other factors even after they've been highlighter and push an agenda.

People with a 6 or 6S were finding their phones to be perfectly capable and therefore not wanting to buy a 7 because it wasn't enough of an upgrade (ie there wasn't enough value in buying one) when balanced against a $29 battery replacement. The drop in sales wasn't directly correlated with people fixing their throttling issues - there would also be large numbers who were formerly unaware that this was even an option, and also people who buy their devices and hold them for resale - $99 would probably be too much to be worth holding on to the phone for another year (as the value would drop further) but $29 would tip the value proposition.

Personally, I had an iPhone 7 with a knackered battery. For the price of battery replacement, it was a no-brainer to take advantage and then sell it cheaply to a family member (who uses it to this day) to replace their iphone 5 which was also on its last legs. They were ready to purchase a new phone, but still haven't. Sale lost, but in no way related to throttling.
[automerge]1589638929[/automerge]

Undoubtedly there was an email found in discovery that revealed this.

I doubt it, unless you can show that evidence.
[automerge]1589639033[/automerge]

And you know the truth?

Perhaps you should write a book and fill it with your uncited claims.

You could call it (If) iDid It

 

[HVDynamo]

Have any of you had an old iPhone with a battery on its last leg? I have, and when I used the camera app, the performance drew so heavily on the battery they regardless of the charge level, the phone would often just shut off immediately. What Apple was doing with this “slowing down” was actually to prevent this sort of random shutdown. I wouldn’t consider what Apple did to be deceptive or an underhanded tactic to get people to buy new phones. The big mistake was when Tim Cook treated the revelation as if it was something to ask for forgiveness for. What he should have done instead of apologizing is have the PR team release a YouTube video explaining what happens with batteries that are on their last leg and how they cause random shutdowns. It’s Cook’s fault that Apple has coughed up so much cash over this. If he would have taken a different tactic and stance and stayed firm that the software was doing what was in the best interest of the customer to begin with, then none of these lawsuits would have succeeded.

I agree. This misstep was not the throttling itself as that extends the useful life of the phone since a slow phone is still more usable than a phone that shuts off randomly. So from an Engineering standpoint they made the right decision. But where they fell short is notifying the user when that happens. If something as critical as performance is throttled or reduced due to an internal situation, that is a case where the user should be notified. I like the PR idea to train people how batteries work and degrade over time.

 

[biffuz]

Any info on how other manufacturers deal with the issue of ageing batteries?
Do they warn the user?
Do they throttle the CPU down, leading people to believe the phone is old and needs to be replaced?
Do they let the phone crash, leading people to believe it's faulty and needs to be replaced?

 

[HVDynamo]

This was specifically the statement made by Tim Cook after the issue broke on an investor call, i.e. folks with 6 & 6S phones were taken advantage of the battery replacement program rather than buying new phones. Given the option had not existed before, their option by implication before that was replacing their phones instead.

So from my situation, I did take advantage of the battery replacement program rather than buying a new phone. But that is what my plan was anyways, so I really only saved money because of the reduced price of the battery replacement. But that said Apple still got that money from me as if it hadn't been for that reduced price I would have ordered a kit from iFixit and replaced it myself as I have done in the past. But I am likely an outlier in this. So in my case, Apple got more money from me due to this situation.

 

[Osamede]

Apple in March agreed to pay $500 million to settle a class action lawsuit that accused the company of "secretly throttling" older iPhone models, and now the settlement has been preliminarily approved by a judge.

According to Law360, U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila in a Zoom hearing provided preliminary approval but said that he wants to extend the final approval deadlines due to the ongoing health crisis. Apple's lawyers have been instructed to propose a new date for a settlement approval hearing that will take place sometime in December.

If the settlement is approved, it will put an end to dozens of lawsuits that were levied against Apple and ultimately consolidated into one class-action suit in May 2018. The lawsuits were filed against Apple after Apple confirmed that it introduced software to throttle the maximum performance of some older iPhone models with chemically aged batteries no longer capable of supporting full power to prevent these devices from shutting down unexpectedly.

Apple 2017 released iOS 10.2.1 with performance management software that had the throttling built in, but made little mention of the change in the software's release notes. The throttling was discovered by Primate Labs founder John Poole when he noticed lower than expected benchmark scores, and there was a major public outcry after it was discovered Apple was limiting performance.

Apple apologized for its lack of communication and ultimately launched a battery repair program that dropped the price of battery replacements to $29 through the end of 2018. Because the throttling kicks in when an iPhone has a degraded battery, a battery replacement effectively fixes the issue.

Apple in iOS 11.3 introduced a new feature that allows users to see the current health of their batteries, and it turned off the performance management feature by default until an unexpected shutdown occurs. Though agreeing to settle the case, Apple has maintained that it did nothing wrong legally.

If approved, the settlement will provide every affected iPhone user in the class with $25. The amount could increase or decrease somewhat depending on legal fees and the aggregate value of the approved claims. If the payouts, attorney fees, and expenses don't add up to at least $310 million, class members could receive up to $500 apiece until that minimum is reached.

Apple has email addresses for most class members, so attorneys for both sides believe there will be a high claims rate.

The lawsuit includes all former or current U.S. iPhone owners that have the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, 7, 7 Plus, and SE, running either iOS 10.2.1 or later or iOS 11.2 or later, and who ran these versions of iOS prior to December 21, 2017.

Article Link: Apple's Plan to Pay $500 Million to Settle Lawsuit Over 'Secretly Throttling' Older iPhones Gets Preliminary Approval

Dear journalist, it’s called a “video” hearing not Zoom, Facetine, Skype or any other brand name.