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

[617660]

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.

I am being screwed by not having the ability to switch photo/camera resolution straight from the camera app. Instead any iPhones other than iPhone 11, even with the latest iOS 13 update, still need to go into setting to change the resolution.

Tell me any plausible reason why my A12 chip in XS can't handle this?

 

[HVDynamo]

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?

You are missing the reason why the issue surfaced to begin with. CPU performance increase means more power draw at peak loads. That increased power draw can 1. wear the battery faster, and 2. draw more from the battery than it can handle after it ages. The power requirements for the A7 and earlier weren't as high as they became with the A8 and forward. Since this was the case your useful life out of the battery is greatly increased because you aren't stressing it nearly as hard. The moment we moved to the 6 and forward, the screens got larger, and the processor got more demanding to a point where the combined power draw of everything began pushing the limit of the battery. Pushing the limit of the battery kills the battery faster. Clearly this change wasn't anticipated and was only discovered after people have had the phones for a while and the batteries begin to age. Then the engineering solution was to throttle to keep the phones from shutting down on people. Then they didn't tell people. The fact that they didn't tell people is where I think people have the most right to be upset about this. But the engineering solution was the right decision. In newer phones now they have (hopefully) redesigned things to remove the issue with battery degradation entirely. Since the phones have gotten a little bigger since then and so have the batteries, they can support higher peak current without stressing them into an early failure. (Battery physical size is directly relatable here).

To sum up, it was a miss in design engineering of the 6/6S (undersized battery as you suggest), and the fix made the bad stuff less bad, but they didn't tell anyone what was happening, and that's the problem I have with it.

 

[dazz87]

That teenager did a number on apple didn’t he.......

 

[I7guy]

... Instead, they recommended to the customer that they buy a new phone.

Maybe some genius' did say that. But in my anecdotal case, when we brought the iphone 7 into the store because it was acting wonky, we wound up with a free battery replacement.

Getting the advice to buy a new phone just because makes no sense to me and I would question it just as much as being told to buy a new car because the windshield wipers needed replacement.

Now, if I wanted a new phone and this was just the tipping point....
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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?

Don't know about the latest android release, but a web search seems to show, at least anecdotally, Android phones (at least prior to the latest releases) just power down. What is he mindset when that happens? Unless it's posted on the internet, we don't know.

 

[I7guy]

I am being screwed by not having the ability to switch photo/camera resolution straight from the camera app. Instead any iPhones other than iPhone 11, even with the latest iOS 13 update, still need to go into setting to change the resolution.

Tell me any plausible reason why my A12 chip in XS can't handle this?

That is one way to look at it, being "screwed". The other way is that apple isn't supporting a feature/function that you want. Why? I don't know and don't know who can answer, except an apple insider. Maybe there is a technical reason, maybe a marketing reason.

 

[dogslobber]

I might use this to buy another iPhone!

 

[Phone Junky]

Maybe some genius' did say that. But in my anecdotal case, when we brought the iphone 7 into the store because it was acting wonky, we wound up with a free battery replacement.

Curious, did they test the battery and did it show it needed serviced? Some people claim that, before this big controversy started, when trying to get a new battery at an Apple store, if their test showed the battery was OK, they would refuse to change the battery.

 

[ignatius345]

I agree. But in the end I’m happy this happened. Every time Apple does something wrong, they react correcting the policy. And now Apple’s battery policy is great (iOS health status, more affordable in store replacement, bigger batteries).
I’d like to see something similar happens to other idiotic choices like soldered RAM and SSD and the lack of a decent VGA in Mac...

I'd like upgradable RAM and SSD as well, but there's nothing legally wrong with selling a Mac that has non-upgradable components, as long as the customer is aware of that fact up front. We all know the deal with that when we buy them (unfortunately).

I do agree it's a bad, anti-environmental move to seal Macs up this way.

 

[617660]

That is one way to look at it, being "screwed". The other way is that apple isn't supporting a feature/function that you want. Why? I don't know and don't know who can answer, except an apple insider. Maybe there is a technical reason, maybe a marketing reason.

What technical reason could there be? They don't mention this in marketing either.

Not supporting a feature for no good reason = "Screwed"

 

[ipponrg]

...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.

Keyword that you are missing is “battery” not the phone. If battery dies, it tells me I need to replace the battery or phone. If phone dies, it means I need to replace the phone.

Hope you understand the difference

 

[I7guy]

What technical reason could there be? They don't mention this in marketing either.

Not supporting a feature for no good reason = "Screwed"

We, who are discussing this, don't know the real reason, so I guess the bottom line is "screwed" for those who view this as an essential feature.
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...
Hope you understand the difference

With the vast number of employees in the apple store across all stores and scenarios, maybe some were told that. But that is not what happened to me. The battery on my 6s and iphone 7 were replaced without the "get a new phone" sales pitch.

And granted there was a settlement for the plantiffs, but it doesn't seem like a lot of information is forthcoming out of this. Maybe more in the future.

I believe I may have gotten some email about this, but I thought it was phishing so I didn't bother replying. And today, I don't really care as I thought I was treated fairly.

 

[617660]

We, who are discussing this, don't know the real reason, so I guess the bottom line is "screwed" for those who view this as an essential feature.
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We are discussing this because you said and I quote here:

"...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..."

I simply brought up the camera resolution switching feature to show Apple has the intention and the motivation to deprive customer with older devices.

The missing camera resolution switch on older iPhone is not an internal screw-up by Apple. And I know for a fact it's not just in "my" mind.

 

[falainber]

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.

"Device randomly powering down at any battery level" is a design flaw. Apple was happy to pay for "secretly throttling". The right remedy should have been a total recall of the poorly designed models.

 

[Metrosey]

I bet we won't see any of it

 

[I7guy]

"Device randomly powering down at any battery level" is a design flaw. Apple was happy to pay for "secretly throttling". The right remedy should have been a total recall of the poorly designed models.

Same for android? Right?

 

[falainber]

Same for android? Right?

It would be if there were Android smartphones that were randomly shutting down at 40% remaining charge with 80+% of battery capacity. Android vendors used larger batteries and processors with lower peak power draw.

 

[Rainshadow]

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?

I’m not pointing to the fact the 5 wasn’t slowing down. I meant to say they gave something like 5 years of software updates for a device.

I never had a or 6s, but I had a 7 for 3 years. Never had any issues that were apparent. Having a phone shut down randomly would have been very noticeable - and would have made me upgrade sooner. Again, not saying they shouldn’tbe transparent, but the last thing I have ever felt that Apple ACTIVELY does is push me to The next generation. Sure, the make better phones and progress... but they are a company. They should. Most people on here complain they don’t make enough advancements year to year anymore... so what is it? Is it really pushing an upgrade with slow iterative advancements and 5 ish years of software support?

 

[I7guy]

It would be if there were Android smartphones that were randomly shutting down at 40% remaining charge with 80+% of battery capacity. Android vendors used larger batteries and processors with lower peak power draw.

Android phones just shut down with no power mitigation. I can easily pull up citations from google if needed.

 

[Rainshadow]

Keyword that you are missing is “battery” not the phone. If battery dies, it tells me I need to replace the battery or phone. If phone dies, it means I need to replace the phone.

Hope you understand the difference

I’m not missing any words. If my phone died (battery or otherwise) after a year - or even two, I would switch brands immediately. Remember the phone would shut down at any point it was overtaxed, not a low battery. So - your phone would stop working when you’re asking it to Do something.

Any 700-$1000 device that stops working when I rely on it to work after a year or even two - I won’t have it.

But yes, it would be nice to KNOW the battery was dying so I could replace it. But then again, anyone on this forum understands battery degradation and could always opt to upgrade their battery after a couple years if they cared.

But NO I would NOT want a phone (or battery) to stop working when I was using it. Horrible user experience.

 

[MacCheetah3]

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.

Sure, but you assume everyone properly assesses situations and isn't greedy. ;-) That is, people made a fuss that the iPod battery eventually needed to be replaced.

 

[itr81]

People saying they didn’t know replacing the battery would restore some of the performance - is complete BS.

Bad battery in a car = starting issues/electronic glitches

Bad battery in old Motorola phone in the 90’s = turns off abruptly, talk time drops significantly

Bad battery in a toy = toy glitches/slows down/dies

Bad battery in a laptop = performance drops, applications start glitching, and runtime is severely reduced

Replacing the battery automatically fixes many of those issues.

Before this lawsuit - my 4s lasted 4 yrs plus. (throttled)

After this lawsuit - my 7 lasted only just over 2 yrs. (non-throttled)

I won’t even get into the hassle of replacing a battery, while under quarantine.

This was only a money grab for the lawyer’s. Regular people will probably be lucky to see $20-25 bucks. Not worth it, when you can replace a battery for $59-70 bucks. Battery plus recently replaced my battery for only $59 including tax.

 

[ronno]

Apple makes around $500 million in profit every three or four days, so this is not much of a punishment.
(And yes, I’m taking profit, not revenue…)

 

[macfacts]

"Device randomly powering down at any battery level" is a design flaw. Apple was happy to pay for "secretly throttling". The right remedy should have been a total recall of the poorly designed models.

Apple did recall those defective iphones.

Apple Service Program status - Apple Support

Apple Service Program status

support.apple.com

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No one wants to be a green bubble. Apple knows this. Apple knows people are locked in, so apple behaves accordingly.

 

[farewelwilliams]

pay $500 million for doing something right. next time Apple will just not implement a solution and let your battery die forcing you to shell out $$$ for a surprise battery replacement.

i hope you people complaining switch to android so that you can complain to samsung on why your old phone suddenly reboots.
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Apple makes around $500 million in profit every three or four days, so this is not much of a punishment.
(And yes, I’m taking profit, not revenue…)

Apple will just postpone expanding the free iCloud storage until next year. Really it's just a punishment to everyone. Thank those who unnecessarily complained.
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It would be if there were Android smartphones that were randomly shutting down at 40% remaining charge with 80+% of battery capacity. Android vendors used larger batteries and processors with lower peak power draw.

I've seen people complain about their old Samsung galaxy S3 randomly shutting down on a Samsung forum and a Samsung rep said just replace the battery.

Interesting I took a screenshot of a post that was deleted by Samsung.

 

[617660]

People saying they didn’t know replacing the battery would restore some of the performance - is complete BS.

Bad battery in a car = starting issues/electronic glitches

...

You are talking about performance, right?



FAILED