U.S. Government Official Questions Apple Over iPhone Battery Slowdowns

[Smartass]

That was before they changed their policy, which they did after about 2 days.

Do try to keep up.

Ok my bad.
But this still doesnt remove fact that Apple knew about this battery issues and still didnt want to replace batteries because they wanted people to buy a new phone. They agreed to start changing batteries on older iphones after they had a "gun to their head". They deserve to lose all the lawsuits and as much money as possible.

 

[MacsRuleOthersDrool]

Ok my bad.
But this still doesnt remove fact that Apple knew about this battery issues and still didnt want to replace batteries because they wanted people to buy a new phone.

Sez you.

Prove it.
[doublepost=1515611304][/doublepost]

Free battery replacement is just a low hanging fruit. What really should have been demanded by the senator is a refund to those who upgraded due to this issue.

A refund like that would usually necessitate the owner to GIVE UP their new phone.

I wonder how many would go for that?

The idea of a Tort Judgment is to "make you whole again". NOT to provide a "windfall".
[doublepost=1515611369][/doublepost]

Stop touting your personal phone as if it's the absolute benchmark.

As long as you stop touting your OPINION as Gospel.
[doublepost=1515611453][/doublepost]

It stops being a "personal anecdote" when the throttling "feature" itself has been introduced for devices up until the iPhone 7. Apple doesn't really do preemptive measures just for the sake of it, they knew specific devices are being affected.

Or, it's because the iPhone 8 and X are TOO NEW to be affected, FFS!!!

 

[Piggie]

It makes no sense to me why the Apple product that needs to be charged most of all has half the charge cycle capacity of all their other products.

Indeed you are 100% or even 1000% (if there were such a thing) correct.

Apple stand up on stage, and states, before the world audience that "They make the very best products they are capable of doing"

As you say and as we all know. A company will have much information about "usage cases" of a potential product that they will considering building/launching.

They don't just guess and pluck numbers out of a hat.
Apple know exactly what they are doing. If not we would need to call them incompetent or foolish, and I'm sure even the most strongest Apple hater. knows they are not fools.

It's all planned to the tiniest degree.

They know they are fitting battering that, will be charged more times than pretty much any other device you own.
They know it's going to be powered up and running, or sleeping from the moment you open the box, till the day you sell/lose/break it.
They know it's going to need to be recharged, every day or so.

So this is all deliberately designed into it. It can't be, anything else.

Apple has great chips, the fastest CPU and GPU's and the need nice clean power.
Apple know the batteries they are fitting will only be able to give the chips the power they need for a very limited amount of time before they need recharging.

Could Apple fit a larger battery
There are phones today with 4000 to 5000 mAH battering in them, and they are not 1" thick or weigh the same as a family car.

If it was the case of unclipping the rear shell, every 12 months and popping in a new $10 battery, as used to be the case, then it would almost hardly be a story.

Irrespective of Apple giving reasons why the implemented this "Feature" to keep phones running.
The question for the future should be, Are you going to stop fitting unsuitable batteries into THE most premium/expensive phones in the world ?

 

[essential]

For example me. Occasional (and, based on the current battery level, perfectly predictable!) shutdowns are much better than a phone that is always (even when on external power) sluggish.

This also applies to me and my current iPhone 6 Plus, and why i'd toggle it off if given the choice. When I was getting the shutdowns, I always was under 50% (usually around 30%). It was predicable and manageable, and much better than an always sluggish phone.

 

[H3LL5P4WN]

And yet they consistently whip all over the Snapdragon and Exynos (sp?) SoCs in Benchmarks.

Oh I know.

 

[Gilligan's last elephant]

Honestly it would have been really easy to provide a little banner in the Settings app that had a yellow warning icon next to the battery option and when tapped it explained that the phones performance was being restricted due to the Battery being degraded.

This is very similar to the "Service Battery" warning that you receive on a Mac when it goes below a certain health rating. We need to stop treating consumers like dumb-asses.

The point is, this is likely widespread, and having this warning (due to the power of social media) it would soon spread that Apple had a battery issue. They would likely want to avoid that like the plague.

 

[Royksöpp]

I pity the people that are defending Apple. What they did was indeed deceptive, and truly unfair to customers. There's no if's, and', or but's about it. This was coming for a long time. It's a good thing that the **** has finally hit the fan. Hopefully this will act as a wake up call.

 

[nebo1ss]

Gonna try my hand at battery replacement in my iPhone 6 this weekend. Wonder how much I’ll have to battle with the ‘Geniuses’ over the fact that they should replace it for £29 rather than £79. It’s funny how Apple Store employees never seem to read the same news all the rest of us do, even when it’s in mainstream sources outside MacRumors...

You will not have a problem, be polite but firm. The staff have been instructed to replace the battery if the customer insist. It does not matter what the APPLE test shows they will replace it for you.
[doublepost=1515618433][/doublepost]

I'm glad to see that people aren't taking their foot off Apple's neck. really messed up, and they need to be held fully accountable.

Agreed i don't think this is any different from the VW emission scandal. If Apple was a foreign company the US Govt would be all over them. But time will tell if what i believe to be true is really true they only go after foreign companies. BP, VW all the foreign banks etc.

 

[617660]

A refund like that would usually necessitate the owner to GIVE UP their new phone.

I wonder how many would go for that?

The idea of a Tort Judgment is to "make you whole again". NOT to provide a "windfall".

You don't think the people who have been harmed financially would want to go this route?

A partial refund would work. The price of a new iPhone - resale value of iPhone given up due to this issue = the amount of refund. That is the extra money people had to spend to avoid this issue. I don't think this require giving up the new phone.

 

[Gorms]

Has anyone from Apple explained why the battery in the iPhone is only rated for half the charging cycles of the Apple Watch, iPad and MacBooks?

Ooof, now that is interesting.

 

[G5isAlive]

The correct analogy to what Apple is doing would be, that you were already born with some major disability in your body, but it only came out in full force after reaching 60.

so you don't count 'death' as a problem? because yes our bodies are programmed to die, and yes it becomes most noticeable after a certain age. I just don't buy that Apple programed these phones to be worthless in 2 years. Sure, you might need a new battery, why is this really a shock to people?

 

[617660]

so you don't count 'death' as a problem? because yes our bodies are programmed to die, and yes it becomes most noticeable after a certain age. I just don't buy that Apple programed these phones to be worthless in 2 years. Sure, you might need a new battery, why is this really a shock to people?

Because Apple conveniently neglected to tell customers that all they needed was a new battery. Everyone instead flocked onto a new iPhone.

 

[G5isAlive]

Apple should have never allowed a clock speed to be so high the battery can only sustain it for one year. But, they took the bait and kept pushing how fast their chip was. Unfortunately, that chip speed was only for one year.

Not picking on you, a lot of people have said similar.. without recognizing Apple only followed the customer's demands... we sit around measuring speed, weight, capacity all the flipping time... and make claims we vote with our wallets for the fastest etc.. Apple is not stupid, or even overly greedy, they just kept pushing the envelope because ultimately we asked them too.
[doublepost=1515619607][/doublepost]

Because Apple conveniently neglected to tell customers that all they needed was a new battery. Everyone instead flocked onto a new iPhone.

That batteries age is well known. When was the last time you bought a new car and the dealer told you, oh btw, you will need to replace your battery and tires after a while. Sorry. Apple told specific customers who failed the battery test, buy a new battery. They did not withhold that. And, CPU throttling has long been a fact of life with their laptops. I have no doubt it was second nature to incorporate it here to increase phone use with batteries that were deteriorating but not dead. I would be surprised if the courts decide otherwise.

 

[617660]

That batteries age is well known. When was the last time you bought a new car and the dealer told you, oh btw, you will need to replace your battery and tires after a while. Sorry. Apple told specific customers who failed the battery test, buy a new battery. They did not withhold that. And, CPU throttling has long been a fact of life with their laptops. I have no doubt it was second nature to incorporate it here to increase phone use with batteries that were deteriorating but not dead. I would be surprised if the courts decide otherwise.

Boy, think I've been given the runaround here. Just the same question coming from Apple defenders.

Ohhhh and bringing up the CPU throttling in laptop and the car too!

You, sir, have completed the full circle.

 

[Wide opeN]

This was willful ignorance on Apple's part. I think they were trying to be proactive with the software workaround, but didn't mind if you concluded that hey a new iPhone might be the answer as well.

If turning away customers who wanted new batteries and were willing to pay is company policy, then that's a whole nother story on to itself.

They say the best lies, have a little truth sprinkled in.

 

[Quu]

The point is, this is likely widespread, and having this warning (due to the power of social media) it would soon spread that Apple had a battery issue. They would likely want to avoid that like the plague.

And what a great job they did. *rolls eyes so hard they fall out my sockets*

 

[aliensporebomb]

You gotta wonder if the engineer who devised the throttling subroutine got a bonus or got his walking papers...

 

[Gilligan's last elephant]

And what a great job they did. *rolls eyes so hard they fall out my sockets*

I have no idea what you are talking about or implying.

 

[Count Blah]

Planned obsolescence is a crime. But Apple is doing the exact opposite.

Yes, they are slowing phones down and not informing their customers. The customers take the phones to the Apple store, asking them to fix the phone, at which point the 'genius' informs them that 'everything checks out with the tests run against the phone, and perhaps they should simply buy a new phone instead.'

Yep, that's the exact opposite of Planned obsolescence alright.


[doublepost=1515625658][/doublepost]

That was before they changed their policy, which they did after about 2 days.

Do try to keep up.

And all the time between 10.2.1 and this this very recent change, doesn't count?

 

[Act3]

Planned obsolescence is a crime. But Apple is doing the exact opposite.

ok, then why didn't they advertise/promote that as a "feature" rather than waiting until they got caught?

 

[Altis]

Just let those phones shut down by itself and deny service since they're out of warranty, just like every other one does, and Apple won't be sued again.

The throttling begins while devices can be still under the factory warranty (1 year), let alone Apple Care.

The throttling also starts while the battery is above 80% so Apple considers it "Healthy" and won't replace it (well, now they will, since this broke).

Then there's the fact that they hid it from consumers entirely and actively removed access to battery health information.

 

[Makayla]

Why is this in prsi? Lol

 

[Joesmith13245]

They deserve it for trying to pull planned obsolescence.
[doublepost=1515586418][/doublepost]
Because they intentionally slowed older iPhones without informing the user.

The funny thing about this is the more the above statement is repeated, the worse it gets for Apple. My advice to Apple fans....Let this go. The more you defend the worse it gets.

 

[jdsingle]

Glad to see the witch hunt continues on. Do I wish Apple had told me that was what was happening when my 6s battery kept dying at 30-40%? Yes. Am I going to demand a new iPhone X for the inconvenience? No. I hope all the people needing the money get what they need to be made whole, but I still can't rally and say down with the bastards.

 

[617660]

The funny thing about this is the more the above statement is repeated, the worse it gets for Apple. My advice to Apple fans....Let this go. The more you defend the worse it gets.

But they can't. What happens to their stock holding?

Gotta defend!