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UK Lawsuit Over 'Throttled' iPhones Moves Forward

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A legal claim in the United Kingdom over Apple's 2017 "throttling" controversy has been allowed to move forward by the Competition Appeal Tribunal, according to Reuters.

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Consumer advocate Justin Gutmann filed the claim back in June 2022, originally seeking a total of £750 million for up to 25 million iPhone users in the UK whose devices were affected by the issue, which stemmed from Apple's efforts to prevent devices with degraded batteries from unexpectedly shutting down while in use. The claim has since ballooned to as much at £1.6 billion plus interest.
Gutmann's lawyers had argued Apple concealed issues with batteries in certain phone models and "surreptitiously" installed a power management tool which limited performance.

Apple, however, said the lawsuit is "baseless" and that it strongly denies batteries in iPhones were defective, apart from in a small number of iPhone 6s models for which it offered free battery replacements.
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Gutmann's claim covers iPhone 6 through iPhone X models, and while the Competition Appeal Tribunal ruled the claim can move forward, it also highlighted "a lack of clarity and specificity" that will need to be resolved before it can actually proceed to trial.

Apple deployed power management features with iOS 10.2.1 in 2017 that throttled performance to prevent devices with degraded batteries from attempting to draw peak power the batteries could no longer provide. Apple says it introduced the features to help extend device lifespan while minimizing disruptive device shutdowns, but the company was criticized by some customers for not disclosing what it was doing amid suggestions it was attempting to hide defective devices.

Apple apologized for not better explaining the changes it made and why it did so, and introduced a low-cost battery replacement program that lasted for several years.

In 2020, Apple agreed to pay up to $500 million to settle a long-running class action lawsuit in the United States over the issue, and the company has faced similar lawsuits in a number of other countries.

Article Link: UK Lawsuit Over 'Throttled' iPhones Moves Forward
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/11/01/uk-lawsuit-throttled-iphones-moves-forward/
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Consumer advocate Legal troll Justin Gutmann
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Fixed.

"Instead of doing the honorable and legal thing by their customers and offering a free replacement, repair service or compensation, Apple instead misled people by concealing a tool in software updates that slowed their devices by up to 58%," Mr Gutmann said.
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Companies do not have a requirement to provide free replacements for batteries affected by entropy.
 
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Reactions: Tim Apple’s Glasses, Jmausmuc, freedomlinux and 18 others
Just force Apple to allow downgrade to the last update of older versions...

iOS 16.7.x, iOS 15.8.x, iOS 14.8.1, iOS 13.7, iOS 12.4.x/12.5.x, iOS 11.4.1, iOS 10.3.x, iOS 9.3.x, iOS 8.4.1, iOS 7.1.1, iOS 6.1.x

Batteries still need to be replaced but performance will be much better on older iOS versions...
 
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Reactions: MRxROBOT, Altis, Jhonjhon236 and 11 others
The issue is they didn't tell anyone, but it is a serious thing that to me is very deceptive. Apple throttled devices without telling people, thus making people think that their phone was getting slower / unable to cope with the latest versions of iOS/apps which likely led to purchasing a new phone. If people were aware that the slowdown was due to a degraded battery, they would then have the choice whether to get a new phone anyway, or spend 90% less and get a new battery fitted.
 
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Reactions: Altis, MecPro, appletree4 and 18 others
They misled consumers by throttling their devices without informing users of said devices. While I don't think Apple should replace the batteries... but throttling devices over 50% without telling its users is in fact a big deal. Companies should absolutely be held accountable for these practices. Let the users have all the information so they can choose to either upgrade the battery or the phone.
 
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Reactions: Tim Apple’s Glasses, Altis, appletree4 and 23 others
MRxROBOT said:
Let the users have all the information
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The thing is, Apple does not even mention the battery capacity nor how many GB of RAM is installed... We only get to know these things through running benchmarks or by someone performing a disassembly...

I totally agree that Apple should have been transparent about throttling devices with batteries that need to be replaced, but then again, businesses have their so-called "trade secrets" and although the throttling is not technically a trade secret, every device manufacturer can probably do it, they should have informed consumers and general public about it, not just limit it to those within Apple/working for Apple...

@GMShadow care to explain the dislike/hate reaction?

@I7guy care to explain the dislike/hate reaction?

@strongy care to explain the dislike/hate reaction?

@TracerAnalog care to explain the dislike/hate reaction?
 
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omihek said:
I can see both sides, but I mean who doesn't know that batteries don't last forever? Kinda weird to me that a company would have to shell out $500million for not telling people what they should already know.
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Batteries not lasting forever isn't the issue. The issue is Apple not disclosing slowing down system performance based on battery health. Nice job to spin the story
 
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Reactions: Altis, Jhonjhon236, Jmausmuc and 14 others
So not only did consumers think their batteries were crapping out but also their performance was degraded? How many of those people did Apple fool into buying a whole new iPhone because they thought their current one was no longer any good?

And why the hell are people in this thread defending Apple over this?
 
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Reactions: Altis, appletree4, sinoka56 and 19 others
Some of us understand engineering. The alternative was your iPhone dies and restarts. And now every tech firm knows users sue you for perceived slights but will live with random restarts when too much current is drawn because they didn’t fix it with software. Because no one is going to start involving users is complicated electronically engineering trade offs. And no one is going to give the user a toggle where one option is to have your device fail.

Remember this was discovered by a YouTuber doing complicated testing. The real world differences were probably imperceptible for 99% or people.
 
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Reactions: allenvanhellen, robfoll, Jmausmuc and 11 others
Phone was working fine and after the update it was not…..I am no battery expert, but if it was a battery issue people would have seen issue even on older phones.

besides, even if Apple did the right thing, they did not communicate …but I am sure people will find a way to justify Apple no matter what.

i am glad someone is looking into this issue.
 
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Reactions: btrach144, CordovaLark, Oblivious.Robot and 2 others
It was kind of a no-win situation: either you let people’s phones start crashing when the battery gets old and they say “my phone doesn’t work, Apple is trying to get us to buy new phones” or you slow down the processor so it doesn’t crash, and people say “my phone is slow now, Apple is trying to get us to buy new phones.”

I think the throttling is the right move between the two; I’d rather my phone finish its task slowly instead of crashing and not finishing at all. Where they went wrong was not making it clear that “this is happening because your battery needs to be replaced.” The wording in the software update that introduced the feature wasn’t clear (the average person isn’t going to understand that “power management” means “we’re slowing the phone down to prevent crashing”).

It really felt to me like a shady move on Apple’s part, like they were thinking “if we don’t tell people that just putting a new battery in will fix everything, they’ll just buy new phones.” As though they were letting the conspiracy theory about planned obsolescence live because it actually worked in their favor.

But I also get the desire to not give people all the battery health info they have now; there are so many posts on forums now saying “my battery health is 100% after three weeks is this normal” and people getting weirdly obsessed with trying to keep their battery health at 100% when it’s a battery and it’s going to degrade no matter what you do.
 
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jimbobb24 said:
Some of us understand engineering. The alternative was your iPhone dies and restarts. And now every tech firm knows users sue you for perceived slights but will live with random restarts when too much current is drawn because they didn’t fix it with software. Because no one is going to start involving users is complicated electronically engineering trade offs.
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No throttling on Android phones and yet no random restarts like on iPhone. So you’re quite wrong here.
 
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Reactions: Altis, mikeschr, freedomlinux and 7 others
hacky said:
No throttling on Android phones and yet no random restarts like on iPhone. So you’re quite wrong here.
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They just eat battery more and more with each update ) At least all my Galaxy S21 22 23 did that. Every update = worse battery life. Sometimes worse camera.

Basically the same, but without the risk of getting lawsuit.
 
eropko said:
They just eat battery more and more with each update ) At least all my Galaxy S21 22 23 did that. Every update = worse battery life. Sometimes worse camera.

Basically the same, but without the risk of getting lawsuit.
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Nope. Throttling the device speed is not the same as eating more battery.
 
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