Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
UK Legal Action Seeks Damages for 25 Million iPhone Users Over 'Throttling' Devices With Degraded Batteries
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Why you would join a £750 million class suit just so the lawyers can make £400 million and you can get a £5 coupon to Fuller's Ale and Pie House when it's all over is beyond me...
The trial will determine whether apple broke the law or not, this is also plain and simple. Maybe apple didn’t and won’t have to pay a cent, or maybe they did and will be ordered to pay several million dollars to be divided between the damage customers.
While the net pay out to the consumer may not be much, there are other reasons behind these types of legal actions. Bad publicity, fines, total damage payments, etc. are meant to discourage companies from doing these types of things again. In that sense, it may be worth it.
If someone felt that what Apple did was unfair or inappropriate, they'd want to help to make sure Apple was "punished" in some way. A suit like this could reduce the possibility of similar things happening again in the future. This can be more about "protecting" consumers going forward than "compensating" consumers for the past.
I do, however, agree with your point (and other post comments) about lawyers. Unfortunately, it's kind of a double-edged sword. If lawyers had to be paid by the hour (win or lose) to take on these cases, few consumers would be willing to do it and companies would get away with unfair or inappropriate behavior more often. By lawyers offering their services for "free" (unless they win), it allows consumers to be able to take a stand against companies in situations like this. There probably should be more of a cap or limit on how much law firms can take but that's something that the market needs to decide and push for.
No one suffered anything from this feature which made your battery last longer. No one.
Bad PR, yes, Apple could have explained better, but this lawsuit is nonsense.
Bad PR, yes, Apple could have explained better, but this lawsuit is nonsense.
There are two key differences between the US class action lawsuit and the UK complaint. First, the UK case is not actually a lawsuit, but rather a complaint to a competition regulator. It is up to the regulator to make a decision, and either party could then challenge this.
Second, if compensation is awarded, there will be no lawyer’s cut to deduct. Even so, the total sum being claimed would only see owners awarded £30 ($36), so no one should start planning M2 MacBook Air purchases with the proceeds.
Apple have really learned their lesson over this, somewhat, by making official battery replacements more affordable.
Did the laptop manufacturer notify users this occurred and was the battery easily replaceable?
5 years ago? What’s the statute of limitations on this? Why wasn’t this lawyer focused on it when it was actually a pressing issue? That’s an archaic iPhone
Apple made a mistake by not telling customers what was happening behind the scenes, but really this is a case of no real harm and thus no foul.
I am a bit shocked that everyone did not know Apple was doing this. At the time, I just assumed they did. When batteries get old, they can put out less peak power, even if their total capacity is close to the same. If you did a diagnostic on the battery, it might show that it had 98% capability. That's not bad. The problem is, If you push it to the maximum of it's rated draw, the battery will catch fire or explode. The solutions are, you can either shut the phone down, slow the phone down when it is at maximum draw or print a warning on the screen telling the user to pull the pin, throw the phone and duck.
I will take option 3.
A two year old battery is an old battery. The batteries in phones today last longer. That is because, the technology is getting much better.
What is degrading the performance the most, having the phone explode, having the phone shut down or having the phone slow down a bit when playing a very demanding game?
I will take option 3.
You mean like this? 🤣
Totally worth paying more for state of art and high quality iPhones, a proper QM and decent testing could have avoided this. Maybe they just tried to hide how bad their hardware is?!
Also a nice way to enforce hardware upgrades, just let the old device explode while updating iOS.
Planed obsolescence²
Last edited:
Those dots are hiding one hell of a story…
I think a lot of media outlets like to think people don’t realize that seeing an ellipses in a quote means things are removed when in fact most people are quite aware. That is clearly a sentence constructed to make Apple look bad, there’s no other reason they would have cut it down the way they did.
I have had multiple iPhone 6, 6S and iPhone 7's with battery and rebooting issues. There was a lawsuit over this a couple years ago but I never heard anything about the payout.
www.forbes.com
2 Million iPhone Owners Set For Batterygate Payout
More than 2 million iPhone owners are set to receive an estimated $65 to settle an iPhone Batterygate case.
www.forbes.com
Could you name one such machine? I've never seen evidence of Macbooks doing this.
Are you possibly confused by Power Throttling that is based on battery's State of Charge rather than health? (i.e. even a brand new battery would be throttled when it's at 10% state of charge)
The same "lost of people" who don't want to get vaccinated for covid because "greedom of choice" - and then end up covering a hospital bed for 5 months.
I was standing in front of a rental car in December (below zero) and could not start the rental (open the door) because my battery died. I rather have set throttling active (still on my very same iPhone 6s by the way). And this is not Apple, it is the like a car battery which gives less juice if temps drop below zero. Throttling - to preserve battery - is good; unless you run a benchmark.
I had the same experience and when mine would get below 20% it would shut off and restart. I don't have an Apple Store nearby and this issue caused me to have to drive over an hour away to two different Apple stores and pay for a battery replacement. I also didn't keep the phone as long as I had planned due to it having performance issues.
It's not good when it's kept secret from the customer and they're unaware that a battery replacement would restore the performance of their phone. Why was this feature a secret instead of being praised in marketing materials like every other feature?
And unless you run a benchmark? Obviously you've never tried to use an iPhone 6/6s with a degraded battery. They barely functioned. Remember we're talking about something that happened years ago. The A8 was much slower than the A15. Degrading it made it barely operational, even at 100% charge while plugged in.
Ahhh ... I was wondering where all the tin foil had gone.
Or, allow people to go back to a version of iOS that worked for them.