UK Legal Action Seeks Damages for 25 Million iPhone Users Over 'Throttling' Devices With Degraded Batteries

[genovelle]

Really?

Really! They have always worked hard to allow devices to live longer. In fact them implementing the throttle decreased the number of for sure replacement devices. The old batteries would spike under very specific conditions and potentially damage other components or burn itself out.

There move mitigated that by monitoring when that happened and taking action. If they were more interested in selling more new items they would have ignored their findings and let the devices die and only support them for 2 or three years.

I’ve been a customer for 21 years and have had them repair devices well out of warranty at no charge to take care of me. Knowing I will be buying and advocating for them for their goodwill gesture.

 

[webkit]

yes, absolutely, its for the lawyers and not for customers.

It's for the lawyers and it's for customers. The directly impacted customers may or may not benefit much financially from settlements but they and other customers can still benefit in the future by these types of cases discouraging companies from doing similar or worse "unfair" or "inappropriate" things down the road.

Lawyers don't force customers to initiate litigation like class action lawsuits. Lawyers don't force other customers to join a class action lawsuit. Assuming a law firm agrees to take it, it's customers that enable these things to go forward.

If lawyers had to be paid by the hour (win or lose) to take on these cases, few customers 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 customers to be able to take a stand against companies in situations like this.

Yes, there probably should be more of a cap or limit on how much law firms can take but that's something the market needs to decide and push for. Customers have the power to help change it if they really want to.

 

[svish]

Apple might have to end up paying for this legal battle.

 

[I7guy]

It's for the lawyers and it's for customers. The directly impacted customers may or may not benefit much financially from settlements but they and other customers can still benefit in the future by these types of cases discouraging companies from doing similar or worse "unfair" or "inappropriate" things down the road.

Lawyers don't force customers to initiate litigation like class action lawsuits. Lawyers don't force other customers to join a class action lawsuit. Assuming a law firm agrees to take it, it's customers that enable these things to go forward.

If lawyers had to be paid by the hour (win or lose) to take on these cases, few customers 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 customers to be able to take a stand against companies in situations like this.

Yes, there probably should be more of a cap or limit on how much law firms can take but that's something the market needs to decide and push for. Customers have the power to help change it if they really want to.

Sure. Anybody can sue anbody or company for anything. Apple being so big, doesn't even to do anything nefarious. All they have to do, for example, is have some undetected QA issue, that someone believes is a coverup and here comes a lawsuit.

However, imo, companies that engage in nefarious activities without conscious will do it again. The collective of Apple, imo, has a conscious.

 

[psac]

Has anyone gone back to look at the OS update release notes to see if they made any mention of the throttling? 99% of people don’t bother reading stuff like that.

Why would they bother spending resources to support older phones with new OSes when they could just be lazy like most Android manufacturers and stop providing OS updates after a couple of years, encouraging people to get a new phone after their contract is up? There more of an argument for planned obsolescence, in my view.

I don’t believe they purposefully tried to slow down phones to get people to upgrade. It’s better to have a phone slow down than turn off. Leaving it to turn off would point towards more of an attempt to get people to upgrade their phone, in my opinion.

If it was always their policy to not offer a battery replacement unless the battery health, during a test at an Apple store, was less than 80% then I’d say it’s just bad luck for them here with what started happening with the iPhone 6 models and the batteries.

It wasn't that they didn't offer a battery replacement, it's that they would REFUSE to replace the battery if you were over 80% by their diagnostics. And no, the throttling was not listed in their OS updates. So both my wife and I had a battery that was over 80% (according to them), and the phones would just constantly shut itself off after still showing 30%-40% current battery charge. And then the phones became so slow they were practically unusable. (The throttling effect.) We upgraded both phones because of this. So yes, the lawsuit is valid. In terms of the US claim, I don't even remember if I ever got my $25 or whatever I was entitled to, woopie. But holding a company accountable for bad business practices is a good thing so they hopefully remember not to do it again. (And I am an Apple stockholder.)

 

[IzzyMandelbaum]

I'm going to sue Microsoft for not allowing me to play Oblivion on Windows 3.1.

 

[IzzyMandelbaum]

It wasn't that they didn't offer a battery replacement, it's that they would REFUSE to replace the battery if you were over 80% by their diagnostics. And no, the throttling was not listed in their OS updates. So both my wife and I had a battery that was over 80% (according to them), and the phones would just constantly shut itself off after still showing 30%-40% current battery charge. And then the phones became so slow they were practically unusable. (The throttling effect.) We upgraded both phones because of this. So yes, the lawsuit is valid. In terms of the US claim, I don't even remember if I ever got my $25 or whatever I was entitled to, woopie. But holding a company accountable for bad business practices is a good thing so they hopefully remember not to do it again. (And I am an Apple stockholder.)

So are you going to sue Microsoft if you put Windows 11 on a 10 year old machine and it doesn't work as fast as it did running Windows 7? Gonna sue a VCR manufacturer because it won't play Blu-Rays?

 

[webkit]

Sure. Anybody can sue anbody or company for anything. Apple being so big, doesn't even to do anything nefarious. All they have to do, for example, is have some undetected QA issue, that someone believes is a coverup and here comes a lawsuit.

However, imo, companies that engage in nefarious activities without conscious will do it again. The collective of Apple, imo, has a conscious.

There's always the possibility of unfair or inappropriate behavior still happening, and that includes from Apple, but class action lawsuits and other types of cases can help be a deterrent to keep companies (and people) more in line. That's part of what legal actions and/or laws are about. Otherwise, there becomes little reason to have them and we just become more of a lawless society and allow companies and people to get away with more and more unacceptable or "crummy" (as you labeled it previously) things in the future.

 

[I7guy]

There's always the possibility of unfair or inappropriate behavior still happening, and that includes from Apple, but class action lawsuits and other types of cases can help be a deterrent to keep companies (and people) more in line. That's part of what legal actions and/or laws are about. Otherwise, there becomes little reason to have them and we just become more of a lawless society and allow companies and people to get away with more and more unacceptable or "crummy" (as you labeled it previously) things in the future.

Sure, and the flip side is not every lawsuit is won, vindicating the actions of the defendant quashing baseless lawsuits. In this case a victory by apple would vindicate them.

 

[AlexisV]

Only 4 years and 364 days until Judgment time...

 

[webkit]

Sure, and the flip side is not every lawsuit is won, vindicating the actions of the defendant quashing baseless lawsuits. In this case a victory by apple would vindicate them.

Obviously, there are going to be flip sides. Not every suit is won and a company/defendant may end up vindicated. There are also times when one side feels there has been an "incorrect" verdict or decision. That's when the appeal process potentially comes in. It's not a perfect system but a perfect legal system doesn't exist anywhere.

A benefit with contingency cases is that it levels the "little guy" versus “big guy" playing field a bit. In these cases, the expenses (at least until they win) fall to the law firm which should help motivate them to only take on cases they think are legitimate and winnable or settleable. If the case is lost or thrown out, the law firm takes the hit.

Again, it's not a prefect system but no legal system is perfect.

 

[loopy123]

Trash lawsuit - always was , always has been.
- Apple throttled those iPhones as some engineers naively thought customers would prefer a marginally slower iPhone over one that suddenly shuts down.
- It is totally absurd that the chattering masses are saying "Apple slowed down iPhones to force people to buy new iPhones". If you had a good battery, your iPhone 6S never slowed down. It so bogus to make that statement, it would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
- Apple has gone above and beyond for consumers by supporting older iPhones making sure they function adequately on the latest iOS they support.
- The battery throttling was mentioned in a release note for , I think, iOS 10.0.1 ( not that anyone reads release notes)

 

[I7guy]

Obviously, there are going to be flip sides. Not every suit is won and a company/defendant may end up vindicated. There are also times when one side feels there has been an "incorrect" verdict or decision. That's when the appeal process potentially comes in. It's not a perfect system but a perfect legal system doesn't exist anywhere.

A benefit with contingency cases is that it levels the "little guy" versus “big guy" playing field a bit. In these cases, the expenses (at least until they win) fall to the law firm which should help motivate them to only take on cases they think are legitimate and winnable or settleable. If the case is lost or thrown out, the law firm takes the hit.

Again, it's not a prefect system but no legal system is perfect.

Sure, and here is some interesting reading. The aphorism: "win some lose some", definitely applies here. As the link below shows, not all class action suits stand and some are declassed.

Litigation involving Apple Inc. - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[SlaveToSwift]

A lot of people fail to recognize that Apple is actually run by people who have little to no ethical boundaries and would screw over someone in their own family to help increase their own wealth. I am not talking about the creative and innovative side of Apple, I am talking about the “publicly traded” business side of Apple that have very influential investor groups from the likes of the “vampire squid” Goldman Sachs, or other equally reprehensible parasites, such as BlackRock… those are the influencers driving theses types of things. Hopefully the good parts of Apple doesn’t get sucked into being more like those bad parts of Apple.

It’s because of things like this that i am cynical about other things thats proclaimed about Apple, such as them being our privacy watchdogs, and thwarting over reach of big brother. When the documents that came from Snowden/Manning and made it onto Wikileaks, I tend to believe Apple is in bed as they can be with the surveillance states coming at the direction of many of the governing bodies around the world, but has relied upon (with help of establishment controlled media) the “persona” and “narrative” that they are not like Microsoft… I want to believe Apple is better than that… but sadly i can’t… I have to allow reality to dictate what i believe and influences me. And in reality, Apple is not the goody two shoes, pro consumer, pro civil rights, advocate they want everyone to think they are… its a nice dream though.

Apples most influential investor is Warren Buffett, and he's clearly not telling them to do anything unethical. And they never did, at least in this case.

When batteries lose capacity with age, a spike in power draw can cause the phone to shutdown/restart. Apple added software to prevent this from happening with older batteries, so you can keep using your phone without regular restarts.

They didn't tell anyone they did this. So what? They don't tell you every time they tune the OS in a thousand ways to make charges last longer, make views open faster, to manage device temperature, etc.

When users found out and a small minority flipped out, they apologized and added UI so you could manage the effect. Again, so whats the problem?

 

[SlaveToSwift]

All batteries degrade with age. Only the iPhone had a widespread shutdown problem when running with degraded batteries.

All phones have this problem. Aging batteries can't meet the demands of power spikes. The only way to prevent it is to throttle the processor so to reduce the power spikes to levels the battery can handle.

If you haven't seen this on other phones, hmm, maybe you should be asking why?

 

[SlaveToSwift]

But people buying the phone and suffering the throttling before it was ‘a done deal’ should be compensated. If you speed while driving in a certain day and get caught you’ll still have to pay a fine, even if you respect the limit the following days.

Your actual analogy is if a car maker secretly added code to their cruise control systems to throttle the engine to prevent customers from taking corners dangerously fast, and then it was discovered, the car maker should pay a fine because they stopped the customer from crashing?

 

[BootsWalking]

All phones have this problem. Aging batteries can't meet the demands of power spikes. The only way to prevent it is to throttle the processor so to reduce the power spikes to levels the battery can handle.

If you haven't seen this on other phones, hmm, maybe you should be asking why?

There hasn't been any other phone that has needed to be throttled by 50% on aging batteries to avoid a shutdown.

 

[I7guy]

There hasn't been any other phone that has needed to be throttled by 50% on aging batteries to avoid a shutdown.

True, but android phones just shut down, afaik there is no throttling. And then there is the note 7…in a class by itself. So
This throttling is a plus.

 

[The1Biz]

While phones were subsidized I got a new one whenever I could, owning one for no more than 3 years. Performance and battery life was never an issue. My 6s was the last one that was subsidized, so I kept it knowing I'd have to pay full price for a new phone. Both me and the other half had the same issue after 3+ years, even with a battery replacement a 6s would chew through battery life. The second battery on my phone, replaced after 3 years went from 100 to 70 percent in a year, and then the third battery still had a horrible life, and the phone died shortly after (4+ years old). Apple Genius workers at two stores both mentioned an issue with worn transistors over time, which sounds like the performance issue Apple is dancing around. I don't think iPhone electronics are meant to last. My 6s tanked under repair warranty after the 3rd battery and they gave me a new 6s, and battery life and performance with the most current OS was as good as when I got my original 6s. This makes sense with Apple's story about no performance issues, a fresh new phone that is old still does work well with OS updates.

So my take away (and certainly my opinion) is that the degradation of the electronics (transistors?), especially after 4 years, is what is causing the problem, and an old battery certainly isn't helping. A brand new older model did work great, but in practice nobody is using a brand new phone that is a four year old model. Also, people keep phones longer now so I think they are seeing the effect of worn out electronics that was masked by prior cellular contracts that kept a fresh phone in consumer's hands.

I think the sweet spot is to toss a phone or sell it after 3 years before you see any real problems.

 

[SlaveToSwift]

There hasn't been any other phone that has needed to be throttled by 50% on aging batteries to avoid a shutdown.

And why?

Because they’ve always been throttling? Or because they just let the phone shutdown?

 

[The1Biz]

And why?

Because they’ve always been throttling? Or because they just let the phone shutdown?

iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S, 6S Plus, SE, 7, 7 Plus, 8, 8 Plus and iPhone X models

That's a lot of phone models. I'm going with it's not just the battery, but the internals that degrade over time, too.

 

[ponzicoinbro]

All batteries degrade with age. Only the iPhone had a widespread shutdown problem when running with degraded batteries.

All devices can potentially shutdown and throttle with the last few percent of battery life, even some laptops.

 

[ponzicoinbro]

I'm going with it's not just the battery, but the internals that degrade over time, too.

Capacitors fail with age in almost every device that has capacitors.

New solid state ones are a great improvement, but I don’t remember computer makers being taken to court in the 80s-90s when capacitors failed much easier or when rechargeable batteries depleted much faster.

So much progress has been made and instead of celebrating it we see ”legal action” to punish it.

If they want to take “legal action” against some company they should go after the gun lobbyists, crypto lobbyists, oil lobbyists and tobacco lobbyists.

But those lobbyists spend millions of dollars so nah. We gonna let them keep polluting, scamming and destroying lives because muhh freedom.

 

[ponzicoinbro]

There hasn't been any other phone that has needed to be throttled by 50% on aging batteries to avoid a shutdown.

False. Performance will degrade anyway when batteries are degraded or depleted because the CPU/GPU can no longer be fed the right amount of power. There’s no unicorn magic hardware that exists to avoid this.

The only work around is to detect the state of the batteries, reduce clock speed relative to the battery’s condition and maybe disable graphical effects.

 

[alexhardaker]

Trash lawsuit - always was , always has been.
- Apple throttled those iPhones as some engineers naively thought customers would prefer a marginally slower iPhone over one that suddenly shuts down.
- It is totally absurd that the chattering masses are saying "Apple slowed down iPhones to force people to buy new iPhones". If you had a good battery, your iPhone 6S never slowed down. It so bogus to make that statement, it would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
- Apple has gone above and beyond for consumers by supporting older iPhones making sure they function adequately on the latest iOS they support.
- The battery throttling was mentioned in a release note for , I think, iOS 10.0.1 ( not that anyone reads release notes)

Do you have a screenshot or other evidence that the throttling was mentioned in the update? I’ve wondered if it was ever since the story broke & I’ve never seen anyone or the media mention it at all. The media likes to make a story out of anything, though & most people like simple stories/simple questions and answers.