Apple hit with lawsuit after admitting to slowing down iPhones with depleted batteries

AppleInsider

A day after Apple acknowledged slowing down iPhones with degraded batteries, a Los Angeles man is pursuing a class action lawsuit in the matter.

Owners didn't agree to the prospect, and it hurts the devices' value, according to a filing by plaintiff Stefan Bodganovich, cited by TMZ. The case is said to be particularly concerned with the impact on iPhone 7 users.

The suit asks that Apple stop throttling older devices, and pay compensation to affected people.

Over the course of December, a number of people on Reddit and elsewhere have speculated that iPhones perform faster after battery replacements, mostly citing anecdotal evidence. Apple effectively confirmed that situation on Wednesday, but with the provision that it only throttles phones to prevent sudden, potentially damaging shutdowns.

"Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions," the company said in a statement. "We've now extended that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add support for other products in the future."

Official battery replacements can be free under AppleCare+, but normally cost $79 plus tax.

coolfactor

Just another person making this world muddy and messy.

Apple doesn't owe anybody any money.

danv2

coolfactor said:

Just another person making this world muddy and messy.

Apple doesn't owe anybody any money.

It owes a shit load in taxes and is gonna pay up as per the EU lol. Regarding this situation: if they were transparent then they would not be getting fucked on this deal. They should have made it a feature, and left it to the consumer to decide. When you make calls like this on behalf of the customer, then they will come at you with fangs. More importantly, a prompt should pop up "its time to replace your battery for $80" instead of "lemme slow you down bro w/out telling you bro" etc.

There is a clear cut difference here, and they made a mistake on assuming what each person would want.

Soli

coolfactor said:

Just another person making this world muddy and messy.

Apple doesn't owe anybody any money.

They don't, but this was expected with a lack of transparency on the issue. That said, based on all the data I would've taken the same moves Apple did to keep the device working instead of having it shutdown or have considerably worse battery life.

I doubt we'll see any official recall for this issue, but because of this outrage I can see a future update having an option in Settings » Battery for a a Throttle toggle switch that works kinda like Low Power Mode, except that it won't disable "mail fetch, Hey Siri, background app refresh, automatic downloads, and some visual effects."

Bebe

What compensation?  Free battery replacement?  Good luck 

NemWan

And taxpayers should sue NASA because they've been turning off features we paid for on the Voyager space probes as the power level drops because of the plutonium decay.

MacPro

danv2 said:

coolfactor said:

Just another person making this world muddy and messy.

Apple doesn't owe anybody any money.

It owes a shit load in taxes and is gonna pay up as per the EU lol. Regarding this situation: if they were transparent then they would not be getting fucked on this deal. They should have made it a feature, and left it to the consumer to decide. When you make calls like this on behalf of the customer, then they will come at you with fangs. More importantly, a prompt should pop up "its time to replace your battery for $80" instead of "lemme slow you down bro w/out telling you bro" etc.

There is a clear cut difference here, and they made a mistake on assuming what each person would want.

My suggestion is a message that says "Your battery is getting to near to its end, so ... do you want to keep going as you are and risk the phone dying on you or allow iOS to slow down some processes to make it last a little longer, totally up to you bro."

mavemufc

Does anyone think this is a big deal? Apple choose to preserve battery life over power in older models, they continually update iOS and bring new phones out every year, the way technology advances I don't see this as a big deal but thats maybe cause I'm more than happy to pay whatever for the latest phones, I certainly wouldn't expect my old iPhone 6 to work at the same speed as my new iPhone 10, regardless of how old the device is.

linkman

danv2 said:

coolfactor said:

Just another person making this world muddy and messy.

Apple doesn't owe anybody any money.

It owes a shit load in taxes and is gonna pay up as per the EU lol. Regarding this situation: if they were transparent then they would not be getting fucked on this deal. They should have made it a feature, and left it to the consumer to decide. When you make calls like this on behalf of the customer, then they will come at you with fangs. More importantly, a prompt should pop up "its time to replace your battery for $80" instead of "lemme slow you down bro w/out telling you bro" etc.

There is a clear cut difference here, and they made a mistake on assuming what each person would want.

Apple did make this a feature; it warns you when your battery needs to be replaced. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207453. If the user had the ability to turn it off the throttling then the phone would would shutdown unexpectedly and the user would be ticked off.

This lawsuit is totally stupid. Should someone sue Apple because their batteries wear out?

jume

They should get sued for this. My iPhone 6 is so fucking slow at moments its barely useable. Why there just can't be a switch in settings. It's my decision if I want usable phone or if an app shuts down because of an old battery. This is bad for Apple. 

wood1208

This one reason why Apple or other company should never admit unless life threatening. What do law suit filer wants ?

mikethemartian

NemWan said:

And taxpayers should sue NASA because they've been turning off features we paid for on the Voyager space probes as the power level drops because of the plutonium decay.

But Voyager 2 is going to get a very big upgrade once it reaches the machine planet.

bloggerblog

MacPro said:

danv2 said:

coolfactor said:

Just another person making this world muddy and messy.

Apple doesn't owe anybody any money.

It owes a shit load in taxes and is gonna pay up as per the EU lol. Regarding this situation: if they were transparent then they would not be getting fucked on this deal. They should have made it a feature, and left it to the consumer to decide. When you make calls like this on behalf of the customer, then they will come at you with fangs. More importantly, a prompt should pop up "its time to replace your battery for $80" instead of "lemme slow you down bro w/out telling you bro" etc.

There is a clear cut difference here, and they made a mistake on assuming what each person would want.

My suggestion is a message that says "Your battery is getting to near to its end, so ... do you want to keep going as you are and risk the phone dying on you or allow iOS to slow down some processes to make it last a little longer, totally up to you bro."

Yes that would make sense, but what happened to the 1,000 cycles claim on their batteries? I do remember Apple boasting it a few years back.

1,000 cycles is a little over 3 years if you drain your battery every single day. 

skaduusch

Not telling consumers about this behavior has nothing to do with "transparency." If Apple were to point out every little detail about how iOS works it would be too long for anyone to actually read. This isn't a "feature" nor is it a fault. Electronic devices in general are not going to function as optimally when their power source weakens. That's the way electronics work. The fact that they had to make this compromise in order to keep the phone running smoothly (even if a little slower) is a much better solution than just letting the phone crash all the time. My car battery weakens over time too and eventually can't start my car any more. At that point I have to get a new battery, that's just life.

Ciprol

jume said:

They should get sued for this. My iPhone 6 is so fucking slow at moments its barely useable. Why there just can't be a switch in settings. It's my decision if I want usable phone or if an app shuts down because of an old battery. This is bad for Apple. 

Your iPhone 6 is 'so fxxx slow' because you have old apps and/or left too little free storage space. Nothing to do with the few percentage points in processor performance reduction for peak power.

This law suit reflects badly on some members of the society.

Soli

jume said:

They should get sued for this. My iPhone 6 is so fucking slow at moments its barely useable. Why there just can't be a switch in settings. It's my decision if I want usable phone or if an app shuts down because of an old battery. This is bad for Apple. 

It is your decision, so go ahead and jailbreak it, then you can not only bring the clock speed back to what it was but also increase it as Apple already underclocks their A-series chips for better battery life from the factory… assuming that hack is currently available or you have the skills to make it. The point being, you have that option, just as Apple has the option to make the clock speed what they wish since they don't promise any on their Techs Specs page and aren't beholden to your whims when they create their next version of iOS.

maestro64

Did anyone not predict this.

I was reading all the headline on this subject, in typical media fashion these days, they make it sound like Apple only did it to force people to update their phones. Verses the real reality, they were trying to extend the useful life of the phone under low battery conditions. It was clear the phone was not slow down all the time only when the battery level hit a certain point.

it made total sense what they did, reduce the current spikes on low battery condition which kept the battery voltage from dipping below the low voltage cut off. Customer could get a new phone or new battery, I have replaced batteries on a number of iPhone after 3 yrs to get rid of the problem of it shutting down too quickly on low battery. I am not sure if we really notice the slow performance.

The issue now it the media has spun this so bad that people are piss even if they never saw an issue or upgrade just because they wanted a new phone. As person who used an Android for long time and saw real performance hits after 6 to 9 months of using the phone, Apple slow down does not compare.

bbh

This lawsuit is bogus. Are consumers supposed to vote on every aspect of cpu operation? I think not. 

Kuyangkoh

Weee weeee weeeee, cry baby....if you don’t want what Apple did, go et an Oppo or Siaome. You are better off and you won’t get trolled down if your battery is dying.
iphone is not forever and ever phone you know.

zroger73

I say Apple should remove the throttling feature. I wanna see how many more people start complaining about unexpected shutdowns and decreased usage times.

jume

Ciprol said:

jume said:

They should get sued for this. My iPhone 6 is so fucking slow at moments its barely useable. Why there just can't be a switch in settings. It's my decision if I want usable phone or if an app shuts down because of an old battery. This is bad for Apple. 

Your iPhone 6 is 'so fxxx slow' because you have old apps and/or left too little free storage space. Nothing to do with the few percentage points in processor performance reduction for peak power.

This law suit reflects badly on some members of the society.

I have auto update on all my apps. I don't use them that much. The most frustraiting apps to use are Camera, Facebook and Instagram. Sometimes I want to photo an event and before camera turns on all the events are already past. I have 128 GB with 40 gigs free. So what now? I year ago I used the same apps, had same storage space and the phone worked normally. So what should I do?