Judge clears way for $500M iPhone throttling settlements

AppleInsider · August 12, 2023 3:07PM

Owners of iPhone models who were part of throttling lawsuits that ended up with a $500 million settlement from Apple may soon receive their payments, after a judge denied objections against the offer.

In May 2020, a proposed settlement to end a series of class action lawsuits over the so-called iPhone slowdown controversy was given a preliminary approval by courts. Two years later, and the settlement is getting very close to actually being paid out to affected Apple customers.

The settlement was objected against by two iPhone owners, who took the case to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals over its terms, according to SiliconValley.com. The court denied the appeal, paving the way for the settlement payments to commence.

The settlement pertains to a software feature Apple introduced to iOS that throttled the iPhone processor under instances of heavy loads. The idea of the feature was to reduce the negative effects of iPhone batteries aging, such as random shutdowns, for a range of iPhone models.

The affected iPhones included the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus to the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, as well as the iPhone SE running iOS 10.2.1 or later before December 21, 2017, or the iPhone 7 and Plus running iOS 11.2 or later after that date.

Consolidating multiple class action suits into into one settlement, the list of claimants reached around 3 million people who were accepted by a deadline on October 6, 2020.

Under the settlement, Apple will be paying out a total of between $310 and $500 million, with the actual value depending on the number of valid claims after applications complete processing. It is reckoned that the average compensation claim per claimant will be around $65.

Read on AppleInsider

robin huber · August 12, 2023 4:01PM

No good deed goes unpunished. The “throttling” was not nefarious, but a good faith effort to protect consumers from overheating phones. In other words what tort attorneys call a business opportunity.

mplsp · August 12, 2023 4:25PM

robin phuber said:

No good deed goes unpunished. The “throttling” was not nefarious, but a good faith effort to protect consumers from overheating phones. In other words what tort attorneys call a business opportunity.

Like I’ve said before, had Apple simply been more clear in disclosing the throttling there would have been no issue. Since they didn’t, they left their intentions open to interpretation. Whether they did to protect consumers or as an underhanded move to drive sales is completely dependent on your view of Apple. Even in the charitable view they may have driven people to unnecessarily buy new phones when a simple battery replacement would have sufficed.

draco · August 12, 2023 4:39PM

robin huber said:

No good deed goes unpunished. The “throttling” was not nefarious, but a good faith effort to protect consumers from overheating phones. In other words what tort attorneys call a business opportunity.

The throttling wasn't done to prevent overheating. It was done to prevent "unexpected shutdown" which is a case where the phone's battery display shows a relatively high state-of-charge like 20-30%, yet the phone shuts off immediately after a heavy load is applied such as CPU, GPU, camera, etc.

Users should have been given the ability to opt into this behavior, but Apple, always trying to keep things simple, made the behavior automatic for all users.

macgui · August 12, 2023 4:50PM

MplsP said:

robin phuber said:

No good deed goes unpunished. The “throttling” was not nefarious

Like I’ve said before, had Apple simply been more clear in disclosing the throttling there would have been no issue. Since they didn’t, they left their intentions open to interpretation. Whether they did to protect consumers or as an underhanded move to drive sales is completely dependent on your view of Apple. Even in the charitable view they may have driven people to unnecessarily buy new phones when a simple battery replacement would have sufficed.

Exactamundo on both points. I think Apple didn't want to say in any way "our iPhones slow down" because they knew there would be ugly YTers mugging for their cameras shouting "APPLE THROTTLES iPHONES SPEED" and "YOUR iPHONE IS SLOW" or whatever. And as it happens that's what they got anyway.

Given that some well known provider throttle "unlimited" throughput I can see why Apple might want to avoid "nannyism" backlash. And they got it anyway.

If they had braved that in the beginning it might have cost them a lot less than $500M pocket lint. $500M here, $500M there, pretty soon we're talking real money.

alandail · August 12, 2023 4:58PM

Draco said:

robin huber said:

No good deed goes unpunished. The “throttling” was not nefarious, but a good faith effort to protect consumers from overheating phones. In other words what tort attorneys call a business opportunity.

The throttling wasn't done to prevent overheating. It was done to prevent "unexpected shutdown" which is a case where the phone's battery display shows a relatively high state-of-charge like 20-30%, yet the phone shuts off immediately after a heavy load is applied such as CPU, GPU, camera, etc.

Users should have been given the ability to opt into this behavior, but Apple, always trying to keep things simple, made the behavior automatic for all users.

Why would anyone opt out of ensuring their phone doesn't unexpectedly turn off. Apple wrote software to improve reliability and are being fined for it. It's an absurd cash grab by the attorneys.

edited August 2023

mayfly · August 12, 2023 5:41PM

This is just fallout from the Apple Inc. culture of secrecy. As many have noted, had they just given advance notice, or even a contemporaneous technical bulletin, it would have saved them some pocket change. We have two phones affected, so I'm guessing we'll get $5-10 each.

mikethemartian · August 12, 2023 6:38PM

robin huber said:

No good deed goes unpunished. The “throttling” was not nefarious, but a good faith effort to protect consumers from overheating phones. In other words what tort attorneys call a business opportunity.

All they had to do is give a user a notification that the battery was weak and needed to be replaced and that until then the performance of the device would be affected.

chasm · August 12, 2023 8:54PM

I had one of the affected iPhones, and took advantage of the much-reduced battery replacement program later introduced, which to me settled the entire matter.

Bear in mind that the iPhone would ONLY slow down SOMEWHAT when the battery was under load, not when you’re just reading a web page or some such thing. Apple’s move was not intended to trick people into buying a new phone; a battery replacement program existed prior to this, so the option of replacing the battery for around $70 was always an option.

Android users didn’t get this option: their phones would crash increasingly often, with ZERO notice as to why that was happeneing, and they’d just go buy another one. This move was by design to increase sales.

I agree with those who say they should have notified users that your battery is now degraded to the point where it will underperform when you are putting it under load, pointing to a web page if they wanted more information about what batteries are and how they work and age.

America’s incredibly poor science education system should IMO be footing part of the bill, because it’s embarrassing to meet grown-ass adults that have no idea how a rechargeable battery works. I think Apple has been punished pretty severely for a modest failure in communication that they long ago mitigated, while the Android manufacturers got rewarded (and to the best of my knowledge were never sued) for their planned obsolescence.

jfabula1 · August 12, 2023 9:19PM

mayfly said:

This is just fallout from the Apple Inc. culture of secrecy. As many have noted, had they just given advance notice, or even a contemporaneous technical bulletin, it would have saved them some pocket change. We have two phones affected, so I'm guessing we'll get $5-10 each.

Thats it?? Who gets the big mullah, the Attorney of course :-(

radarthekat · August 13, 2023 12:50AM

Travesty of justice.

foregoneconclusion · August 13, 2023 2:06PM

The reality: all phone sized lithium-ion batteries lose the ability to deliver a steady flow of voltage when the charge gets below 20%. That means that the system could potentially need a voltage that is too high for the depleted battery to provide. Why is that important? Because that is a situation that could significantly damage the phone. Prior to Apple's addition of throttling to the OS, the solution to preventing damage from voltage demands that were too high for the battery to provide was for the phone to immediately shut down. Obviously the shortcoming for that kind of protection is that the user has no warning and might be in the middle of something important. Example: an emergency call. The purpose of the throttling addition to the OS was for the system to anticipate the kinds of uses where voltage demand might be too high for the battery and BOTH prevent damage to the phone while also allowing basic uses of the phone (like calls) to continue without a unexpected shutdown.

So Apple was successfully sued for providing a significantly better way to protect the phone/battery from the known limitations of lithium-ion technology.

edited August 2023

avon b7 · August 13, 2023 4:14PM

foregoneconclusion said:

The reality: all phone sized lithium-ion batteries lose the ability to deliver a steady flow of voltage when the charge gets below 20%. That means that the system could potentially need a voltage that is too high for the depleted battery to provide. Why is that important? Because that is a situation that could significantly damage the phone. Prior to Apple's addition of throttling to the OS, the solution to preventing damage from voltage demands that were too high for the battery to provide was for the phone to immediately shut down. Obviously the shortcoming for that kind of protection is that the user has no warning and might be in the middle of something important. Example: an emergency call. The purpose of the throttling addition to the OS was for the system to anticipate the kinds of uses where voltage demand might be too high for the battery and BOTH prevent damage to the phone while also allowing basic uses of the phone (like calls) to continue without a unexpected shutdown.

So Apple was successfully sued for providing a significantly better way to protect the phone/battery from the known limitations of lithium-ion technology.

My opinion is that the phones themselves were designed with batteries that just weren't up to the task in the simplest of terms: capacity.

At a time when users were beginning to use their phones for longer and longer periods of screen time, millions (my wife included) simply got through the charge cycles of their batteries faster and run into problems early as a result.

My brutally abused fast charging Honor 7 absolutely spanked my wife's iPhone 6 battery (which had to be replaced at full cost). No problems whatsoever.

When the scandal hit and Apple reduced pricing for the battery change, we had to find out how to reclaim the overcharged amount for a refund.

Once we found the correct channel, it was relatively easy but Apple made no effort to contact us and notify us that potentially we were due a refund. The swap was carried out by Apple at an Apple Retail Store and they had all our contact info, serial numbers and AppleID records.

edited August 2023

commentzilla · August 13, 2023 4:37PM

The bottomline line is that this feature was meant to protect the phone and the user (period). But hey, I guess the shills would prefer the phone to just unexpectedly turn off or explode.

macxpress · August 14, 2023 9:27PM

So everyone gets a $10 Apple Gift card lol...The lawyers are the only ones who are going to make out on this.

Judge clears way for $500M iPhone throttling settlements

Comments