Apple fined for slugging phones

[Guest]

France have slapped a drop in the ocean 25million euro fine of Apple for slowing down phones with degraded batteries.

 

Quote

Apple has been fined 25 million euros (£21m, $27m) for deliberately slowing down older iPhone models without making it clear to consumers.

The fine was imposed by France's competition and fraud watchdog DGCCRF, which said consumers were not warned.

In 2017, Apple confirmed that it did slow down some iPhones, but said it only did so to "prolong the life" of the devices.

Apple said in a statement that it had resolved the issue with the watchdog.

I wonder how many more countries will act.

 

Quote

Why does Apple slow down old iPhones?

Many customers had long suspected that Apple slowed down older iPhones to encourage people to upgrade when a new one was released.

In 2017, the company confirmed it did slow down some models as they aged, but not to encourage people to upgrade.

It said the lithium-ion batteries in the devices became less capable of supplying peak current demands, as they aged over time.

That could result in an iPhone unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components.

So, it released a software update for the iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE which "smoothed out" battery performance.

The practice was confirmed after a customer shared performance tests on Reddit, suggesting their iPhone 6S had slowed down considerably as it had aged, but had suddenly speeded up again after the battery had been replaced.

Which I think is fair enough. However I agree with the findings of the French investigation that Apple should have been open and upfront about the effect their code potentially has. At least that would have given users a choice. Hopefully the small fines and the poor press will make Apple more open in future.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51413724

[hishnash]

I think your write apple should have been clear from the start and done more than told a select media outlets about it. 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

I had a 3GS and when that got old the random shutdowns drove me absolutely insane. 

 

I'm very glad apple chooses this route rather than letting the phone shutdown. the fact they can get fined for this amazes me. besides it's a feature you can disable if you want a terrible experience. 

[justpoet]

They also made it an option in the next iOS release after doing it, so you could turn off the smart battery management that does this if you want to and risk shutdown instead.  Doesn't make sense to me that people would rather have issues at some point for a tiny bit of performance, but enough people spoke up about it that Apple added the option in instead of just doing the best thing, which is how they started.

[Andreas Lilja]

What year phones are we talking about?

 

How old was the most recent slowdown'ed phone in 2017?

[Blademaster91]

Not getting the performance you paid for is an issue, and I'd rather the phone turn off than become so slow I can't use it anyway. The phone suddenly shutting off is a better way of telling people to get it fixed than slowing down the device with no warning whatsoever.

 

[williamcll]

Did they ever removed this feature? 

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, Phill104 said:

France have slapped a drop in the ocean 25million euro fine of Apple for slowing down phones with degraded batteries.

 

I wonder how many more countries will act.

 

Which I think is fair enough. However I agree with the findings of the French investigation that Apple should have been open and upfront about the effect their code potentially has. At least that would have given users a choice. Hopefully the small fines and the poor press will make Apple more open in future.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51413724

 

This is really a non-story. I'm absolutely sure all the mobile phone manufacturers did the same, cause they have "tuned" their phones for benchmarks before, I wouldn't put it past them doing it when the battery capacity is reduced to 80%.

[Bombastinator]

5 hours ago, Phill104 said:

France have slapped a drop in the ocean 25million euro fine of Apple for slowing down phones with degraded batteries.

 

I wonder how many more countries will act.

 

Which I think is fair enough. However I agree with the findings of the French investigation that Apple should have been open and upfront about the effect their code potentially has. At least that would have given users a choice. Hopefully the small fines and the poor press will make Apple more open in future.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51413724

I thought this was a long ago thing where Apple agreed to stop doing it and provide battery replacement service or something.  Maybe didn’t happen in all countries and this is echoes of what has happened other places?

[RejZoR]

10 hours ago, Twilight said:

I had a 3GS and when that got old the random shutdowns drove me absolutely insane. 

 

I'm very glad apple chooses this route rather than letting the phone shutdown. the fact they can get fined for this amazes me. besides it's a feature you can disable if you want a terrible experience. 

The idea was fine, communication around it was not. Phone should notify users that battery doesn't have sufficient capacity anymore and give user a choice. Have better battery life by slowing the phone down or have performance and be required to charge phone more often. That was the main issue. From a perspective of a casual user, maybe, but I'd still like to be informed, so you don't look like total idiot why phone is all of a sudden much slower than it used to be,

[realpetertdm]

12 hours ago, Twilight said:

I had a 3GS and when that got old the random shutdowns drove me absolutely insane. 

 

I'm very glad apple chooses this route rather than letting the phone shutdown. the fact they can get fined for this amazes me. besides it's a feature you can disable if you want a terrible experience. 

They got fined because they didn't disclose it, not because they had the feature.

[kokakolia]

TBF, Apple should just be fined like any other big American company for not paying taxes through obscure loopholes. It’s money they owe anyways. 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

12 hours ago, Andreas Lilja said:

What year phones are we talking about?

 

How old was the most recent slowdown'ed phone in 2017?

I can say this. when I bought my used iPhone 6s the battery was at 72% health, it lasted less than an hour with the screen on and I had to charge it 4 times a day minimum. that battery stil had peak performance capacity. 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

4 hours ago, RejZoR said:

The idea was fine, communication around it was not. Phone should notify users that battery doesn't have sufficient capacity anymore and give user a choice. Have better battery life by slowing the phone down or have performance and be required to charge phone more often. That was the main issue. From a perspective of a casual user, maybe, but I'd still like to be informed, so you don't look like total idiot why phone is all of a sudden much slower than it used to be,

 

2 hours ago, realpetertdm said:

They got fined because they didn't disclose it, not because they had the feature.

that's fair. a warning being like hey the battery is absolutely shot you should really replace it would be nice. 

[schwellmo92]

9 minutes ago, Twilight said:

I can say this. when I bought my used iPhone 6s the battery was at 72% health, it lasted less than an hour with the screen on and I had to charge it 4 times a day minimum. that battery stil had peak performance capacity. 

80% battery health is when Apple slow phones by default. The battery throttling "feature" wasn't something that was brought in recently so you may not have had the update on your phone if you had peak performance at 72%.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

3 minutes ago, schwellmo92 said:

80% battery health is when Apple slow phones by default. The battery throttling "feature" wasn't something that was brought in recently so you may not have had the update on your phone if you had peak performance at 72%.

it was running the latest update (already on iOS 13 at the time), and in battery health it said that it supported peak performance. so you appear to be misinformed here. 

[Bombastinator]

5 minutes ago, Twilight said:

it was running the latest update (already on iOS 13 at the time), and in battery health it said that it supported peak performance. so you appear to be misinformed here. 

Goes to definition of “recent”. Iirc this thing blew up about 2017, so it depends if pre-2017 is “recent” or not.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

4 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Goes to definition of “recent”. Iirc this thing blew up about 2017, so it depends if pre-2017 is “recent” or not.

...what? schwellmo92 asked if the feature was available on my phone at the time with the old battery in it, not when it was added. this feature was added as a software update, so if you had a 6s at the time I'm almost certain that it was updated to have the feature. 

[schwellmo92]

1 hour ago, Twilight said:

it was running the latest update (already on iOS 13 at the time), and in battery health it said that it supported peak performance. so you appear to be misinformed here. 

I did some googling and I was slightly misinformed. Your battery health has to be below 80% AND you have had to experienced an unexpected shutdown.

[CTR640]

Don't worry, Apple will fight the fine and they got our back.

[Jotoco]

17 hours ago, Twilight said:

I had a 3GS and when that got old the random shutdowns drove me absolutely insane. 

 

I'm very glad apple chooses this route rather than letting the phone shutdown. the fact they can get fined for this amazes me. besides it's a feature you can disable if you want a terrible experience. 

I've had so many phones. So many phones that gotten to only a few hours of battery life and NEVER not one shutdown randomly. 

 

Be it Nokia, Samsung, Asus or Motorola, none have problems. I guess this is a special battery by apple that does this. 

[Bombastinator]

My iPhone7 reads 85% and is on its first battery.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

1 hour ago, Jotoco said:

I've had so many phones. So many phones that gotten to only a few hours of battery life and NEVER not one shutdown randomly. 

 

Be it Nokia, Samsung, Asus or Motorola, none have problems. I guess this is a special battery by apple that does this. 

no, all of them do that eventually. it just takes a long time. 

[snowbeast]

On 2/8/2020 at 1:07 AM, Twilight said:

I had a 3GS and when that got old the random shutdowns drove me absolutely insane. 

 

I'm very glad apple chooses this route rather than letting the phone shutdown. the fact they can get fined for this amazes me. besides it's a feature you can disable if you want a terrible experience. 

well it was not because they slowed down phones but because they didn't tell their customers, I agree this way is better but this should make them learn that u need to communicate with your customers. 

[snowbeast]

On 2/8/2020 at 6:40 PM, CTR640 said:

Don't worry, Apple will fight the fine and they got our back.

apple is a company and does not care about you, never trust companies.