Apple face 2 class action suits in USA over slowing down iPhones

[mr moose]

8 hours ago, abazigal said:

That Apple chose to peg the slowdown to battery health, rather than have the software update slow down all iPhones uniformly regardless of the state of their batteries makes me inclined to believe that Apple was genuinely acting in the best interests of its users (or so they believed). Think about it - if Apple had chosen the latter, they would never have been found out, because Geekbench would have returned the same results regardless of the state of the battery in the phone. 

 

The way I see it, they were faced with an engineering problem, and so they went about solving it in an engineering fashion, and a software patch was, in their opinion, the most convenient and expedient way of resolving the issue potentially facing hundreds of millions of iPhones. Not every user is in a position where they can readily exchange the battery in their phone, and a popup may just lead to more confusion and panic. 

 

Apple didn't go out of their way to hide this information from the users either, just that in their opinion, the consumer didn't need to know. Seems like a bunch of pretty bad calls made by Apple in hindsight. Not saying their actions are excusable, but I don't think Apple deliberately slowing down your iPhones with the express and malicious intent of tricking users into upgrading any sooner than they had to (though it is undeniable that this was likely a consequence thereof). 

 

7 hours ago, leadeater said:

It's also nice to remember that companies have employees, these are real people the same as everyone else. They also tend to like their job and enjoy designing and solving problems that care about the products they make and the people that use them. The fact that this power management feature is so precisely targeted at a single issue it feels like this directly came from an engineer or group of that had identified an issue and were addressing it.

 

If the performance was not restored with a new battery then I would be suspicious of intent, making something slower due to age without a reasonable metric to base it off other than age is far more a corporate body solution to a technical issue than actually checking the battery health.

I don't think anyone disputes the legitimacy of the patch being for degrading batteries,  the issue most people have is it is happening on phones that are just out of a year old (iphone7) when lion batteries should easily last 2-3 years before degradation is a problem, and they didn't tell anyone, so it's basically degrading performance to hide a poor design choice.

[79wjd]

43 minutes ago, mr moose said:

 

I don't think anyone disputes the legitimacy of the patch being for degrading batteries,  the issue most people have is it is happening on phones that are just out of a year old (iphone7) when lion batteries should easily last 2-3 years before degradation is a problem, and they didn't tell anyone, so it's basically degrading performance to hide a poor design choice.

Well, it does depend on which iPhone 7s have a problem. If it's those that see average use, then that's a problem. If it's those that have gone through 1000+ cycles, then it's fine. Although I'm inclined to believe it's the former seeing as my 6s Plus is throttled about 10% and has seen an average (or even less) usage -- being charged probably about 4-5 times per week. Which probably lines up with Apple's battery estimate of 500 cycles before capacity drops below 80%.

 

The battery should be big enough to sustain 1000 cycles, which would equate to about three years of average use, whereas in my personal testing it's about half that and in inline with Apple's estimate.

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, djdwosk97 said:

Well, it does depend on which iPhone 7s have a problem. If it's those that see average use, then that's a problem. If it's those that have gone through 1000+ cycles, then it's fine. Although I'm inclined to believe it's the former seeing as my 6s Plus is throttled about 10% and has seen an average (or even less) usage -- being charged probably about 4-5 times per week. Which probably lines up with Apple's battery estimate of 500 cycles before capacity drops below 80%.

 

The battery should be big enough to sustain 1000 cycles, which would equate to about three years of average use, whereas in my personal testing it's about half that and in inline with Apple's estimate.

I'm only going off an article I read earlier where a battery expert (supposedly from some university) was claiming today's li ion/polymer batteries should power a phone without fault for at least 3 years under average use rather than stricter cycling or recharging regimes.  If they don't then the either batteries have issues or they are too small for the phone.   I'll try and find it.

[D13H4RD]

Honestly, I fully understand why Apple did this.

 

Are they slowing down your iPhone to get you to upgrade? No, because if they did so, then full performance would not be restored with a new battery. The main reason why they did so is to prevent the phone from prematurely shutting down due to a higher voltage load on a battery of which a degraded one can not handle properly when compared to a new one. Remember the Nexus 6P shutdown problems where one even shut off during winter, leaving its owner stranded? That’s what Apple wants to avoid.

 

With all that said, Apple did themselves no favor with their communication (or lack thereof). Had the phone displayed a notification which said “Your iPhone’s battery may require a replacement” followed with an exclamation mark beside the battery icon, perhaps this wouldn’t have blown up the way it did. Macs did this as my MacBook Pro displayed a “Service Battery” message when opening the battery tab.

 

Long story short, disgruntled users (and super diehard Android fanboys) will tell you this is planned obsolescence, but I really don’t think that’s the case. I think this was a genuine thing designed to avoid a potentially catastrophic issue that ultimately backfired because Apple failed to properly disclose what is going on.

 

In essence, it’s an example of what was intended to be good being interpreted as bad due to inadequate communication.

[Jito463]

39 minutes ago, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

In essence, it’s an example of what was intended to be good being interpreted as bad due to inadequate communication.

Now, I could get behind a theory like yours, because it is plausible.  I just can't get certain individuals who believe Apple did absolutely nothing wrong and had zero obligation to inform their customers of this because it's "obvious" that it was due to the battery.

[D13H4RD]

On 12/28/2017 at 8:50 AM, Jito463 said:

Now, I could get behind a theory like yours, because it is plausible.  I just can't get certain individuals who believe Apple did absolutely nothing wrong and had zero obligation to inform their customers of this because it's "obvious" that it was due to the battery.

Apple screwed up. This could have been mitigated with a proper explanation beforehand. 

[Valentyn]

On 28/12/2017 at 12:50 AM, Jito463 said:

Now, I could get behind a theory like yours, because it is plausible.  I just can't get certain individuals who believe Apple did absolutely nothing wrong and had zero obligation to inform their customers of this because it's "obvious" that it was due to the battery.

I like that they’re adding more to the battery section now to indicate battery health.

 

Before that you would get a warning saying the battery needs to be replaced; but it was just a sentence at the top of the battery section.

 

If you wanted more info you needed a diagnostic ran on the device. That’s free at least, just by calling Apple Care.

 

Main issue is the average person likely never touches the Battery section of Settings, and likely doesn’t have a clue anyway about the device outside of using it daily.

 

Im actually in favour of what Apple did, I’m not in favour of the lack of disclosure really.

 

Before the update, a big call driver and issue for Apple were people with older phones randomly shutting off. The software fixes that, through the down clock; but this is where transparency and a better way of checking battery health would have prevented all of these current issues.