Apple might have to pay in “batterygate” class action lawsuit

[starsmine]

4 minutes ago, Issac Zachary said:

Um. Ok...

So you're saying your family all had by chance a bunch of iPhones, and all kept those iPhones until the last update, and you were able to test each one of them and determine when they first crashed and that before those first crashes they weren't throttling and afterwords they were and were no longer crashing?

 

Those are a lot of events that would still require a conciencious effort to track and compile and by your answer seem to be more of an interpretation of what you think happened rather than an actual investigation that took place those many years ago.

 

Sorry, maybe you did decide to invetigate it back then, but that's not the way it sounds.

No I'm saying the phones that didn't have the update crashed often. The ones that did, only had throttled performance after a crash had occured.

And yes, we all kept those iphones a long time. 
I went from a 6s to a 12mini
Parents went from an SE first gen to 12 mini. 
Siblings went from 6s to a X

[mr moose]

12 hours ago, Obioban said:

That's not a "defective battery"-- that's just how battery chemistry works.

 

Throttling does make it work better-- not randomly restarting is better than randomly restarting. Without the update, the batteries absolutely need to be replaced-- restarts under load are not a viable ownership experience. A device being slower, but functioning, is a viable ownership experience.

 

Failure to communicate is what they deserve to be criticized for here.

 

Battery chemistry and degradation for any given workload is something apple should know enough about to know how to properly size a battery.  By putting in slightly smaller battery they ensured (either intentionally or out of straight up ignorance) that they would die early and then require an unannounced patch to mitigate the crashing issue.    Those who used and recharged their phones more aggressively would have had the issue way sooner than someone who rarely used the phone and kept it charged most of the time.  

 

This is why cheap phones die earlier than quality devices (we can see it clearly across the android market as there is a larger range of phones with difference sized batteries but similar power draws).   The more cycles for a given time period the short the battery lasts and there are only two ways to reduce battery cycles, one is to use the device less the other is to put in a bigger battery.    

 

Seeing as the issue here was batteries failing before they should have (compared to similar iphones with bigger batteries) and it is unreasonable to ask consumer to use a premium product less for fear of it not lasting as long,  the proper thing for apple to do was to admit the batteries weren't up to the task and offer to replace them on effected devices up to 2 years and discount for upto 4 years.  That way they wouldn't be paying for normal degradation but only for the portion they cheaped out on (i.e the devices that ceased to work as intended too early for the asking price).   

 

 

Also, just a note, the US judicial system is a shambles when it comes to corporate anything,  you just can't trust a court that ignores absolute evidence in favor of emotional tropes.   Just because they found Apple guilty doesn't mean they had proof (not that you need any when they released the fix to an issue that could only be caused by them). 

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

 

Battery chemistry and degradation for any given workload is something apple should know enough about to know how to properly size a battery.  By putting in slightly smaller battery they ensured (either intentionally or out of straight up ignorance) that they would die early and then require an unannounced patch to mitigate the crashing issue.    Those who used and recharged their phones more aggressively would have had the issue way sooner than someone who rarely used the phone and kept it charged most of the time.  

At the time, the 6S I had was fine, but it also reached that battery degradation phase within 3 years. The current XS has not. Not really at least, as it hasn't randomly shut down except during the summer where it did a few times during use of an app that apparently pulled enough power to even overwhelm being plugged into the 10W charger (it came with a 5W one.)

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

This is why cheap phones die earlier than quality devices (we can see it clearly across the android market as there is a larger range of phones with difference sized batteries but similar power draws).   The more cycles for a given time period the short the battery lasts and there are only two ways to reduce battery cycles, one is to use the device less the other is to put in a bigger battery.    

It's more than just that though, there is no quality standard for Android devices, so two devices side by side a user has no way to know which one has a longer lasting battery based on their use case. Two iphone models side by side have generally the same battery life given Apple makes such a show of how long the battery lasts, and tear downs often indicate the battery size going up or down slightly between models.

https://www.macworld.com/article/678413/iphone-battery-capacities-compared-all-iphones-battery-life-in-mah-and-wh.html

 

Current models have a 17Wh (15 Pro Max) battery while as the 6S had 6.91Wh or 10.45Wh (plus) , the Xs Max above has 12.08Wh

 

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

offer to replace them on effected devices up to 2 years and discount for upto 4 years.  That way they wouldn't be paying for normal degradation but only for the portion they cheaped out on (i.e the devices that ceased to work as intended too early for the asking price).   

 

What Apple should have done from the design phase was keep the same battery size and form factor, so that replacing the battery could be done by the end-user, at any time, instead of having to go to an Apple store (and what if you lived in a town with no Apple store? Kind of a terrible ask to drive 4 hours to the closest city with one) and hope the store even has it in stock years after it was sold.

 

All the models hovered around 5Wh until the 6 when they started going up with the larger screen sizes. Current base models are around 13Wh and the larger models are closer to 17, vs the 6 era with just under 7Wh and 11Wh.

 

I find it hard to believe that Apple did anything deliberate to shorten the life of the 6/6S, and rather it was features in the OS that were rolled out for a later model back ported to the 6/6S that resulted in the actual shorter battery life. It's just a coincidence that Apple rolled out a "fix" to keep it from shutting down at the same time.

 

Just the same, telling the customer they have to replace the phone because they don't stock those batteries anymore is just as much a scam in the owner's eyes. I fear Apple replacing the battery in the XS because I don't want the phone to stop working again like it did with the 6S a few months later after the battery change.

 

This was done in January of 2018, the phone was purchased on September 2015. The phone died on October 2018 right after iOS 12.0 Take note:

Take note of the "Fixes an issue where some iPhone XS devices did not immediately start charging..."

I ain't paying that, and there is to way to force Apple to waive it.

 

At any rate, again, sucks to be the victim of a software update that causes a hardware problem.

The 12.1 update then has: 

Quote

Adds a performance management feature to prevent sudden shutdowns for an iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, or iPhone X, with the ability to disable this.

Aligns perfectly with the lawsuit target.

 

[Obioban]

4 hours ago, mr moose said:

the proper thing for apple to do was to admit the batteries weren't up to the task and offer to replace them on affected devices up to 2 years and discount for upto 4 years.  That way they wouldn't be paying for normal degradation but only for the portion they cheaped out on (i.e the devices that ceased to work as intended too early for the asking price).  

They made out of warranty battery replacements for effected phones $29.

(and replacing the battery restored full performance to the phone)

[Dracarris]

IIRC the issue wasn't really the battery itself but a design flaw in the PMIC subsystem of affected phones, which mismanaged a degraded battery to deliver enough current for peak load.

 

Back then, Apples throttling basically worked by checking whether the phone has crashed due to a degrading battery and then applying the throttling, while initially not giving any info to the user (only later giving a popup to the user on the post-crash reboot after all this mess went down, which is AFAIK still how it's done in current iOS versions).

[mr moose]

20 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

It's more than just that though, there is no quality standard for Android devices, so two devices side by side a user has no way to know which one has a longer lasting battery based on their use case. Two iphone models side by side have generally the same battery life given Apple makes such a show of how long the battery lasts, and tear downs often indicate the battery size going up or down slightly between models.

https://www.macworld.com/article/678413/iphone-battery-capacities-compared-all-iphones-battery-life-in-mah-and-wh.html

 

I was just commenting on the phones that we can compare power draw wise.  That's not an overly hard thing to do with the shear number of reviews out there.

 

20 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

What Apple should have done from the design phase was keep the same battery size and form factor, so that replacing the battery could be done by the end-user, at any time, instead of having to go to an Apple store (and what if you lived in a town with no Apple store? Kind of a terrible ask to drive 4 hours to the closest city with one) and hope the store even has it in stock years after it was sold.

 

All the models hovered around 5Wh until the 6 when they started going up with the larger screen sizes. Current base models are around 13Wh and the larger models are closer to 17, vs the 6 era with just under 7Wh and 11Wh.

 

I find it hard to believe that Apple did anything deliberate to shorten the life of the 6/6S, and rather it was features in the OS that were rolled out for a later model back ported to the 6/6S that resulted in the actual shorter battery life. It's just a coincidence that Apple rolled out a "fix" to keep it from shutting down at the same time.

The battery in the non plus models were smaller, not by a huge amount but obviously by enough.    If they had of put the same size battery in all models then they would have either all had the problem or none of them would.  But yes, you are correct in that it would have made replacing the battery easier (another gripe I have with modern phones).

 

18 hours ago, Obioban said:

They made out of warranty battery replacements for effected phones $29.

(and replacing the battery restored full performance to the phone)

yes they did,  but that doesn't excuse them for keeping users in the dark about throttling their phones nor does it excuse them for failing to make the product do what they advertised in the first instance.

[Dracarris]

21 hours ago, Kisai said:

Just the same, telling the customer they have to replace the phone because they don't stock those batteries anymore is just as much a scam in the owner's eyes. I fear Apple replacing the battery in the XS because I don't want the phone to stop working again like it did with the 6S a few months later after the battery change.

If only there was a solution. But sure, unless an Apple store near you offers to do it, the phone inevitably becomes eWaste

 

https://canada.ifixit.com/products/iphone-6s-replacement-battery

https://canada.ifixit.com/products/iphone-xs-replacement-battery

 

They literally deliver to your doorstep, wherever you are located. If (even as a tech-savy person) you feel incapable of doing the repair yourself, you can take these parts to any local 3rd-party store to get the replacement done for you (or have them order them by themselves).

[starsmine]

7 hours ago, Dracarris said:

If only there was a solution. But sure, unless an Apple store near you offers to do it, the phone inevitably becomes eWaste

 

https://canada.ifixit.com/products/iphone-6s-replacement-battery

https://canada.ifixit.com/products/iphone-xs-replacement-battery

 

They literally deliver to your doorstep, wherever you are located. If (even as a tech-savy person) you feel incapable of doing the repair yourself, you can take these parts to any local 3rd-party store to get the replacement done for you (or have them order them by themselves).

It bothers me so much, that people consider the batteries of these phones to be so hard to replace that they are "not replaceable"
Like consumables on many cars are harder to fix. I have to roll the engine to get to my back bank of spark plugs. Those are considered user-replaceable. 

[Dracarris]

5 hours ago, starsmine said:

It bothers me so much, that people consider the batteries of these phones to be so hard to replace that they are "not replaceable"
Like consumables on many cars are harder to fix. I have to roll the engine to get to my back bank of spark plugs. Those are considered user-replaceable. 

So much this. It's like they want them to not be user replaceable to having something to whine about.

[Issac Zachary]

6 hours ago, starsmine said:

It bothers me so much, that people consider the batteries of these phones to be so hard to replace that they are "not replaceable"
Like consumables on many cars are harder to fix. I have to roll the engine to get to my back bank of spark plugs. Those are considered user-replaceable. 

On older iPhones battery replacments probably weren't bad at all. Sure, there were plenty of Android phones back then that you could replace the battery with just your fingers, no tools. But I knew a lot of shops that could change an iPhone battery no problem... at least they used to.

 

What bothers me is how new iPhones have serialized batteries. I'm not saying that Apple's own batteries are bad and that buying one when an iPhone needs one is bad. But I hate the monopolistic way of serializing every aspect of the phone (or tablet or computer).

 

If I had a new iPhone (say 13, 14, 15, or the next 16, etc.), and the screen broke or the battery got worn down after years of use, where in the world am I supposed to get it fixed? How much will it cost? Who am I supporting? I live 4 hours away from the nearest city that has an authorized Apple Repair shop. There's a nice little business in town that does repairs, but not on Apples. They're friendly, we know each other, on most phones they have them done in a day or so. But what are my options? Send my Apple iPhone off in the mail to some place, who knows where, and wait for days or weeks to get it back and at Apple's top dollar price?

 

I'm sorry, but if Apple wants me to be one of their customers they need to give me reasons why I should buy their stuff. I don't have very many reasons at present, and repairability definitely isn't one of them.

[Mark Kaine]

On 1/7/2024 at 4:06 AM, 8tg said:

why is everything a gate

its so cringe, anyone who names something a _____gate should be ashamed of themselves for being so unoriginal

 

Besides the point. But yeah, apple needs to be reminded every now and then of basic consumer rights and what the consumer should expect. This happened with the iphone 4s except they still never just allowed backwards downgrading of the OS, so still to this day most iphone 4s's are unusable with ios 9.3, and the activation services for ios 6 dont work with modern sims. Wont be the first time theyve been sued for stuff like this, wont be the last.

 

inb4 apple gets sued again for their stupid usb C ac adapters which dont like to work with anything that isnt an apple product

an apple-C-gate? boy, i can't wait!

 

(that's actually hilarious if true)