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Apple Agrees to Pay $113M to Settle 'Batterygate' Case over iPhone Slowdowns

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Re: Apple Agrees to Pay $113M to Settle 'Batterygate' Case over iPhone Slowdowns

#21

Post by bgorman »

reducesuffering wrote: post #17
CapriciousCptl wrote: post #10

So, I'm somehow developing a pro-Apple bias these days. This whole batterygate to me is kind of based on conjecture-- that Apple slowed old phones with the intention to sell more new ones. If there's any supporting evidence, or anything that's come up in discovery that Apple acted in bad faith, I'd possibly change my (admittedly biased) mind. But really, slowing the phones down to extend battery life is a reasonable…

I think this is the crux of the issue. Apple had to make a call for their customers: ensure the low battery is as long-lasting and predictable as possible around 1-5%, or keep high performance as the phone battery degrades quicker and shuts off. I think many people thoroughly understand how crucial it can be to have that last 1-2% and going into a situation where you think you have 5%, but then the phone dies, is a p…

No it is not an engineering trade off. If you had one of these phones you would know.

The throttling here was so bad, the phones were completely unusable during the throttling. Sure, the operating system was running but doing basic tasks like using Apple maps or even sending a message would be effectively impossible. Imagine trying to play a video game at 2 frame per second. Unusable.

The real decision was that Apple didn't want to pay for millions of battery replacements, so Apple came up with a "software" fix for a hardware problem... Except that the software fix made the phone unusable.

Re: Apple Agrees to Pay $113M to Settle 'Batterygate' Case over iPhone Slowdowns

#22

Post by manfredo »

xahrepap wrote: post #16
CapriciousCptl wrote: post #10

So, I'm somehow developing a pro-Apple bias these days. This whole batterygate to me is kind of based on conjecture-- that Apple slowed old phones with the intention to sell more new ones. If there's any supporting evidence, or anything that's come up in discovery that Apple acted in bad faith, I'd possibly change my (admittedly biased) mind. But really, slowing the phones down to extend battery life is a reasonable…

I own an iPhone because I got sick of these kinds of issues I was having with my Pixel phones. (would last ~1yr of perfect bliss. Then the honeymoon ends and the phone would just behave like crap). I decided to give another brand a shot. I'll tell you what will really tick me off in another year or so... If my device is, without warning, notification, ability to change, etc, purposefully nerfing itself for ANY REASON…

So it'd have been better to just let people's phones crash on startup and become 100% unusable?

Re: Apple Agrees to Pay $113M to Settle 'Batterygate' Case over iPhone Slowdowns

#24

Post by jimnotgym »

loeg wrote: post #11
kahrl wrote: post #5

0.00565% of Apple's $2T market cap.

Does that seem inappropriately high or low for "batterygate?"

Well if what the prosecutors say is true I would say it was low. They alleged that Apple deliberately deceived consumers.

We will never know if that is true because Apple apparently don't think it is worth clearing their name

Re: Apple Agrees to Pay $113M to Settle 'Batterygate' Case over iPhone Slowdowns

#26

Post by plorkyeran »

manfredo wrote: post #22
xahrepap wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own an iPhone because I got sick of these kinds of issues I was having with my Pixel phones. (would last ~1yr of perfect bliss. Then the honeymoon ends and the phone would just behave like crap). I decided to give another brand a shot. I'll tell you what will really tick me off in another year or so... If my device is, without warning, notification, ability to change, etc, purposefully nerfing itself for ANY REASON…

So it'd have been better to just let people's phones crash on startup and become 100% unusable?

The throttling also left my phone unusable while disguising the fact that it was because the battery needed to be replaced.

Re: Apple Agrees to Pay $113M to Settle 'Batterygate' Case over iPhone Slowdowns

#27

Post by yreg »

xahrepap wrote: post #16
CapriciousCptl wrote: post #10

So, I'm somehow developing a pro-Apple bias these days. This whole batterygate to me is kind of based on conjecture-- that Apple slowed old phones with the intention to sell more new ones. If there's any supporting evidence, or anything that's come up in discovery that Apple acted in bad faith, I'd possibly change my (admittedly biased) mind. But really, slowing the phones down to extend battery life is a reasonable…

I own an iPhone because I got sick of these kinds of issues I was having with my Pixel phones. (would last ~1yr of perfect bliss. Then the honeymoon ends and the phone would just behave like crap). I decided to give another brand a shot. I'll tell you what will really tick me off in another year or so... If my device is, without warning, notification, ability to change, etc, purposefully nerfing itself for ANY REASON…

Before this the old iPhones used to randomly reboot when the battery wasn’t able to keep them alive. (I had such phone.)

I don’t think slowing it down is “nerfing” compared to that. I speak also as someone who used an old iPhone 6 which was slowed down this way. Btw they throttled based on battery health, not age.

Re: Apple Agrees to Pay $113M to Settle 'Batterygate' Case over iPhone Slowdowns

#28

Post by [deleted] »

system2 wrote: post #20
pkaye wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As part of Wednesday's settlement, $113 million will be distributed among the states, including California, Tennessee and Pennsylvania. The funds will cover attorneys' fees and will be used to fund future consumer protection investigators. You will get nothing by the looks of it.

Sweet justice. We get scammed, corporate pays a fine, lawyers get rich.

[deleted]

Re: Apple Agrees to Pay $113M to Settle 'Batterygate' Case over iPhone Slowdowns

#29

Post by bgirard »

Karunamon wrote: post #6

Worth mentioning here is that this wasn't just about the "sneaky" fix for battery degradation, it was about doing this without notice , and having internal tooling that would deny a replacement (even at full retail price) if the battery was above an arbitrary health threshold (but still low enough to cause throttling). Before Apple changed their tune, if you read about this, and went into an Apple store for a replace…

> it was about doing this without notice, and having internal tooling that would deny a replacement (even at full retail price) if the battery was above an arbitrary health threshold (but still low enough to cause throttling).

Do you have a source for that? This would change my opinion on this story.

Reminds me of hot coffee where it sounded a bit ridiculous until you got the full story.

Re: Apple Agrees to Pay $113M to Settle 'Batterygate' Case over iPhone Slowdowns

#30

Post by skunkworker »

CapriciousCptl wrote: post #10

So, I'm somehow developing a pro-Apple bias these days. This whole batterygate to me is kind of based on conjecture-- that Apple slowed old phones with the intention to sell more new ones. If there's any supporting evidence, or anything that's come up in discovery that Apple acted in bad faith, I'd possibly change my (admittedly biased) mind. But really, slowing the phones down to extend battery life is a reasonable…

I believe it wasn't slowing down the phones to extend battery life, it was slowing down the phone's power draw because as the LiPo battery wore out it could no longer give the peak power like it used to. The only real fix was to throttle the phone, which apple did a horrible job communicating on.
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