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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

#41

Post by csharptwdec19 »

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.

Which honestly is pretty sad/absurd.

Honestly, a voucher for 1 free battery replacement usable at any-time for every class member would have been a fair-enough settlement IMO.

  - Would mitigate damages to the class
 
  - Relatively low cost to Apple, but enough to make a dent and deter future shenanigans. Considering a no-name battery can be had for 6$, I will assume that Apple's cost for a genuine one is that number. (could be lower, could be a little higher but doubt it.)

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

#42

Post by bigbubba »

jolux wrote: post #39
invisible wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's possible they weren't being malicious. The part that gets me is that they didn't decide to instead allow folks to set a max battery charge to extend their battery life. It's pretty widely accepted that charging a battery to 100% over-and-over will cause battery degradation. It seems fair to me that decisions that are hidden from consumers and obviously degrade the consumer's experience should negati…

The alternative is that the phone shuts off spontaneously and reboots if power draw gets too high, which also degrades the consumer’s experience and looks a lot scarier and more obviously broken to most people.

Are these really the two options? What about displaying a plainly worded message that explains the situation to the owner, then gives them the choice?

Or would that be too confusing and scary for Apple customers?

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

#43

Post by aetherspawn »

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…

Hi,

Battery engineer here at an electric vehicle company.

The crux of it is this: when you draw high current from a small battery, the voltage will sag (1). The manufacturer has an on-board battery management system that MUST turn off the battery if it goes below a certain voltage threshold.

As the battery ages, the sag effect increases significantly, up to 2-3x. Thus, when your phone clearly indicates say 20% battery remaining, if a high load were to be applied, the last 20% would be inaccessible because the battery sag from the spontaneous high load would cause a reboot.

Thus, Apple acted in good faith to maximize the battery life on these older devices. The reason is technical, so it's hard to communicate this in a way that all consumers can understand. Yes, they failed at this. Look at all the confusion.

    (1) Exercise:
    Suppose no-load 3.4V corresponds to 20% remaining.
    Suppose that the battery cut-off is set to 3.2V.
    The battery % is usually derived from a current sensor (coulomb counting), NOT from the measured voltage.
    But the battery cut-off is a safety feature and needs to be measured hard against the voltage (and the current sensor needs to be ignored due to cumulative error).
    
    On a new phone, fully loaded voltage drop = 0.1V
    On a used phone, fully loaded voltage drop = 0.3V
    
    Low-load condition, @20% = 3.4V, OK
    Full-load condition, @20% = 3.4 - 0.3 = 3.1V, Emergency OFF.

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

#44

Post by cheeze »

aetherspawn wrote: post #43
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…

Hi, Battery engineer here at an electric vehicle company. The crux of it is this: when you draw high current from a small battery, the voltage will sag (1). The manufacturer has an on-board battery management system that MUST turn off the battery if it goes below a certain voltage threshold. As the battery ages, the sag effect increases significantly, up to 2-3x. Thus, when your phone clearly indicates say 20% batter…

I agree about the confusion, btu the issue AFAICT is more about the fact that they didn't offer consumers any way to rectify the issue

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

#45

Post by bgorman »

1123581321 wrote: post #38
bgorman wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I experienced it as well and this isn’t true either. The throttling was significant (40%, rough ballpark) but the phones were usable. A game that played that poorly would not have run well at full power. Maps and messaging was functional. They should have communicated the change, in case that qualification is needed.

Have you ever considered that multiple generations of phones were effected by this issue and your single anecdote doesn't describe the full spectrum of behavior.

I don't appreciate being called a liar, especially about an issue that personally effected me to the point I left the Apple ecosystem for years. (I gave up my iPhone before the revelations, but I am 100% sure in retrospect I was being throttled)

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

#46

Post by radlad »

bgirard wrote: post #40
filoleg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are correct in a sense that it was doing it "without notice". But they had a good reason to do the slowdowns, no malice needed, their one and only big mistake here was doing it without a notice. The reason they did it was to prevent battery degradation and bad battery life by throttling the CPU. Except back then, iPhone CPUs weren't overperforming monsters they are today, so the slowdown was fairly noticeable. A…

Karunamon made a very specific claim in this thread that I quoted. Your response doesn't discuss this claim. I'm interested in what data we have backing that claim.

Your quote mentioned "without notice", which was responded to. I would also like to see a response to this part of the quote:

> 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).

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

#48

Post by sthnblllII »

cheeze wrote: post #44
aetherspawn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, Battery engineer here at an electric vehicle company. The crux of it is this: when you draw high current from a small battery, the voltage will sag (1). The manufacturer has an on-board battery management system that MUST turn off the battery if it goes below a certain voltage threshold. As the battery ages, the sag effect increases significantly, up to 2-3x. Thus, when your phone clearly indicates say 20% batter…

I agree about the confusion, btu the issue AFAICT is more about the fact that they didn't offer consumers any way to rectify the issue

Have the plaintiffs requested some kind of battery notification? Their angle has always been accusing Apple of planned obsolescence, which seems laughable compared to how little long-term support Android phones get.

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

#49

Post by gpm »

aetherspawn wrote: post #43
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…

Hi, Battery engineer here at an electric vehicle company. The crux of it is this: when you draw high current from a small battery, the voltage will sag (1). The manufacturer has an on-board battery management system that MUST turn off the battery if it goes below a certain voltage threshold. As the battery ages, the sag effect increases significantly, up to 2-3x. Thus, when your phone clearly indicates say 20% batter…

The fix for this is simple. Appropriately size the battery when designing and manufacturing the device so that it is still capable of running the device a few years into it's lifetime, instead of a few months.

The after the fact fix for this is also to not refuse to fix your defective devices when customers bring them in under warranty claims, and definitely to not lie about them not being defective.

You don't make pay out the better part of a billion dollars in settlements and fines because you acted responsibly in a way that is hard to explain to consumers. You pay out a billion dollars in settlements because you broke the law.

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

#50

Post by yyyk »

aetherspawn wrote: post #43
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…

Hi, Battery engineer here at an electric vehicle company. The crux of it is this: when you draw high current from a small battery, the voltage will sag (1). The manufacturer has an on-board battery management system that MUST turn off the battery if it goes below a certain voltage threshold. As the battery ages, the sag effect increases significantly, up to 2-3x. Thus, when your phone clearly indicates say 20% batter…

The issue is that Apple knew about the bad batteries* , denied it and discouraged battery replacement, thus leading to increased iPhone sales if users wanted a decent experience - defrauding its own customers.

That's not good faith at all. That apologists keep talking about batteries but ignore the real problem smacks of a PR campaign.

* We actually don't know if the slowdown was only for bad batteries - that's Apple's version, but it could be that they applied the throttling generally. I'm unaware of any third party who has verified this.

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