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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

#51

Post by fiblye »

yreg wrote: post #27
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…

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.

Yeah I definitely had that experience a few times.

Using the maps on my phone in a different country where nobody spoke my language and I didn't speak theirs with 25% battery life and having it suddenly shut down wasn't the funnest moment of my life.

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

#52

Post by artimaeis »

bgorman wrote: post #45
1123581321 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Did you ever confirm if the device was being throttled? It was only not user-discoverable for a few months before a point release added the ability to see it from the Settings>Battery menu.

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

#53

Post by epistasis »

gpm wrote: post #49
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…

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…

Yikes, how many phones did this affect after only a few months? That's an entirely new thing that I hadn't heard before.

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

#54

Post by AOsborn »

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…

There is definitely business aspect in terms of warranty and customer support. In New Zealand for example, legislation guarantees a warranty window on new devices that the manufacturer cannot opt-out (Consumer Guarantees Act).

Highlighting either option for consumers would bring attention to the fact this is a hardware issue, which would void acceptable use warranties if the battery was degrading to be insufficiently usable within one or two years.

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

#55

Post by gpm »

epistasis wrote: post #53
gpm wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yikes, how many phones did this affect after only a few months? That's an entirely new thing that I hadn't heard before.

Not sure in terms of numbers, you might be able to find it if you dug through the court documents. It's not a rare anecdote though, for instance see this comment currently slightly below this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25144122

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

#56

Post by swiley »

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…

Most people here are aware of this, at least at the university I went to this was explained in physics class and anyone who's messed with an arduino has experienced it.

The problem is that you really need to be able to override things like this. Sometimes users do in fact have a better grasp of the nuances of the particular situation they're in than the programmers do. Sometimes it makes a lot of sense to make this kind of trade off of stability vs performance.

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

#57

Post by Bud »

epistasis wrote: post #53
gpm wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yikes, how many phones did this affect after only a few months? That's an entirely new thing that I hadn't heard before.

Approximately zero. And obviously, those would have been covered under warranty.

The reason you haven't heard this before is that it didn't happen.

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

#58

Post by gpm »

Bud wrote: post #57
epistasis wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes, how many phones did this affect after only a few months? That's an entirely new thing that I hadn't heard before.

Approximately zero. And obviously, those would have been covered under warranty. The reason you haven't heard this before is that it didn't happen.

Apple did not consider "my (friends) phone has been throttled because of the battery" as sufficient cause to replace the battery under warranty.

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

#59

Post by spullara »

gruez wrote: post #35
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 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. That's a fairly unusual feature to have for a consumer device. Support for it is spotty on laptops, and on androids the only way of doing it (I'm aware of) involves rooting your phone.

My AirPod Pros have notified me that based on usage they would only charge to 80%, but that is modifiable.

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

#60

Post by mthoms »

Interesting side note:

Apple has completely wiped their battery-gate "apology"[0] letter from their website. It simply doesn't exist any more. If you visit that URL, you're immediately redirected (301) to a general battery information page which (surprise!) has no mention of the surrounding controversy.

Make of that what you will.

[0] It was only an apology in the "we're sorry you got upset" sense but it was something. Here's the URL: https://www.apple.com/iphone-battery-and-performance/ Here's the content that used to be at that page: https://web.archive.org/web/20171229003922/https://www.apple...

For those that need it, here's some context: https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/28/apple-apologizes-for-not-b...

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