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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

#121

Post by gruez »

spullara wrote: post #59
gruez wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

iPhones also have that feature, but they're both introduced fairly recently. Furthermore, it's not a general "max charge %" limiter, it's a system that's supposed to automagically guess when you're not going to use your phone (eg. at night), and won't charge to full during that time, but will otherwise charge to 100% (eg. in the morning).

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

#122

Post by inquirerofsorts »

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…

> 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.

Nothing in your longwinded explanation of battery basics says anything about why I can't go into an Apple store and pay full price for a replacement.

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

#123

Post by comeonseriously »

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 still read this as they mismatched the CPU and battery size in their obsession with getting iPhones thin.

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

#124

Post by electro_blah »

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…

LOL stop defending a shitty company.

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

#125

Post by arcticbull »

marcosdumay wrote: post #119
arcticbull wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other option Apple had at their disposal was basically to throttle the device literally all the time so that even when the battery was old the phone would never draw enough current to trigger a brown out condition. Instead what they did was make the most power possible available from the battery at all times, and yes that changed over time. This seems like a much better alternative. I really don’t understand the…

The other option Apple had here was notifying people their battery was bad, not hiding the throttling, and letting people buy new batteries for a reasonable profit.

It's not bad though, it's normal, and functioning as expected at that part of the age curve. You can avoid this by reducing performance for the entire time you owned the device so nobody noticed, I guess, but that's all.

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

#126

Post by gpm »

Spooky23 wrote: post #99
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…

I'm on year 3 of my iPhone 8, with 82% battery health. My total talk time is over 36 days , and I probably actively use it for non-talk tasks for 3-4 hours/day. In my experience, which included managing and oversight of the operations/budgets for BlackBerry, iPhone and Android fleets with 10-50k devices, early battery death is usually accounted for by poor environmental conditions like temperature extremes. The AFRs…

The complaints here apply to iPhone 6, 6S, SE, and 7. So your iPhone 8 not having the same issue isn't really surprising.

(Article that lists the models involved: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/11/apple-settles-wi...)

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

#127

Post by stale2002 »

arcticbull wrote: post #125
marcosdumay wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other option Apple had here was notifying people their battery was bad, not hiding the throttling, and letting people buy new batteries for a reasonable profit.

It's not bad though, it's normal, and functioning as expected at that part of the age curve. You can avoid this by reducing performance for the entire time you owned the device so nobody noticed, I guess, but that's all.

> You can avoid this by reducing performance for the entire time you owned the device so nobody noticed, I guess, but that's all.

Or you could notify people of the situation, and sell replacement batteries.

That would have been the best solution.

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

#128

Post by arcticbull »

stale2002 wrote: post #127
arcticbull wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not bad though, it's normal, and functioning as expected at that part of the age curve. You can avoid this by reducing performance for the entire time you owned the device so nobody noticed, I guess, but that's all.

> You can avoid this by reducing performance for the entire time you owned the device so nobody noticed, I guess, but that's all. Or you could notify people of the situation, and sell replacement batteries. That would have been the best solution.

Again, the battery is not defective, it is a certain number of years old. That is how batteries perform at a certain age. Batteries are consumable parts like tires and ink cartridges.

It's like returning an ink cartridge at 50% capacity because it's only got half the ink left. Yes, that's the point, that's what cartridges do.

This feature is designed to always get the most out of a battery. Is that really something to complain about?

I guess this is where it's a perspective issue.

- You're saying that a new battery starts out at "100%" and that after a year or so, Apple throttles is down to "80%" because it can no longer keep up with how it came out of the factory. Apple designed a function that reduces the performance of a system that's defective to hide the defect. That would be strictly negative.

- What I'm saying is that the battery starts out at "120%" out of the factory (which you can confirm, when you buy a new mac check out the Batter mAh vs. design rating in System Report) and eventually drifts towards "100%" over time. Apple designed a system that allows you to get that extra 20% at the start, when it's available. That would be strictly positive.

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

#129

Post by stale2002 »

arcticbull wrote: post #128
stale2002 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can avoid this by reducing performance for the entire time you owned the device so nobody noticed, I guess, but that's all. Or you could notify people of the situation, and sell replacement batteries. That would have been the best solution.

Again, the battery is not defective, it is a certain number of years old. That is how batteries perform at a certain age. Batteries are consumable parts like tires and ink cartridges. It's like returning an ink cartridge at 50% capacity because it's only got half the ink left. Yes, that's the point, that's what cartridges do. This feature is designed to always get the most out of a battery. Is that really something t…

> That is how batteries perform at a certain age.

Ok, and customers should still be informed of whatever it is that you think the situation is, and they should be allowed to purchase a replacement.

> This feature is designed to always get the most out of a battery. Is that really something to complain about?

They should have still told the customer and allowed people to buy a replacement.

> I guess this is where it's a perspective issue.

No. My perspective is not that. Instead my perspective is that the consumer should have been told about that, and offered the ability to buy a replacement.

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

#130

Post by AlisdairO »

arcticbull wrote: post #128
stale2002 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can avoid this by reducing performance for the entire time you owned the device so nobody noticed, I guess, but that's all. Or you could notify people of the situation, and sell replacement batteries. That would have been the best solution.

Again, the battery is not defective, it is a certain number of years old. That is how batteries perform at a certain age. Batteries are consumable parts like tires and ink cartridges. It's like returning an ink cartridge at 50% capacity because it's only got half the ink left. Yes, that's the point, that's what cartridges do. This feature is designed to always get the most out of a battery. Is that really something t…

The battery may not be defective, but the device is. It previously performed acceptably, then started performing poorly, with no indication to the user that there was an action needed to restore acceptable performance. Nobody expects a magic battery fix, but they do expect to be told that their device has been slowed down.
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