Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

text.npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 266 posts

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

#131

Post by Retric »

stale2002 wrote: post #129
arcticbull wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This issue impacts literally every phone ever sold.

Manufactures can hide it any number of ways, but a new battery is always better even if your phone is exactly 1 day old. That’s what continuous degradation means.

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

#132

Post by stale2002 »

Retric wrote: post #131
stale2002 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This issue impacts literally every phone ever sold. Manufactures can hide it any number of ways, but a new battery is always better even if your phone is exactly 1 day old. That’s what continuous degradation means.

> This issue impacts literally every phone ever sold.

No, actually, most phones did not release an update like this, deny the situation, and then also refused to let people purchase replacement batteries.

The issue is that Apple did this update, did not tell people about the whole thing, however you want to describe it, and then also did not allow people to buy replacement batteries.

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

#133

Post by arcticbull »

AlisdairO wrote: post #130
arcticbull wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The device is fine, and so's the battery.

What I'm suggesting is that you consider the 100% performance mark to be far side of the performance curve at the end of the expected life of the device, so 80% capacity after 1000 charge cycles or 2 years, give or take.

With that as your baseline ("100%"), if you can make the phone perform better than the that in the first few years you're offering an early-life performance boost over the baseline, not a late performance degradation. Otherwise, the far end of the curve is the performance level you'd have to artificially limit the device to in order to avoid any change in performance over time. The phone was defective before the update was shipped as it didn't appropriately account for this normal battery degradation curve.

Apple was basically giving you more performance than you paid for, for free, early on -- not stealing your performance down the line.

The only time you should be told your battery is defective is if it reaches the 80% mark in less than 2 years or 1000 charge cycles along the defined anticipated performance curve. I do agree, however, that a battery replacement should be available at a fair price to those who want one.

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

#134

Post by webmobdev »

arcticbull wrote: post #116
Karunamon wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, it's not that Apple didn't violate the laws of physics on their "magical" device, it's that they: 1. Applied the throttling fix silently 2. Denied warranty replacements 3. Wouldn't even replace the battery with cash in hand until after the suit was filed 4. ..leaving people with no good way to have a working device.

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…

> I really don’t understand the criticism.

Then you are being deliberately obtuse as many here have already explained that this case was never about the throttling. Quoting another user (Karunamon):

> Again, it's not that Apple didn't violate the laws of physics on their "magical" device, it's that they:

> 1. Applied the throttling fix silently 2. Denied warranty replacements 3. Wouldn't even replace the battery with cash in hand until after the suit was filed 4. ..leaving people with no good way to have a working device.

Basically they were slowing down people's device, without informing them, and forcing them to buy new devices as they refused to replace the battery even when customers were willing to pay for a new battery!

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

#135

Post by AlisdairO »

arcticbull wrote: post #133
AlisdairO wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The device is fine, and so's the battery. What I'm suggesting is that you consider the 100% performance mark to be far side of the performance curve at the end of the expected life of the device, so 80% capacity after 1000 charge cycles or 2 years, give or take. With that as your baseline ("100%"), if you can make the phone perform better than the that in the first few years you're offering an early-life performance…

Your definition is not common to the market. Users can’t possibly anticipate whether the phone will provide acceptable performance when it reaches this ‘100%’ state. The devices are reviewed based on as new performance. The device provides adequate performance for some time, subsequently stops providing adequate performance, without notifying the user that there’s a way to restore acceptable performance. This is extremely user hostile behaviour.

I would literally rather my phone started randomly turning itself off at 30% power. At least that way I might take it for repair, have the reason diagnosed, and get it restored to acceptable performance, rather than simply assuming that software has moved on and I have to live with a slow device or purchase a new one.

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

#136

Post by CamelCaseName »

iJohnDoe wrote: post #7
post_break wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free iPhone? You're lucky to get a free battery out of Apple after they got caught.

Agreed. That’s my point. It says people received $25. This settlement amount goes to lawyers and the states.

There has to be some incentive to take up these cases.

I imagine the success rate and frequency of prevailing against Apple in court is quite low.

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

#137

Post by disown »

thewileyone wrote: post #118

A $113M fine to Apple is like slapping someone in the face with one goose feather ... ridiculous.

Apple's market cap is $2 Trillion. Apple settling for $113M is like someone worth $2 million settling for $113. I don't think anyone at Apple is losing any sleep over this.

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

#138

Post by SuperPaintMan »

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…

>iPhones have strict shutdown temperatures for both cold and heat. (which make them useless in many outdoor work environments)

Absolutely, I'm in the middle of Saskatchewan where it can get down to -40 and this was my biggest gripe with some of my old iPhones. Weirdly enough my BlackBerries (including my Key2!) managed a bit better. Only major issue I noticed was that capacity would rise when coming into a warmer environ. The Titan seems to be faring pretty well so far this winter, but it also is more battery then phone.

Was always funny walking in and having my phone restart, just to shutdown though.

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

#139

Post by greggman3 »

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.

Let's imagine it's a electric car. The car goes 70mph when you buy it. Suddenly it only runs at 45mph. You want to buy a new battery to fix it but the car company refuses even though you're willing to pay.

Why should you have to put up with a car that only goes 45mph when it went 70mph when you bought it?

What part of this is hard to understand. I don't want a phone that runs slow.

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

#140

Post by exabrial »

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 key being here they completely and utterly failed at communication :/
Post reply on HN