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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

#161

Post by Dylan16807 »

udba wrote: post #108
rasz wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phone is not an electric car. Capacitors are a feasible solution for momentary high load. Those phones just had tired depleted batteries and the proper thing to do was offer users battery replacement, not lie to their faces while upselling new model.

A high power workload on a phone might require ~5-10W over 100ms, i.e. ~0.5 joules. At 4V capacitor voltage, you would need ~30mF capacitor. Not likely to fit in a phone. This assumes you’re powering the phone solely off the cap. Even with a battery you’d still need something in the mF range to make up for the battery’s degradation.

The first data sheet I pulled up has an option for 47mF at 4.5V in 20x15x2.3mm of supercap. So it would fit if you really wanted.

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

#162

Post by unishark »

Karunamon wrote: post #84
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…

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.

Apparently Apple doesn't agree that this is covered under warranty since they have denied wrongdoing (at least last I saw as of the $500M settlement, can't access the latest one).

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

#163

Post by conk »

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.

Or apple could make the device a few mm thicker and put in a larger battery that’s able to produce enough current for a reasonable product life.

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

#164

Post by arcticbull »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #158
arcticbull wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All that tells me is that other phones aren't getting the most out of new batteries, and are instead limiting themselves to the performance of an old battery. But yes, I agree, they should have permitted replacements - in fact replacements should have been permitted at home. Batteries deserve to be user serviceable.

> All that tells me is that other phones aren't getting the most out of new batteries, and are instead limiting themselves to the performance of an old battery. That's only one possible explanation. Imagine two phones that can both draw 5 watts max. Phone A has a battery that can supply 5 watts brand new, and phone B has a battery that can supply 10 watts brand new. It's true that phone A is "getting the most out of…

Is there some reason to think that's the case? Batteries are pretty consistent technology, roughly equivalent across manufacturers and all sourced from a pretty small pool of OEMs. If that's the case I'd love to know more!

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

#165

Post by murukesh_s »

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…

Then they should show battery at 0% or 1%, so we can go and update the battery not the device itself. Instead they decided to throttle CPU silently. And oh it conveniently timed with new product launches and iOS version releases, so your then flagship device now "feels" sluggish compared to the new models.

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

#166

Post by Dylan16807 »

arcticbull wrote: post #164
Dylan16807 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All that tells me is that other phones aren't getting the most out of new batteries, and are instead limiting themselves to the performance of an old battery. That's only one possible explanation. Imagine two phones that can both draw 5 watts max. Phone A has a battery that can supply 5 watts brand new, and phone B has a battery that can supply 10 watts brand new. It's true that phone A is "getting the most out of…

Is there some reason to think that's the case? Batteries are pretty consistent technology, roughly equivalent across manufacturers and all sourced from a pretty small pool of OEMs. If that's the case I'd love to know more!

Lithium ion chemistry can vary things significantly, but I was picturing simply putting in a larger battery for the hypothetical. The motivation is more hours of runtime, but as a side effect you have more peak watts available.

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

#167

Post by rat9988 »

arcticbull wrote: post #155
Ygg2 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point was that throttling is better than not working. But that's a false dichotomy. Rather than throttle. You can show less charge. It's what other phones do.

Why would I want the phone to turn off sooner?

It's still better than being slow while being on.

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

#168

Post by thirdsun »

yyyk wrote: post #50
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 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…

It's not a bad battery. The degrading performance over time applies to every battery ever sold. Apple decided that keeping your device functional by slightly reducing the performance once the battery is degraded is preferable to randomly shutting your device down. I agree with them.

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

#169

Post by meowster »

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…

> third party replacement done (and kill your warranty)

Just a reminder to everyone in the U.S., it is illegal for a company to revoke an item's warranty if you open it up, have a third party fix it, etc. It's the exact same law that applies to cars: The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act

If you're in a state where one-party consent audio recording is legal, it's a good idea to always record your conversations with customer service.

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

#170

Post by jolux »

triceratops wrote: post #150
jolux wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or slow the phone down and inform the customer their phone is running in "Reduced mode" or whatever due to their battery being old. It's honestly not that hard.

Which is more or less what they’ve now done.
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