Slashdot Mirror
Apple Hit With Class Action Lawsuit After Admitting To Slowing Down Old iPhones (appleinsider.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Apple Insider: A day after Apple acknowledged slowing down iPhones with degraded batteries, a Los Angeles man is pursuing a class action lawsuit in the matter. Owners didn't agree to the prospect, and it hurts the devices' value, according to a filing by plaintiff Stefan Bodganovich, cited by TMZ. The case is said to be particularly concerned with the impact on iPhone 7 users. The suit asks that Apple stop throttling older devices, and pay compensation to affected people. Over the course of December, a number of people on Reddit and elsewhere have speculated that iPhones perform faster after battery replacements, mostly citing anecdotal evidence. Apple effectively confirmed that situation on Wednesday, but with the provision that it only throttles phones to prevent sudden, potentially damaging shutdowns. UPDATE: A second lawsuit has been filed against the company. Chicago Sun-Times reports "five customers have filed a federal lawsuit in Chicago against the tech giant for what they're calling 'deceptive, immoral and unethical' practices that violate consumer protection laws."
This kind of thing merits a prompt on every reboot.
"The OS has detected that the battery has deteriorated to the point that it may affect device stability. Should battery saving mode be enabled to attempt to work around this issue? (Battery saving mode will slow down all phone operations.)"
If you click no, they can either prompt you where to get a battery replaced, if that is at all feasible, or rather give you a small coupon on the discount of a new phone. If the phone crashes after that point, well you were warned.
That would be the ethical way to handle it... I'd rather know the true state then wonder if the phone is infested with malware.
Contrary to nerds' beliefs, judges and juries are allowed (encouraged!) to infer motives from actions, and allowed to conclude that you're a fucking liar when you try to claim this was simple incompetence on your part. "Cui bono?" is a real thing that gets asked all the time.
People and companies regularly lose legal cases where they never explicitly confessed to some offense, and if If Apple's best defense is "We'll just perjure ourselves!", they're in for a world of hurt.
I also have to wonder if this was partly in response to the battery issues they had with the 6-series (or 6s, i forget) where they'd get unexpected shutdowns and battery capacity under ~40% was a complete crapshoot. I had one and regularly saw the phone power off at 20% battery...or go from 30 to 5 and then power off and back to 40% when powered back on.
My guess is iffy battery performance messed up their capacity algorithms when it couldn't handle minor spikes in power due to CPU...so they basically just cut out the spikes in CPU to avoid further need of replacing batteries. And from there...it becomes a logical step to apply this to any device which might have anything similar happen. A slower phone is easier to accept than one which powers off somewhat randomly after all.
I'd put my money on them being linked. It was a business decision to help limit battery replacement...and a "good idea" spread it to all devices.
If anyone would bother to read, they would already KNOW that Apple has already explained that this is in response to the 6/6s "premature shutdown" issue.
Apple explained that, as LiOn batteries age, and as the charge level depletes, they become less capable of being able to deliver energy SURGES when processing/graphics demands them. This is a fact of physics, and nothing Apple (or anyone) can really control. So, in iPhones, this was causing the power-management hardware/software to essentially "panic" and shut down the phone before the gross-charge-level was showing a low-batt. situation.
So, Apple decided to, under those circumstances, "spread-out" the current-spikes, by temporarily rearranging some low-level timing in the OS. The actual goal of this software update was to EXTEND the useful life of the phone's batteries, NOT to "make an old device slower to boost sales of a replacement".
Apple contends (and probably rightly), that you would most likely NOT see these brief slowdowns under normal use; but that benchmark testing reveals them, due to the exceptionally-high-and long-term-demands those types of tests place on the system.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/12...
tl;dr
Nothing to see here, take off your tinfoil hat and move along.
I guess Apple is safe, then. The battery isn't glued in on iOS devices; I've replaced the battery in every phone my wife and I have ever had.
iOS devices are clearly designed to be serviced. Much like a watch, requires tools and more skill than a two year old.
Seriously, your "non-replacable battery" is pure bullshit. As with any machine, you need to use the right tools for the job.
Even on the glued-in MacBook batteries, Apple has always had a solvent to release the glue for servicing, and (shocker), it's even been reverse-engineered by the folks at iFixit.
If you're not willing to use the correct tools, find somebody who will -- which is pretty much why Apple replaces the batteries at cost (with the main cost being the guy willing to use the correct tools.)
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.