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Apple Hit With Class Action Lawsuit After Admitting To Slowing Down Old iPhones (appleinsider.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the didn't-see-that-coming dept.

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."

16 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Buy a newerer fasterer one by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Slow down old phones, customers see how much faster the new ones are....profit!

    1. Re:Buy a newerer fasterer one by torkus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

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    2. Re:Buy a newerer fasterer one by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I expect it is. However I don't expect the Class action to win. This seems that Apple was doing its best to extend the life of older devices vs trying to shorten it. Could they have done better? Yes. They could have given an option to turn such a feature on or off, Set a notification that the battery is no longer optimal... Have a little more press in getting a battery fix for older phones, as it is possible....

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    3. Re:Buy a newerer fasterer one by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

  2. SERIOUS QUESTION... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Does the slow-down also happen when the phone is plugged into the wall?

    If yes, then this lawsuit has a huge case here! Still, it should be noted in the manual at the minimum of this 'feature'.

    1. Re:SERIOUS QUESTION... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

  3. No fan of apple but... by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is retarded. There's clear reasons why someone would potentially want this feature. The suit shouldn't request they stop doing it, but rather make it optional and put it in control of the user.

    Full disclosure: Typing this on a laptop which gives me the choice of performance or battery life in the power settings.

    1. Re:No fan of apple but... by Baron_Yam · · Score: 4, Insightful

      >This is retarded. There's clear reasons why someone would potentially want this feature.

      No, they were deceptive. Obviously the feature is great when it stops your phone from rebooting... but paired with hiding it (instead of say, giving a battery condition alert) and making the battery non-replaceable, what they've really done is put an artificial expiry date into their phones.

      Even if they didn't mean to be deceptive (and I'd bet the engineers didn't, but don't ask me to extend the same credit to sales & marketing), that just makes it unintentionally deceptive.

      They still need a good hard smack to help them never do anything like this again.

    2. Re:No fan of apple but... by Junta · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Additionally, in laptop land they tend to issue a warning when battery performance is degraded compared to original condition. It wouldn't be such a terrible idea for mobile devices to do the same, so long as there were a reasonable way to service the battery (which often there is not).

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    3. Re:No fan of apple but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  4. Re:Yes by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've read comments saying people have had their batteries replaced with new ones and the slowdown goes away. So which one is it? Both of these can't be true. It either happens based on battery age (which is fine, maybe even a desired feature, but it should have been disclosed and maybe had controls) or OS version (which is not fine and can easily be interpreted as predatory).

  5. Re: Unsurprising by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would prefer to be notified so I can make an informed choice. Not have my iGadget mysteriously degrade performance in a time period when it would encourage me to buy a new unit. Perhaps it should prompt for three choices:

    1. Accept performance degradation.
    2. Accept reduced battery life.
    3. Come in to replace battery.

  6. Future news - lawsuit settled by Kohath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Class action lawsuit settled. Lawyers to get $30 million. Phone customers to get a coupon for $5 off a new iPhone.

  7. Re: Unsurprising by MachineShedFred · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You are assuming those are the choices. Batteries that age put out less voltage throughout the discharge. If the voltage supplied to the CPU isn't sufficient to run it at full power, you get random reboots, corrupt data, etc.

    Lower the CPU power, increase tolerance of lower voltage, increase stability of the whole device. So, how about this choice:

    1. Accept performance degradation.
    2. Have a phone that is unstable, rebooting when power draw is highest (phone calls) and possibly fucking over your data
    3. Have a battery service.

    I agree that Apple should have done some notification to the user when this "limp mode" was engaged, but a lot of people are preening about it being some kind of nefarious marketing scheme to get people to buy new phones, when it could just be an honest attempt to maintain stability on an aging device to keep existing customers happy. The proper move probably would have been to throw a notification that your iPhone is in need of a battery service, click here to schedule one, etc.

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  8. Re: Unsurprising by torkus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd hope folks on /. would know the CPU is absolutely not running at battery voltage, much less directly off the battery.

    Lowering the CPU power prevents spikes in battery drain. Since batteries are less efficient at higher current draws, this still makes sense but not how you explain it.

    Also, engaging 'limp mode' and notifying the user is likely a very bad idea. Limp mode is very likely a momentary (though frequent) throttling of the CPU - or more exactly, it DOESN'T throttle the CPU up and engage more cores when a higher load is presented. Modern CPUs bounce frequency and multiplier and cores around constantly...so you'd get as much as a few pop-ups a second. So much for improving battery life.

    --
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  9. Re:We need to start taxing by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We need to start taxing devices into which batteries have been glued. If an end-user can't replace the battery themselves, the lifespan of electronic devices is cut significantly. This results in more waste, and should be taxed accordingly.

    This practice needs to stop.

    Apple has a flat-rate iPhone battery replacement service for $79.

    Now what?