iPhone owners aren't happy with Apple, and they're letting the company know with lawsuits. Five iPhone users filed a lawsuit in New York yesterday and are seeking class-action status over Apple intentionally slowing down their phones as the devices' batteries aged. USA Today first reported the lawsuit, which follows others filed over the past week.
These iPhone owners claim that they all upgraded their devices to newer models once their phones slowed down after updating to new versions of iOS. The lawsuit states if they had known their batteries were to blame for the slowdown, they would have replaced the battery instead of buying a new phone. Prior lawsuits make similar arguments.
Last week, Apple confirmed that it slowed down the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S, 6S Plus, and SE through a software update. The company said this feature "smooth[ed] out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down." Lithium-ion batteries, which are used in iPhones, "become less capable of supplying peak current demands when in cold conditions, have a low battery charge, or as they age over time, which can result in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components." The software update prevented this from happening.
Still, iPhone owners argue that Apple should have been more transparent about how it treats and recognizes aging batteries. The company only admitted the slowdown feature existed after independent Reddit users and bloggers tested devices.
Comments
My question is why push this out with a software update? Shouldn’t it be baked into the OS from the start if the intention was to make the device safer.
By MML10022 on 12.27.17 1:59pm
Well the obvious reason is to get people to buy new iPhones. That’s also obviously why they obscured the fact until exposed and made it mandatory and not optional. It may technically be tied to the battery, but it seems more likely that this was really to drive people to buy new phones.
By WickedToby741 on 12.27.17 2:36pm
That is the easiest assumption to take away from this & it’s not one anyone can really argue against even if it may be untrue. The court of public opinion has decided Apple’s reason for this; so even if it’s false no one cares, because it’s what "makes sense" for people to believe & take away from this. Plus how Apple handled it just doesn’t favor them.
There’s a saying, "no one believes the truth, when the lie is more entertaining." Usually reserved for gossip & celebrity scandals, it also tends to ring true in every aspect of life. I’m not assuming what Apple’s intention was/wasn’t but it certainly doesn’t look good.
By Black Dude on 12.27.17 2:47pm
Or just occam’s razor because they haven’t been able to postulate any other explanation verified by actual evidence.
By Woof LikeABear on 12.27.17 3:22pm
Or that everyone is unable to apply hanlon’s razor.
By Nuttygamer on 12.28.17 1:05pm
The argument is against this behavior is that not all batteries degrade at the same rate. if you bought the phone 6 months after release it would still have a decent battery capable of handling the stress of peak loads. Or some people are good about charging habits and their batteries might not degrade much at all of the first year. simply pushing a software update to all older models is not the right way to go.
By McStagger on 12.27.17 4:33pm
Supposedly it would detect the age/wear on the battery and make a decision based on that, it wouldn’t just look at purely model- or time-based metrics.
By raptorswithhats on 12.27.17 9:02pm
That is how it seems to work, I have a 6s and it is not slowed down one bit. On the contrary, when I tested it after this came out, my 6s was running faster and performing better than a baseline 6s.
By cy.starkman on 12.28.17 12:04am
The software throttles the CPU only if it detects that the battery is not up to par.
By FactCheck16 on 12.28.17 11:57am
As others have noted this isn’t how it works and the battery itself is being assessed. It’s why replacing the battery returns the device to its original state.
By Smigit on 12.28.17 3:07pm
The lie isn’t entertaining. The morons that have that happen to them and excuse blindly Apple are way more entertaining to everyone hearing about this. Who here would let Apple push an update that crippled their phone forcing them to buy a new one? Let’s vote with hands. Or Samsung or any other company. Anyone? Don’t think so. I rather be forced when I can’t deal with the battery, if ever than tricked into it.
By AbaddonR on 12.28.17 1:47pm
Do you know what’s happening here?
Would you rather have full performance but a phone that shuts down randomly because the battery is old and is giving out? I mean seriously, think of the lawsuits if people are hurt or dying because their battery is old and shutting down unexpectedly.
By VisionaryShaolin on 01.11.18 8:59am
But I know from personal experience, and from discussing this issue with my friends, that any and all Android phones any of us ever owned turn into a laggy crashy mess after a couple years. WHY is THAT just fine?? When a 2-3 year old Galaxy phone becomes super slow and crashes a lot (either because Android is a memory management nightmare OR because they don’t have any code that throttles the phone to keep it running with an old battery) you are essentially also forced to buy a new phone right? Who here is still sporting a 3 year old Android phone? How is that working for you?? Most owners of a [insert any brand here] smartphone do upgrade after 2 years because that phone got slow/laggy and/or crashy. And that’s just fine because they didn’t put code in to try to stabilize the phone?? Why are they sued?? The result is the same, whether it’s code to support an older phone without telling you how, or NO SUPPORT AT ALL.
I agree, Apple could have been a little more outspoken and transparent about this (even though @tomwarran did tweet a screenshot of iOS’s battery screen showing a message telling the user the battery might need replacing), but all this hysteria and lawsuits is just f-ing sad at this point, given the fact that Apple’s competitors DO NOT TRY AT ALL to keep you from having to buy a new phone every 2 years.
By FactCheck16 on 12.28.17 11:56am
I used a Note 3 for for years before buying a pixel 2 this year. I could’ve gone on for longer but it started to do buggy things this year.
By Joseph Santos on 12.28.17 1:38pm
Android devices tend to get faster after updates so I don’t think you can compare it to what Apple is doing here.
By forwardisstilltheonlyway on 12.29.17 8:32am
Looks like someone forgot to tell my Moto X and my room mate’s Nexus 6P.
By dammit_danny on 12.29.17 1:43pm
I’ve never heard this before, and there’s lots of forum posts that prove otherwise.
By VisionaryShaolin on 01.11.18 9:00am
They probably weren’t aware of the issue two years ago when the devices were first released..
Probably weren’t many two year old iPhone 6S’s to test on back in 2015…
By jontseng on 12.28.17 11:28am
Exactly. Bug fixes happen all the time to address behavioural issues.
By Smigit on 12.28.17 3:09pm
Apple fan or not, everyone should appreciate this because what Apple did was wrong.
By PhatDummy on 12.27.17 2:07pm
If only people had common sense.
By Stone Cold Dan Quinn on 12.27.17 2:15pm
I don’t think what they did was wrong (in terms of how they wanted to handle aging batteries) but the lack of communication certainly was. And if someone who comes into an Apple Store to complain of a slowdown is told to upgrade their phone instead of replacing the battery, that’s wrong as well. If customer service employees weren’t trained about this new update & how to handle it (i.e. suggest a battery replacement) then there’s definitely a problem. If that is the case, which we have no evidence (beyond a reasonable doubt) at this point to suggest it is/isn’t, then people should be compensated. I think the biggest case against Apple is that they didn’t communicate how they would handle aging batteries & that customers unknowingly sold/upgraded their phones without knowing the fix was much simpler/cheaper.
By Black Dude on 12.27.17 2:22pm
Nice someone with basic common sense and reason
By Bad Case on 12.27.17 2:28pm
He clearly has no place in today’s government!
By TheVergeUrge on 12.27.17 3:02pm
Thank you for showing actual "common sense"
By NukedKaltak on 12.27.17 3:05pm