Judge clears way for $500M iPhone throttling settlements
Judge clears way for $500M iPhone throttling settlements
Owners of iPhone models who were part of throttling lawsuits that ended up with a $500 settlement from Apple may soon receive their payments, after a judge denied objections against the offer.
Judge clears way for $500M iPhone throttling settlements::Owners of iPhone models who were part of throttling lawsuits that ended up with a $500 settlement from Apple may soon receive their payments, after a judge denied objections against the offer.
I know I’m going to get downvoted to oblivion here, and people love to hate on Apple. But this was in response to older phones with old batteries sometimes not being able to keep up with the demands of the latest iOS and features and unexpectedly shutting down. So they would “dampen” the demands to keep them running.
We want to keep our old phones forever but we also want them to do the stuff that the latest phones can do. Something has to give.
This is litigation culture run rampant.
At the same time, they could have been more obvious about it. Quietly doing that in the background seems like they're deliberately making what would be an otherwise mostly-usable device worse, so you buy a new one.
Something like popping a warning saying "Battery has degraded, would you like to reduce performance to extend battery life?" would have been better, letting the users choose to either replace the battery, and/or downrate the performance. Either way, doing it quietly was going to be a PR disaster when it came out.
I honestly think they didn’t disclose it precisely because there was no malicious intent behind it. It was something they did to extend the useful life of the phone, and I don’t think it occurred to them that it would be seen negatively.
It also doesn’t make sense as a shady tactic to spur phone upgrades because you can always just get a battery replacement to restore the original performance. You don’t need a new phone, just a new battery.
Sadly, very few people seem to understand this. I'm all for seeing a big company have to take responsibility, but the way people just blindly follow this is very disheartening. You can't have true accountability without accuracy. They hear "throttling old phones" and assume the rest. The supreme irony is, throttling was the only way to keep older devices running longer. When I was doing kernel development on the Note2 and Note4, people constantly reported sudden reboots or otherwise rapidly depleting battery while using the camera. The old batteries just couldn't handle the sudden spike in demand for near 100% CPU/GPU utilization + full display brightness + camera hardware powered on + heavy RAM/IO use, all at once. So the voltage would drop, even for just a few milliseconds, then the CPU would starve, and the device would reboot. Just like pressing the reset button on a PC. Limiting the CPU was the easiest solution for everyone. Do I think they should have done it silently? No. Do I think they did it to avoid being thrust into the spotlight when more and more of their users were reporting reboots? Yes. I think modern devices handle this much better because they learned from the past. Manufacturers didn't realize back then what the degradation curve would be years into the future against acute spikes in battery demands.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I was affected by this way before they were sued, started offering cheap battery replacements, and added a setting to disable the throttling. Today you might turn on battery saving and not notice any slow down, but older iPhones were not like that. Depending on the throttling, everything would lag.
Mine was lagging left and right after 1 year. I managed to make it better by disabling animations, etc, but after a while even that wasn't enough to keep me happy. I went to my local official Apple store and the suggestion was to buy a new phone because mine (then owned for ~1 and a half years) was a 3 year old model.
I had no idea what the problem was and there was no way to disable this. Apple's fix was to buy a new phone. When I managed to get the money, I did buy a new phone... that was my first and last iPhone though. The phone I got next (from a then new brand called OnePlus) lasted 3 years on my hands without hidden throttling or random shutdowns.
I understand why they did it and why it's useful. The problem is that they did it behind people's back without providing any information or a way to disable it, and then had their stores suggesting a new phone as a fix. For me this is scummy behaviour and shouldn't be praised.
Strongly disagree. Current draw is a well-known design consideration for a device like this. Unless otherwise stated, devices are generally assumed to function at full performance for the lifetime of the device. It’s expected that battery life will degrade over time, but not processing performance and responsiveness. Most manufacturers will account for degradation in peak current by limiting TDP to the peak demand for the device’s future current capacity. Throttling the SOC is not something customers expect, which is why the case has succeeded.
I don’t disagree entirely. And this article is a little light on the details… But I think the main reason behind the legal liability is the lack of transparency - which could be interpreted as having a malicious intent to push people to upgrade their hardware.
Needing to adjust performance is acceptable. Maliciously adjusting performance to motivate people to buy new devices isn’t. Pretty sure that is one of the major factors in this case.
I never wanted software updates to be handled this way. The phone works fine with the original software. There is no reason to downgrade to the latest version that doesn’t work well on the phone other than pressuring users to buy a new one.
It always blows my mind some people actually found Apple's defense convincing.
The iPhones didn't inform users when they were throttling because they had an old battery. Apple kept the throttling a secret and coincidentally it helped them upsell new phones to people with old phones. This type of functionality was also unique to Apple, it's not like this is the only choice they had and an industry practice.
Did you have one of these phones? Because I did. I was one of those that experienced this controversy first-hand.
Most people complaining I’m guessing have very little direct experience with Apple products. Although maybe you do and just have different expectations that 5 year old tech should work the same as a new phone. We still have an iPhone 6 and the original SE in the family. My high school kid uses a 2011 MacBook Air with no problems and I have a 2014 MacBook Pro as a backup laptop for work. These devices last a long time.
Where they did fuck up is not explaining what they were doing, and the slowdowns were probably more impactful than they expected.
If Apples objective was to force people to upgrade, it would have been much easier to just discontinue support for old handsets on the newest iOS. Instead users got the latest iOS, it was just throttled because of the battery limitations.
Weird to think that $500million is a fraction of a percent for apple
I guess the good thing is that this sets precedent
The precedent that it’s a minor crime worthy of an easily ignored fine?
Tim Apple knows what’s up.
We should bear in mind that the level of slow downs were worse on some devices than on others.
I don't know if it was the different SoCs or just different levels of throttling for different levels of battery wear, but my phone got really slow. There was no information about what was going on, no way to disable the slow down, and Apple support back then would tell you to just get a new phone (which they did to me).
While the idea behind the slow downs is solid and I've done it myself on old laptops with bad batteries, doing it behind the scenes without informing anyone and then making money by selling new devices is not something that should be praised. Apple probably made more money than what they'll have to pay with this settlement, but still... better something than nothing.
While the idea behind the slow downs is solid and I’ve done it myself on old laptops with bad batteries, doing it behind the scenes without informing anyone and then making money by selling new devices
I genuinely believe this was a case of bad comms rather than ill-intent. I say that based on time spent within the company where there was an insane (in a good way) focus on the customer experience.
Apple will fuck around with shit like the App Store and dick-prices for RAM but they won't risk their image by doing stupid shit slowing down devices to encourage new purchases. New software features are the carrot to encourage upgrades / new purchases. There is no stick. I can't tell you how much shit got punted to fix things a different time when people cried foul because devices got slow.
The intention was probably good, but at the end of the day my phone still lagged, I couldn't disable or was aware of the "feature", the guy at the store still told me to get a new phone, Apple still denied it at the time, etc. Willingly or not, they created a bad experience for some iPhone owners and made money selling new devices.
I'm not getting any of this money and that was my first and last iPhone (I'm still pissed all these years later...), but it's good that they're receiving bad PR and have to pay something. Not only customers got cheap battery replacements and a setting to disable this (on newer iPhones) after the lawsuits, but next time they're more likely to remember to create a help page on their site and to inform their store staff about features like this one.
Hahah so funny. Its like me stealing someone's $2 million Ferrari and judge asking me to pay $10 for bail and damages.
It's like you buying a Ferrari then a few years down the line complaining that yours isn't as fast as the newer one, suing and winning. Yeah Apple was in the wrong but the punishment here fits.