Apple To Pay $113 Million Settlement Over Its iPhone 'Batterygate' Slowdowns (cnet.com) 60
Apple is paying $113 million to settle an investigation by 34 states and the District of Columbia over the company's practice of slowing down the performance of older iPhones when their batteries degrade. From a report: Apple's moves weren't announced by the company, but rather proven by internet sleuths. That led regulators and customers alike to criticize the company for not being forthcoming, particularly when asked about it in the past. "Big Tech must stop manipulating consumers and tell them the whole truth about their practices and products," Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who helped lead the investigation, said in a statement. "I'm committed to holding these goliath technology companies to account if they conceal the truth from their users." Apple will pay Arizona in particular $5 million, with the rest split among other states.
113 million out of 192 billion (Score:5, Insightful)
So Apple is giving up 0.06% of its cash hoard to pay the lawyers representing the victims of one of their global scams.
I'll wait for my postcard check for 17 cents.
Re: (Score:2)
When will these settlements be at a real reasonable rate to actively discourage bad behavior? Should have been closer to a value of 25%+ of the sales of those iPhones.
That would be a wake up call, to all companies, Apple and otherwise.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Mistakes happen, yes. But trying to hide your own mistakes isn't the correct option and should be punished to discourage all business from trying this sneaky behavior. In fact, it has been done before with companies having laptops overheat and then send a firmware to under clock it to prevent overheating. T
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These were caused by a battery manufacturing defect.
Lies. Batteries are a consumable. Apple chose the elegant way, actually prolonging the useful life of the device by throttling energy consumption at the expense of speed.
These sleezy politicians and lawyers are celebrating that Apple did the math and elected not to roll the dice on a non-tech jury not understanding the technologies involved.
Re: 113 million out of 192 billion (Score:1)
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So you prefer having a phone that becomes inexplicably slow silently?
No, I prefer to have a phone with a battery that I can easily replace. Have you really already forgotten that that used to be a thing? A thing that there is NO REASON to have done away with in the first place?
That way, if there is a defect in a particular battery, I can remove the unsafe one and have zero impact on my phone's performance.
I'll even (*gasp*) pay for it myself!
This problem is the culmination of a series of customer-negative decisions Apple made. Poor (anti-customer) design; poor (anti-custome
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You CAN easily replace an iPhone battery. Takes about 10 minutes and often,the store you got the battery from could change it out for you in 5 minutes.
And while externally replaceable batteries used to be the norm, unless you had a common phone, it was pointless since you couldn't get rpelacement batte
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I like an internal battery with a secure case giving me a more water resistant battery. The old days of a super easy swappable battery are a thing from a bygone era in most ways. Priorities have shifted. Still it is not terribly difficult to swap out the batteries. Once a newer generation of batteries comes along, most of this argument will be academic as the batteries will likely outlive a persons interest in keeping the same phone.
I used to replace my own batteries in iPhones, but now it is just as simply
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So you prefer having a phone that becomes inexplicably slow silently?
No, Cathy Newman. I never said that.
I prefer a device that slows down rather than spontaneously reboot due to a lack of power.
Remember, there were NO notifications that the battery was faulty until it was exposed.
And that's a fair comment. Apple dropped the ball there, I agree. That said, they did update their software to provide that information, and included estimations on the battery's expected lifetime.
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Or at least notification. And in blinking lights on page 1, not hidden in paragraph 417 on page 63.
"As the battery becomes older and battery cells become nonfunctional, we will slow down your phone so the number of hours you get out of it won't be reducing to wayyyy under what we promised."
Also, fits the same pattern as a story from two days ago. The lawyers get millions, the handful of class action leads get some small amount, and everyone else gets a coupon for free fries.
I'll never forget a scam mail I
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batteries ARE NOT consumables
I'm not even going to debate you on that.
if they were that does not give Apple any right to arbitrarily slow the device down without first seeking permission to do so.
If they did nothing, phones would start to arbitrarily reboot due to a lack of power coming from the battery during high performance usage.
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If I canâ(TM)t be replaced without intervention on the part of the manufacturer, does it qualify as a consumable?
Of course. You can't change the batteries on your Tesla, can you?
Also, I've replaced plenty of iPhone batteries myself, in 5s, 6, 7, 8 and Xs iPhones. Only one went wrong, and that was due to my own stupidity.
Furthermore, why does my Galaxy Note consumable, purchased within 2 weeks of my iPhone consumable, power my Note at the same speed as when new?
It cannot and it does not. That's not how batteries work. Do your research.
Why isnâ(TM)t everyone else throttling as well?
How do you know they don't?
Given that itâ(TM)s just LiOn, which has been around for a very long time now, isnâ(TM)t it odd that only one manufacturer found this to be necessary? After all, there are batteries which exhibit better EOL qualities (evidenced by Samsung using them)
I would caution you against using "so and so is using them" as "evidence" that a product is superior.
Iâ(TM)m curious as to how you reconcile Appleâ(TM)s usage of what, by all available evidence, are pretty low-end batteries,
I'm curious to see references for that statement. Where is all that available "evidence" you speak
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It wasn't a battery defect. They just forgot to test the phones with aged batteries so they reset under load, or the battery percent dropped from 50 to 2 instantly.
My wife had one.
The fix was to just limit CPU and GPU performance to prevent high load situations, and cause slow down.
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"iPhone maker throttled performance in several generations of the device to conceal a design defect in the battery"
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/11/apple-settles-with-states-for-113m-over-iphone-battery-throttling/?comments=1
"alleged Apple knew about the defect and failed to disclose it properly"
https://variety.com/2020/dig
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"Design defect" means they made a mistake with the design, not that the battery is defective.
They failed to account for the changing characteristics of the battery when it aged in their design. IPhones have very small batteries by modern standard, the 11 is something like 2800mAh where as a mid range Android would be around 4000mAh. That makes the iPhone more prone to this issue.
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Again, the last quote where Apple admitted the defect....
"battery component that was exposed to controlled ambient air longer than it should have been before being assembled into battery packs"
That's not "They failed to account for the changing characteristics of the battery when it aged in their design", that's a defect.
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> It works out to be less then a dollar a unit. On a phone that started at $649 each.
Not just that - it caused many people to buy new phones, even those who were happy with the pre- and post-slowdown performance.
I strongly suspect $113M is much less than the profit created by the malware.
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If those affected by this get anything at all, it'll probably be a discount voucher for an Apple product or service (replacement iPhone battery?). At least that's my experience with these types of class-action lawsuits.
Re: 113 million out of 192 billion (Score:2)
I got an e-mail from Apple before the settlement informing that I was eligible to join the plaintiffs. They can keep their twenty bucks. My battery still works fine. It might be because I do not use my phone as much as most people or maybe I got lucky. I guess some lawyers are going to get stinking rich, though.
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Apple: (shrugs shoulders) "no problem. Here's 100 million dollars and you're phone can be as unstable as you want it".
Consumer: "Yay a win for freedom!"
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Imagine thinking it should be illegal for them to make the batteries non-replaceable and then conceal that they're throttling old phones' CPUs.
Re:113 million out of 192 billion (Score:4, Insightful)
2. Apple batteries: replaceable by third party vendors or a normal shmoe if you're willing to put some effort into it. People are mad that it's not as easy as replacing the battery in a kids toy. If you feel that strongly about the design of the phone, there are plenty of Androids that fit the bill. Variety of choice is a good thing, right? Why mandate that Apple be the same as Android
3. Fair enough. Apple should have been up front about what they were doing. What they actually did was done for good engineering reasons, but they weren't transparent about it. The fine is probably deserved. But the transgression doesn't make them the incarnation of Lucifer made flesh. I see a lot of people shouting about Apple's evil, which pales in comparison to the abuses that the rest of the tech titans are doing.
Re: 113 million out of 192 billion (Score:2)
All they had to do was ask.
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First, no, this is a lawsuit by governments against Apple, so that money is going to their respective treasuries, not to you.
Second, the class action suit concerning this was settled and the claims had to be submitted by October 6, 2020. You would have gotten $25 per affected device, if you had paid attention to this, which you apparently didn't
Re:113 million out of 192 billion (Score:4, Insightful)
When a Li-ion battery gets to this state, you have two choices. Replace the battery, or limit the amount of power the device tries to draw at any given moment. While most would prefer the former, either is preferable to the device suddenly shutting off seemingly at random. So Apple was right to try to address this. Their only mistake was not telling people what they were doing and why. That created the false impression that Apple was crippling devices to try to get you to upgrade (which the lawyers then played up for a multi-million dollar payday). When in fact the devices were already crippled due to a worn battery, and Apple's fix in fact allowed you to continue using the device for longer. And thus you could put off replacing the battery or upgrading to a new device.
It's actually fortunate that the settlement was so small. If it had been large, it would've discouraged companies from trying to address problems by turning major flaws (like devices suddenly shutting off on their own) into minor annoyances (the device merely slows down instead). And resulted in an expensive all-or-nothing approach to problem solving, rather than mitigation strategies which require no additional money out of the pocket of the end user. Crack in your windshield? You're no longer allowed to repair it with clear adhesive, you have to replace the entire windshield (and no it's not free because your insurance covers it - you end up paying for it via higher premiums).
If you're gonna rail against Apple, do it for something they're doing wrong. Like locking out third party repair centers from fixing their products. Not stuff like this which actually helped customers, it was just portrayed as harming them by lawyers misrepresenting what was actually going on.
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When a Li-ion battery gets to this state
You missed the part of where Apple knew about this being a physical problem with the battery and they didn't want to fess up to the issue. It wasn't Apple chose what it felt was best for the user, its what they felt would be the cheapest solution to their own mistake.(in the end, it wasn't the cheapest, but that was the gamble Apple was willing to make at the time).
Re: 113 million out of 192 billion (Score:2)
No, I didn't "have two choices." I didn't have any at all, because Apple didn't ask me what I preferred the phone to do.
such malarky (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't have to be an apple fanboy to honestly say that haveing a phone fail gracefully over time maintaining its usability as it's battery life degrades is a feature not a bug. The only arguable issue is if this feature is something a manufactuer is free to decide or if every possible tweak is left to the user. For example, why can't I overclock my iphone? Since apple's niche is to spare the user the need to tweak everyting and make good choices that simplify their lives-- something people gladly pay extra to have--- I think it's obvious they need not have exposed that as a choice for the user but just making a sensible choise for them.
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My problem with this was the lack of transparency and even denial by Apple. I had a couple year old Android phone I had to replace at an inconvenient time because it'd shut off/restart under high load because of an old battery and having a way to underclock it to reduce power usage would have been handy. It'd definitely have been a useful option to have.
comeing soon error 69 (Score:2)
error 69 = changed battery at 3rd party repair shop
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We've been through this quite a few times. It was a design fault - all other manufacturers manage it so that their batteries can be used without randomly shutting the phone down even when their batteries are not new. Apple decided to "fix" a hardware issue with a software solution that throttles down phones - even phones with what we'd call relatively new (e.g. 1yr old) batteries, and does not tell anyone about it. Reminiscent of Boeing with MCAS, at least Apple is not in charge of transporting people throu
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huh? they were not shutting phones off they were extending their daily battery life so your phone was... ahem... a phone, all day rather than running out when it's weka battery charge was gobbled to early in the day. How is that a bad idea? You might disagree with the choice, but it's a reasonable choice.
Not a scandal! (Score:4, Interesting)
A little over 3 years ago when I was traveling a lot and my 4-year-old iPhone 5S's battery was not keeping charge very well, I really appreciated the fact that my battery was lasting an extra hour or two. That made the difference between boarding a plane or not because all my boarding passes were electronic.
Eventually, I found the time to have the battery replaced, and I got back both battery life and performance.
Then I bought an iPhone X, and sold my newly refreshed iPhone 5S for $400 on ebay. Cha-ching!
I don't see this as a scandal. Apple made a choice between battery life and performance, and this really benefited a lot people who were in my situation. It clearly did not benefit others, but their reasons for doing so were legitimate.
And, Apple certainly had nothing to gain from it. Replacing my iPhone 5S battery cost me $30. I don't think anyone else bought a new iphone because their battery was worn out.
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I just replaced my wife's iphone 7 battery. It was previously reporting 63% capacity in the battery settings app.
The front screen is pretty much held on by glue, but it was pretty easy to replace the battery. 5 screws, one adhesive gasket, two adhesive tapes under the battery. Didn't have to remove any other parts except a covering plate over the battery connector.
It was also much cheaper than buying her a new iphone.
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> It clearly did not benefit others, but their reasons for doing so were legitimate.
No, they could have checked with the battery controller and not slowed down phones with healthy batteries. They chose not to do this. Ineptitude was their excuse and ill-begotten gains was their reward.
$113M means this was a profitable choice and the shareholders and lawyers are happy.
Re: Not a scandal! (Score:2)
Like I said, I got full performance back after I replaced the battery. That didnâ(TM)t seem to be the case m
Re: Not a scandal! (Score:1)
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I don't agree at all and neither did the courts in two separate cases. The situation appears to be borne out of a design flaw in which the processors from the iPhone 6 and onward would draw more power during standard operation than the battery could handle after its capacit
Re: Not a scandal! (Score:2)
Thanks for this insightful reply.
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Re: Not a scandal! (Score:2)
This is a very nuanced matter. In the end, they didnâ(TM)t necessarily act out of malice, but they didnâ(TM)t do the right thing, either. Itâ(TM)s hard to deny that.
Arizona Attorney General in favor of Open Source (Score:1)
"Big Tech must stop manipulating consumers and tell them the whole truth about their practices and products," Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who helped lead the investigation, said in a statement. "I'm committed to holding these goliath technology companies to account if they conceal the truth from their users."
Perhaps he got something right -- we all know that the "truth" is only in the source.
not the right design choice (Score:2)
Go ahead Apple zealots, mod me down.
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While I can see how it may see to make sense to you, so you might find it quite surprising that the iPhone will not run on "being plugged in" alone. Why? Because the 2.5W or even 5W charger you plug it into will not satisfy the 10W+ power peaks the system requires. Think about, why did the iPhones in question start running faster when the batter was replaced? They probably would have ran full speed if you connected it to a powerful enough power supply instead of a battery (I've done that in a lab setting wi
Re: not the right design choice (Score:2)
That's not a lot of money per person affected (Score:1)