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.
If my mom saw that on her phone she would call me and say her phone was exploding. Or go and buy a new phone.
Doing stuff behind the scenes is fine because people are ignorant and easily panic. But it should have been visible in the battery power menu or something.
In the battery menu of my iPhone X, I saw a warning similar to “maximum performance might be affected”. The menu showed battery life was low (%69), warned about performance and recommended me to bring the phone to customer service.
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.
That is invaluable insight into random reboots. I have a question: Why does the device have to reboot instead of automatically lowering CPU frequencies? Why do you have to set up throttling instead of the hardware handling this by itself?
Thank you for appreciating my contribution. :) And to answer your question, because it happens too fast. Everything powers on, the voltage drops below a critical point, the CPU forgets who it is or where it is, and the reboot begins. I’m sure nowadays they make efforts to anticipate this. But back then, the industry was busy cramming increasingly powerful hardware into devices, and no one had really given any thought to how the batteries would react after years of use. Then environmental factors could make everything worse - coldness can suck dozens of percent off even a healthy battery.
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.
How exactly does one limit TDP without lowering CPU power needs? You could limit the screen brightness, but users are definitely going to notice that and be unhappy.
How does one limit TDP
By designing the device properly? It’s why they don’t put a 170W Ryzen in your phone. TDP is not a dynamic property - it is a design aspect, usually one of the first ones decided upon when building a new device.
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.
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.
I had an iPhone 5 and it was slowed down after a year and a half or so. Formatted it, then disabled animations, etc, but by the end it was really slow to use. The nearest official store suggested a new phone since the model was almost 3 years ago, even though I had used it for less than 2 years.
I had no idea what the problem was. No way to disable it or a cheap way to replace the battery. All that only came after they were sued.
They fucked up by not telling anyone they were doing it and not providing a way to reverse the slow downs. Having their employees suggesting getting a new phone instead of fixing the damn problem was also what I consider to be scummy behaviour.
A few years after getting a new phone (an Android one though, I don’t like to reward bad behaviour), I went back to the iPhone and it was still lagging. There was a new major update available though… which made it a bit faster. I don’t know what happened behind the scenes, but only enforced my view that I was being pushed to buy a new phone.
Weird to think that $500million is a fraction of a percent for apple
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.
