- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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.
Which seem perfectly reasonable to me honestly. This all seem like a nothing issue when we have larger problems concerning things like planned obsolescence and no maintainability to deal with.
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.
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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.
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.
Your battery is going to age no matter what. At some point, it won’t be able to keep up with the power draw of your OS when more and more features keep being added years into owning the device.
Replace the aging battery with a new one and the phone will run full speed again. This applies to Android as much as iOS.
Also, Apple is the current king of power and efficiency in their chips. Your Ryzen hyperbole isn’t applicable to their designs.
Yes, and this happens immediately as soon as it comes off the line, which is why a 6W SOC will be designed with a battery capable of delivering 7-8W of power. Current capacity specifically is generally spec’d so that it’s sufficient for the lifetime of the device, even if total charge capacity (battery life) drops. When the 6S was designed, Apple either knew they would need to throttle the SOC starting at around 2 years after purchase, or they miscalculated the current capacity degradation curve for the battery they chose. The former is shady and misleading, and the latter is just embarrassing. In either case, I am in full agreement with the court that Apple should be held liable for selling a product that does not matched advertised functionality as understood by the typical consumer.
Well you clearly have an axe to grind if you think an average lithium ion battery is going to perform like new years after purchase. Your argument is that it should work perfectly forever, which isn’t logical whatsoever.
I never said that. My point is that if a device requires 1200mA peak current draw to function at full performance, the battery needs to be selected so that it can deliver that demand for the lifetime of the device. The support lifecycle for iPhones is about 7 years, so if the minimum discharge of the battery drops to 80% after 7 years, the battery should be selected to have a nominal discharge current of about 1500mA.
That would increase cost and probably also the size of the phone, likely to unacceptable proportions.
I just don’t think your position is reasonable. We don’t expect car manufacturers to produce engines that never lose horsepower or never need oil changes. Why would we expect similar from electronics that cost a fraction of a car?
But you know, I still support your right to hold that position even if I disagree.
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.