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So, I'm somehow developing a pro-Apple bias these days. This whole batterygate to me is kind of based on conjecture-- that Apple slowed old phones with the inte

So, I'm somehow developing a pro-Apple bias these days. This whole batterygate to me is kind of based on conjecture-- that Apple slowed old phones with the intention to sell more new ones. If there's any supporting evidence, or anything that's come up in discovery that Apple acted in bad faith, I'd possibly change my (admittedly biased) mind. But really, slowing the phones down to extend battery life is a reasonable tradeoff and there's just not a preponderance of evidence suggesting Apple acted in its own interests and hurt existing users. The main problem is this "feature" wasn't out in the open, but again, it just doesn't seem that bad to me.

ponker 6y ago
When there's a rich kid in town, everyone will turn him upside down to see what change falls out of his pockets. Apple is where Apple is because it doesn't put all of its features "out in the open." I don't want 500 config settings for my phone and a lot of other's don't either. If you want to run a webserver on your phone that's cool, there are products for you, but some people want the idiotproof solution.
xahrepap 6y ago
I own an iPhone because I got sick of these kinds of issues I was having with my Pixel phones. (would last ~1yr of perfect bliss. Then the honeymoon ends and the phone would just behave like crap). I decided to give another brand a shot. I'll tell you what will really tick me off in another year or so... If my device is, without warning, notification, ability to change, etc, purposefully nerfing itself for ANY REASON. That will make me really upset. Especially since I can't just pop the back off and toss a new battery in there. Good faith or not. It's an anti-consumer move. If my battery even pretended to be removable, you might convince me otherwise. But gluing the battery in under a glued in screen and then throttling my device based on the battery's age... Just really bothers me.
- manfredo 6y ago
  So it'd have been better to just let people's phones crash on startup and become 100% unusable?
  - plorkyeran 6y ago
    The throttling also left my phone unusable while disguising the fact that it was because the battery needed to be replaced.
  - xahrepap 6y ago
    When there's a problem. I want to fix it. Not ignore it by making everything else work like crap.
- yreg 6y ago
  Before this the old iPhones used to randomly reboot when the battery wasn’t able to keep them alive. (I had such phone.) I don’t think slowing it down is “nerfing” compared to that. I speak also as someone who used an old iPhone 6 which was slowed down this way. Btw they throttled based on battery health, not age.
  - fiblye 6y ago
    Yeah I definitely had that experience a few times. Using the maps on my phone in a different country where nobody spoke my language and I didn't speak theirs with 25% battery life and having it suddenly shut down wasn't the funnest moment of my life.
    - xchip 6y ago
      You would have bought a new battery, not a new phone
  - xahrepap 6y ago
    When my Laptop runs low on power it pops up something like, "You're running out of power." They clearly have the technology to detect if the battery itself is going bad. Why can't my phone boot into that mode and say, "It looks like your battery's life is at X% would you like to slow your phone down to concerve power? [Yes] [Yes, always] [No, ask again when it's more dead] [No, Don't ask any more]" You know... let the user know what's going on.
    - yreg 6y ago
      Ofc they should have communicated it clearly, they failed in that regard. Bad battery health (iPhone) != low on power (your laptop) btw.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  The "behave like crap" comes from Google constantly bloating their apps to drive upgrades. New phone: maps run smoothly. One year later: maps is a laggy POS.
reducesuffering 6y ago
I think this is the crux of the issue. Apple had to make a call for their customers: ensure the low battery is as long-lasting and predictable as possible around 1-5%, or keep high performance as the phone battery degrades quicker and shuts off. I think many people thoroughly understand how crucial it can be to have that last 1-2% and going into a situation where you think you have 5%, but then the phone dies, is a pretty bad experience for the "premium experience" that Apple sells. So for most customers they made the right call to preserve the battery. This is an engineering trade-off and not something that typically gets publically broadcast to customers. I'm sure there's lots of other niche feature tweaks like this to the iPhone that we're unaware of. They definitely could've and should've been more transparent about this, but I understand why it didn't occur to them.
- bgorman 6y ago
  No it is not an engineering trade off. If you had one of these phones you would know. The throttling here was so bad, the phones were completely unusable during the throttling. Sure, the operating system was running but doing basic tasks like using Apple maps or even sending a message would be effectively impossible. Imagine trying to play a video game at 2 frame per second. Unusable. The real decision was that Apple didn't want to pay for millions of battery replacements, so Apple came up with a "software" fix for a hardware problem... Except that the software fix made the phone unusable.
  - 1123581321 6y ago
    I experienced it as well and this isn’t true either. The throttling was significant (40%, rough ballpark) but the phones were usable. A game that played that poorly would not have run well at full power. Maps and messaging was functional. They should have communicated the change, in case that qualification is needed.
    - bgorman 6y ago
      Have you ever considered that multiple generations of phones were effected by this issue and your single anecdote doesn't describe the full spectrum of behavior. I don't appreciate being called a liar, especially about an issue that personally effected me to the point I left the Apple ecosystem for years. (I gave up my iPhone before the revelations, but I am 100% sure in retrospect I was being throttled)
damnencryption 6y ago
> So, I'm somehow developing a pro-Apple bias these days Everytime this happens to me, I remind myself to visit their accessories store on the Apple website. As an example, the new magsafe seems like a clear way to extract more money. The magsafe charger doesn't have a removable cable and it is a very thin cable which is likely to break after minimal usage. The iPad's keyboard costs as much as an entry level Ryzen laptop. Non-upgradable everything so you pay for future-proofing upfront.
- freehunter 6y ago
  Oh man you would not like the accessories for a BMW or Audi then. Because what you're describing is not unique to Apple, it's a defining feature of being a luxury brand. They want price conscious consumers to choose another brand.
invisible 6y ago
I agree that it's possible they weren't being malicious. The part that gets me is that they didn't decide to instead allow folks to set a max battery charge to extend their battery life. It's pretty widely accepted that charging a battery to 100% over-and-over will cause battery degradation. It seems fair to me that decisions that are hidden from consumers and obviously degrade the consumer's experience should negatively affect a company (and more than just the loss of goodwill).
- gruez 6y ago
  >The part that gets me is that they didn't decide to instead allow folks to set a max battery charge to extend their battery life. That's a fairly unusual feature to have for a consumer device. Support for it is spotty on laptops, and on androids the only way of doing it (I'm aware of) involves rooting your phone.
  - spullara 6y ago
    My AirPod Pros have notified me that based on usage they would only charge to 80%, but that is modifiable.
    - gruez 6y ago
      iPhones also have that feature, but they're both introduced fairly recently. Furthermore, it's not a general "max charge %" limiter, it's a system that's supposed to automagically guess when you're not going to use your phone (eg. at night), and won't charge to full during that time, but will otherwise charge to 100% (eg. in the morning).
- jolux 6y ago
  The alternative is that the phone shuts off spontaneously and reboots if power draw gets too high, which also degrades the consumer’s experience and looks a lot scarier and more obviously broken to most people.
  - bigbubba 6y ago
skunkworker 6y ago
I believe it wasn't slowing down the phones to extend battery life, it was slowing down the phone's power draw because as the LiPo battery wore out it could no longer give the peak power like it used to. The only real fix was to throttle the phone, which apple did a horrible job communicating on.
- xchip 6y ago
  The real fix was to tell the truth so people can make better decisions, like buying a new battery.
AOsborn 6y ago
There is definitely business aspect in terms of warranty and customer support. In New Zealand for example, legislation guarantees a warranty window on new devices that the manufacturer cannot opt-out (Consumer Guarantees Act). Highlighting either option for consumers would bring attention to the fact this is a hardware issue, which would void acceptable use warranties if the battery was degrading to be insufficiently usable within one or two years.
- jackvalentine 6y ago
  Australia too (under the Australian Consumer Law which guarantees goods are of acceptable quality). Apple has been found in breach of this law by misleading consumers as to their rights in the past. As a remedy for a number of years they were required to display at the genius bar a sign outlining your rights to a repair, refund, etc in addition to any apple warranties.
deviantfero 6y ago
> If there's any supporting evidence, or anything that's come up in discovery that Apple acted in bad faith I know it's not apple's way of doing things, but can you think of a legit good reason why they couldn't service your phone with a new battery for a price instead?
triceratops 6y ago
> The main problem is this "feature" wasn't out in the open, but again, it just doesn't seem that bad to me. It seems pretty bad to me. If they had told customers "Hey, we're slowing down your phone because your battery needs replacement", most would pay $100 for a battery replacement and happily continue using their phone for another 2-3 years. Apple phones last a long time. By hiding it, a non-zero number of customers chose to upgrade their phone which netted Apple > $100/ customer. It's obvious why Apple chose to hide it.

ponker 6y ago

When there's a rich kid in town, everyone will turn him upside down to see what change falls out of his pockets. Apple is where Apple is because it doesn't put all of its features "out in the open." I don't want 500 config settings for my phone and a lot of other's don't either. If you want to run a webserver on your phone that's cool, there are products for you, but some people want the idiotproof solution.

xahrepap 6y ago

I own an iPhone because I got sick of these kinds of issues I was having with my Pixel phones. (would last ~1yr of perfect bliss. Then the honeymoon ends and the phone would just behave like crap). I decided to give another brand a shot. I'll tell you what will really tick me off in another year or so... If my device is, without warning, notification, ability to change, etc, purposefully nerfing itself for ANY REASON. That will make me really upset. Especially since I can't just pop the back off and toss a new battery in there. Good faith or not. It's an anti-consumer move. If my battery even pretended to be removable, you might convince me otherwise. But gluing the battery in under a glued in screen and then throttling my device based on the battery's age... Just really bothers me.

manfredo 6y ago
So it'd have been better to just let people's phones crash on startup and become 100% unusable?
- plorkyeran 6y ago
  The throttling also left my phone unusable while disguising the fact that it was because the battery needed to be replaced.
- xahrepap 6y ago
  When there's a problem. I want to fix it. Not ignore it by making everything else work like crap.
yreg 6y ago
Before this the old iPhones used to randomly reboot when the battery wasn’t able to keep them alive. (I had such phone.) I don’t think slowing it down is “nerfing” compared to that. I speak also as someone who used an old iPhone 6 which was slowed down this way. Btw they throttled based on battery health, not age.
- fiblye 6y ago
  Yeah I definitely had that experience a few times. Using the maps on my phone in a different country where nobody spoke my language and I didn't speak theirs with 25% battery life and having it suddenly shut down wasn't the funnest moment of my life.
  - xchip 6y ago
    You would have bought a new battery, not a new phone
- xahrepap 6y ago
  When my Laptop runs low on power it pops up something like, "You're running out of power." They clearly have the technology to detect if the battery itself is going bad. Why can't my phone boot into that mode and say, "It looks like your battery's life is at X% would you like to slow your phone down to concerve power? [Yes] [Yes, always] [No, ask again when it's more dead] [No, Don't ask any more]" You know... let the user know what's going on.
  - yreg 6y ago
    Ofc they should have communicated it clearly, they failed in that regard. Bad battery health (iPhone) != low on power (your laptop) btw.
kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
The "behave like crap" comes from Google constantly bloating their apps to drive upgrades. New phone: maps run smoothly. One year later: maps is a laggy POS.

reducesuffering 6y ago

I think this is the crux of the issue. Apple had to make a call for their customers: ensure the low battery is as long-lasting and predictable as possible around 1-5%, or keep high performance as the phone battery degrades quicker and shuts off. I think many people thoroughly understand how crucial it can be to have that last 1-2% and going into a situation where you think you have 5%, but then the phone dies, is a pretty bad experience for the "premium experience" that Apple sells. So for most customers they made the right call to preserve the battery. This is an engineering trade-off and not something that typically gets publically broadcast to customers. I'm sure there's lots of other niche feature tweaks like this to the iPhone that we're unaware of. They definitely could've and should've been more transparent about this, but I understand why it didn't occur to them.

bgorman 6y ago
No it is not an engineering trade off. If you had one of these phones you would know. The throttling here was so bad, the phones were completely unusable during the throttling. Sure, the operating system was running but doing basic tasks like using Apple maps or even sending a message would be effectively impossible. Imagine trying to play a video game at 2 frame per second. Unusable. The real decision was that Apple didn't want to pay for millions of battery replacements, so Apple came up with a "software" fix for a hardware problem... Except that the software fix made the phone unusable.
- 1123581321 6y ago
  I experienced it as well and this isn’t true either. The throttling was significant (40%, rough ballpark) but the phones were usable. A game that played that poorly would not have run well at full power. Maps and messaging was functional. They should have communicated the change, in case that qualification is needed.
  - bgorman 6y ago
    Have you ever considered that multiple generations of phones were effected by this issue and your single anecdote doesn't describe the full spectrum of behavior. I don't appreciate being called a liar, especially about an issue that personally effected me to the point I left the Apple ecosystem for years. (I gave up my iPhone before the revelations, but I am 100% sure in retrospect I was being throttled)

damnencryption 6y ago

> So, I'm somehow developing a pro-Apple bias these days Everytime this happens to me, I remind myself to visit their accessories store on the Apple website. As an example, the new magsafe seems like a clear way to extract more money. The magsafe charger doesn't have a removable cable and it is a very thin cable which is likely to break after minimal usage. The iPad's keyboard costs as much as an entry level Ryzen laptop. Non-upgradable everything so you pay for future-proofing upfront.

freehunter 6y ago
Oh man you would not like the accessories for a BMW or Audi then. Because what you're describing is not unique to Apple, it's a defining feature of being a luxury brand. They want price conscious consumers to choose another brand.

invisible 6y ago

I agree that it's possible they weren't being malicious. The part that gets me is that they didn't decide to instead allow folks to set a max battery charge to extend their battery life. It's pretty widely accepted that charging a battery to 100% over-and-over will cause battery degradation. It seems fair to me that decisions that are hidden from consumers and obviously degrade the consumer's experience should negatively affect a company (and more than just the loss of goodwill).

gruez 6y ago
>The part that gets me is that they didn't decide to instead allow folks to set a max battery charge to extend their battery life. That's a fairly unusual feature to have for a consumer device. Support for it is spotty on laptops, and on androids the only way of doing it (I'm aware of) involves rooting your phone.
- spullara 6y ago
  My AirPod Pros have notified me that based on usage they would only charge to 80%, but that is modifiable.
  - gruez 6y ago
    iPhones also have that feature, but they're both introduced fairly recently. Furthermore, it's not a general "max charge %" limiter, it's a system that's supposed to automagically guess when you're not going to use your phone (eg. at night), and won't charge to full during that time, but will otherwise charge to 100% (eg. in the morning).
jolux 6y ago
The alternative is that the phone shuts off spontaneously and reboots if power draw gets too high, which also degrades the consumer’s experience and looks a lot scarier and more obviously broken to most people.
- bigbubba 6y ago

skunkworker 6y ago

I believe it wasn't slowing down the phones to extend battery life, it was slowing down the phone's power draw because as the LiPo battery wore out it could no longer give the peak power like it used to. The only real fix was to throttle the phone, which apple did a horrible job communicating on.

xchip 6y ago
The real fix was to tell the truth so people can make better decisions, like buying a new battery.

AOsborn 6y ago

There is definitely business aspect in terms of warranty and customer support. In New Zealand for example, legislation guarantees a warranty window on new devices that the manufacturer cannot opt-out (Consumer Guarantees Act). Highlighting either option for consumers would bring attention to the fact this is a hardware issue, which would void acceptable use warranties if the battery was degrading to be insufficiently usable within one or two years.

jackvalentine 6y ago
Australia too (under the Australian Consumer Law which guarantees goods are of acceptable quality). Apple has been found in breach of this law by misleading consumers as to their rights in the past. As a remedy for a number of years they were required to display at the genius bar a sign outlining your rights to a repair, refund, etc in addition to any apple warranties.

deviantfero 6y ago

> If there's any supporting evidence, or anything that's come up in discovery that Apple acted in bad faith I know it's not apple's way of doing things, but can you think of a legit good reason why they couldn't service your phone with a new battery for a price instead?

triceratops 6y ago

> The main problem is this "feature" wasn't out in the open, but again, it just doesn't seem that bad to me. It seems pretty bad to me. If they had told customers "Hey, we're slowing down your phone because your battery needs replacement", most would pay $100 for a battery replacement and happily continue using their phone for another 2-3 years. Apple phones last a long time. By hiding it, a non-zero number of customers chose to upgrade their phone which netted Apple > $100/ customer. It's obvious why Apple chose to hide it.