Posted on 12/27/2017 10:47:01 AM PST by Swordmaker
Recently, reports came out stating that Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) throttles CPU performance on older iPhone models with older lithium-ion batteries to prevent sudden shutdowns due to excessive current draw. SA contributor Paulo Santos has discussed this issue in his recent article, arguing that the company could be looking at $1-9 billion liability. Several class action lawsuits have already been filed as a result of this news. However, in my estimation, Apple has several defenses against the potential lawsuits. It will likely settle these lawsuits for trivial amounts or take them to judgment.
In this article, I explain how CPU throttling works, how it affects battery life and current draw, and why it's a legitimate solution for voltage drop issues on phones with older batteries.
(Excerpt) Read more at seekingalpha.com ...
Yes my mother has owned iPhones given to her by work, and changed jobs and decided to go cheap and got a Samsung phone... now all she does is complain about it, never gets her text messages etc etc...
I gently remind her she didn’t have these problems with she had an iPhone, to which she responds its not that bad... we have this conversation weekly or so and have now for nearly a year.
I don’t even bother trying to contact her by text any longer because she never gets the messages...
I don’t care if you own an android phone or an iPhone, but the people I have to deal with who are systemically complaining about their phones all own androids... period.
“Do you take the Apple approach of throttling the phones and not telling anyone, or the Samsung approach of waiting for the batteries to explode, and not telling anyone?”
Damn, treating your customer base like crap is SUCH a pain! Obviously there were NO other options available. Poor b@stards. /Sarc
They have been going broke for thirty years, surely one day it will be true.
Proof positive that no business or individual has any hope of going without being sued - a genuine "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario:
If Apple just ignored the issue of old, worn out batteries and just let phones suddenly power off/die - there would 100% be lawsuits. Apple does the RIGHT thing to preserve the core/primary function of a cell phone (smart or not) and they get sued.
Lets see - some schmuck has a 1.5-2 year old iPhone (or older) that has seen heavy use and has a battery that has outlived its useful charge cycles. They get in a pickle and have an emergency. They whip out their iPhone and attempt to call for help and it just shuts down because the battery was drained.
Many would happily sue suggesting that Apple should have prevented the phone from just unexpectedly shutting down in an emergency situation.
Hey - I at least partially understand - you pay anywhere from $700-1100 for a device - you expect it to last at least 5 years, with zero reduction of performance. Problem is - even under the most ideal circumstances, software updates/file load, storage space filling up - devices WILL slow down. Add in these fragile Lithium Ion batteries that run out of charge cycles - and rapidly blow their voltage... it just isn't gonna happen any time soon. Add in the propensity of most users to simply mistreat their devices (they may baby them with a case - oh a case that holds in the heat of charging - further shortening the life cycle of the battery), charge and discharge them sometimes multiple times per day... they get stuck in pockets, left on dashboards, dropped, and so much more... They are going to have issues - and battery problems are one of the most common over time. Apple did what was in their power to at least keep the phone part functional longer. But good grief...
Except that the battery is only warranted for a year - and these devices seeing throttling are generally older than a year. The Lithium ion batteries generally do pretty well up to 500 full charge cycles (for the vast majority of users - that’s over a year).
Several manufacturers don’t even give that much of a warranty on their batteries -
How did they become worthless? Real question. I have old apple devices.
Slowing the phones is so stupid and so not in Apple’s best interest nor the owners. What kind of misguided nanny’s run that company.
They would have made a lot more money replacing batteries and selling new phones.
What a bonehead mistake.
Obviously you did not bother to read the article. Read so you can understand what's going on does help to grasp the issues involved before you make bonehead comments. . . but then that's what you do.
I've been pointing this out both here and in the comments on several articles on SeekingAlpha. . . the author of this article does an excellent job of saying the same thing I have been saying in my commentary on these articles, especially in my criticism of Paulo's articles and his over-the-top claims of deliberate scandal and other claims of design flaws in the iPhones. He absolutely refuses to accept to that the batteries themselves have innate limitations that are the problem with age and number of cycles they can use before they are limited in the amount of power they can deliver. For Paulo, in his articles, it is always a problem with Apple.
Problem is - even under the most ideal circumstances, software updates/file load, storage space filling up - devices WILL slow down.
I've also pointed out that the newer iOS and apps and updated apps for later designed iPhones are not really intended for a device with only two cores and a single GPU. It will attempt to run these newer versions of the software and can run them but not as fast as it could the smaller, easier, less complex versions it was designed to handle, but it will not be able to handle these newer versions as quickly or as easily and as adroitly as it could before they were released. It will do so and appear to do so in a slower manner. It is inevitable.
That old iPhone's processor will ALSO do it by drawing more power from the now chemically depleted, older battery that is still installed in the older iPhone, challenging that battery to do a job it is just no longer capable of performing. Like us senior citizens, that battery cannot do what we once could do in our youth. Like us, it no longer has the stamina to do it. Every Lithium Ion battery has a chip in it that is designed to prevent battery swelling and/or over-heating and fire, but switching OFF that battery if it senses too much power draw or overheating. If those conditions are met, it WILL SHUT DOWN THE POWER OUTPUT OF THAT BATTERY, resulting in the complete shutdown of the device.
These shutdowns would leave a user bereft of the use of their iPhones as communications devices, perhaps in an emergency situations, possibly even in a life-threatening case. This was not an acceptable situation. These shutdowns were occurring even when there was sufficient battery charge for normal operations to continue, but not for high-energy draws that a processor/GPU-intensive app would stress an old, depleted battery. It was that which caused these shutdowns.
The real solution was to replace the old, depleted battery with a new, fresh battery.
It was this seemingly random shutdowns that Apple was attempting to avoid that caused them to install the solution of slowing the processing of certain processor/GPU intensive tasks in iPhones that also had batteries that had more than a specified number of recharge cycles which would be susceptible to such unanticipated random shutdowns. By opting for this solution, Apple found a way for the iPhone to continue to operate, generally transparently, and the user would still have their iPhone available, even with a failing battery where with user would not be in danger at the slight inconvenience of a small slowdown in some apps.
The problem was that more and more apps were upgraded by developers to take advantage of later iPhones availability of more cores and more GPUs and their greater speed which simply did not exist on the older iPhones, yet could still load and run on those phones. . . and which would BE processor/GPU-intensive apps, slowing down those older devices.
One of those very processor/GPU-intensive apps is Geek Bench Test. . . and it naturally hit the processor and GPUs very hard and SLOWED the iPhone 6 down hugely and then reported that it was now VERY SLOW compared to how it tested on a new iPhone 6.
Based on the results of his tests, Geek Bench's creator John Poole held a press conference to announce his conclusion that Apple was DELIBERATELY and cynically and greedily slowing its older iPhones to force users to upgrade to new iPhones rather than just replacing the batteries!
That assumption on his part, based on just his tests, and no historical research, which would have uncovered the discussions in the tech press of January and February where the reasons for the slowdowns of processing were thoroughly explained, having NOTHING to do with forcing upgrades to a new iPhone but for real technical reasons having to do with depleted batteries and random device shutdowns, were seized on by the hyperbole prone blogosphere, and then the mainstream press, and then no-nothing anti-Apple commentators, and then all hell was out for noon.
Their PR team needs to reach out to United Airlines for the latest proven methods.
-PJ
So tell me, honestly...
Do you read the EULA's that come with each and every piece of software you install on your computer?
Do you seriously expect a mass-market consumer of a commodity product to scan the tech blogs for the latest insider info on the performance of legacy products?
-PJ
This is the result of a low-voltage high-amperage draw on a battery. . . the thing that Apple was trying to avoid.
Yes, I read them. It's part of my business to know and understand them. Don't you read things you sign? If you don't you're a fool. I never sign anything I don't read. . . I am not a fool.
So - it isn’t just function of the phone... it is a real safety issue. Again - this just reinforces why Apple was totally justified in taking the steps they did.
I would buy an iPhone if they popped apart by swelling the battery up like that so that I could change it with ease.
Let's acknowledge that EULA's are just another form of "opt out" rather than an "opt in." Most people will not purchase a piece of software and then decline the install after reading the EULA, and then return the software to the place of purchase. In fact, some retailers may not accept the return if the shrink-wrap is removed, which is necessary to read the EULA in the first place.
With digital downloads, it may be a few days between downloading and installing, which may result in exceeding the few minutes of return policy.
-PJ
It could be. . . although the batteries Apple usually uses do not have chips in them that fail to do the safety shutdown that would allow this bad a result. It can happen.
The expected catestrophic failure rate of Lithium Ion batteries is now about one in 8 million per year. . . so even with Apple with 1.2 billion iOS devices in the wild with Lithium Ion batteries, we should expect ~150 catastrophic iPhone/IPad/IPod Touch device failures per year which would result in massive swelling, fires, or explosions. For example, there have been about 30 million iPhone 8/8+ models sold since September's release and three have been reported to have swelled batteries. That's a little ahead of the expected number per year. . . but they are under investigation at this point.
That doesn't hold legal penalty with Apple's iPhone's EULA. You can't start using the iPhone until you agree. If you don't, you pack it back up and return it. No foul. Same for the upgrades of Apple's iOS or macOS. You can't install it until you agree. If you don't, you revert to the old version. No foul, no cost.
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