Unanswered questions from Apple’s iPhone slowdown mea culpa
Proper compensation and slowdowns predating 10.2.1 update linger despite CEO’s apology
Apple ended the year on an apologetic note Thursday with an online note from CEO Tim Cook saying the company was sorry for the way it handled the issue of older iPhones slowing down due to aging batteries.
The tl;dr is this: To prevent sudden shutdowns of older iPhones because their processors were making power demands the batteries couldn’t meet, Apple added a “feature” in iOS 10.2.1 last year that smoothed out these peaks. That caused iPhones of a certain age to behave sluggishly, leading some to speculate that Apple was doing this to get its customers to buy newer phones.
In his mea culpa, Cook insisted that was not the case. He said Apple would, starting sometime in January, begin offering battery replacements to owners of iPhone 6 and newer devices for $29, or $50 less than the regular out-of-warranty charge. In addition, Apple will add a feature to a future iOS update that will provide more information about the health of iPhone batteries. (I suspect it will look something like the apps I wrote about here.)
Cook’s apology has only partly calmed the storm. Some folks think the battery replacements should be free. Others note that iPhones slowing as they age predates the iOS 10.2.1 update.
In fact, there are quite a few questions that remain unanswered, including these:
Q What about people who bought new phones because their old one was slow?
A $50 discount seems generous, until you consider that $29 is the price that many third-party smartphone repair shops charge for a replacement.
It also does nothing for people who thought there was something wrong with their older iPhones and then spent hundreds of dollars for a newer one (or $1,000-plus in the case of an iPhone X).
You could argue that a partial refund is in order, but what’s to prevent everyone from saying a slower phone was the reason for a new purchase, even if it wasn’t? Still, it seems only fair that people who genuinely made the purchase because of a slow phone be compensated in some way.
If Apple doesn’t do it, the courts may do it for them - and there are already a growing number of class-action lawsuits on the horizon.
Aging iPhone slowdowns predate the 10.2.1 update. What caused that?
For me, this is the elephant in the room. I’ve heard people complaining about their slowing iPhones since the iPhone 3G — it didn’t just start with the iPhone 6 or 6s. Typically, slowdowns happen when users update to the latest version of iOS. This is not unusual in upgradeable devices — new operating systems make greater challenges on older systems with new features. Anyone who’s ever updated an aging PC with the latest version of Windows knows about that.
In fact, upgrade sluggishness is a big enough issue that some people avoid iOS updates like the plague.
Some of what’s going on is obvious — not enough memory, a lack of storage space (particularly among 16-gigabyte iPhones, which Apple sold far too long), and app clutter all can cause a sluggish device. In these instances, a fresh install of the operating system will often do the trick — and usually does.
Q What about other types of phones? Do they suffer the same kinds of battery issues, including shutdowns, as iPhones? And how do those manufacturers deal with it?
This may be the hardest question to answer. Apple claims processor demands of a weakened battery cause system shutdowns, and that this is largely the nature of lithium-ion battery technology. But it’s also a function of the way the rest of the iPhone’s hardware deals with the issue.
This is purely anecdotal, but I have occasionally heard from owners of Android phones who have experienced sudden shutdowns. More often, I hear from Android owners whose devices have slowed over time particularly if they are users of phones made by Samsung, LG, HTC or other manufacturers who customize Android heavily. But chances are, that’s not happening because of an aging battery.
Tech site The Verge has queried the big makers of Android phones, and so far all those that have answered - including Samsung and LG - say they don’t take the same approach as Apple. But they also don’t say whether their phones are prone to sudden shutdowns when their batteries age, either.
Q Why didn’t Apple explain what was happening sooner?
Time and again, Apple’s secretive nature comes back to bite it, and this is just the latest example. In this instance, there was a growing public suspicion that Apple was engaged in planned obsolescence, deliberately nudging its customers toward forking over cash for the latest iPhone. It had become something of a running — if annoying — joke, to the point that some tech journalists were writing mythbusting columns on the subject.
Then, some iPhone users noted on Reddit that their sluggish devices regained lost performance when their batteries were replaced. The engineers at Geekbench ran the numbers and, sure enough, there was a linkage between aging batteries and iPhone performance. Only then did Apple speak up, explaining what was going on.
Apple had a chance to be transparent when iOS 10.2.1 was released. The company told TechCrunch that a software fix for iPhone shutdowns was included. But Apple did NOT say how the fix worked, or what the side effects were. They probably could have avoided public relations pain and maybe some lawsuits if they had.