- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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Since Batterygate, has this behavior actually ended with phone manufacturers, have they resorted to sneakier means, or is it basically as bad as before? Like the way the EU tried to stop Microsoft’s monopolistic behavior with Internet Explorer, but these days Google is basically Microsoft but worse.
No, it will never go away because it’s a legitimately good feature that was introduced in order to extend the useful life of older devices with degraded batteries. Old batteries can’t always consistently deliver the same power as newer batteries. Before “Batterygate” your phone would just shut itself off in the middle of whatever you were doing. That’s the baseline experience. To prevent this, Apple developed a software update to, when and to the extend needed, dynamically throttle power demand in order to stay within the limits of the battery. On a full charge at room temperature, even a degraded battery may still be able to support full unthrottled performance, but if it gets too hot, or if your battery is low, it might not. Even then you may still be able to do stuff without any throttling, but if you do something that requires a spike in power consumption, it might need to be temporarily throttled then, through some combination of slightly slower performance (often not even noticeable) or a slightly dimmed screen. The more degraded your battery gets, the more it will need to throttle.
There are no scenarios where a sudden shutdown is actually preferable to throttling. This was a pro-consumer move that make old iPhones more usefull. It’s a shame that Apple was bullied into adding the ability to disable the throttling feature.
As someone else mentioned, while there are legitimate reasons for this, Apple didn’t tell users about it or give people any option over it. If they had been open about doing it or gave some option in the battery menu to disable it there would be nothing to complain about. But secretly slowing down older devices was obviously going to be controversial when people figured it out.
There’s also the fact that apple makes replacing their batteries difficult. If their motivation was purely to keep people from the negatives of older batteries, a logical step would be to make battery replacement cheaper and easier. Instead slowing the devices feels like an extra push to sell new iphones or at least make money on battery replacements.
But unlike the US settlement, which only applied to devices in the iPhone 6 and 7 ranges, the UK lawsuit also seeks damages for those who had iPhone 8, 8 Plus and X devices.
Sounds like it might have kept going on, if the UK is also seeking against more models of iPhone.
My wife’s pixel 3a became so slow to the point of being useless. I tried to restore it but it was still very slow. It started happening after a software update after the pixel 5 came out 🤷
I’ve got an old Thinkpad that works great. I’m guessing if I ever connect it to the Internet again it’ll mysteriously brick
I, and a friend of mine also experienced this. I believe it started after the “final” update, but there’s no way to know. Needless to say i won’t ever buy, or recommend, a google device ever again.
The plausible deniability is the most frustrating bit.
But Pixels are also known for being the most open source of all Android phones, are they not? If you flash it to the final available version of GrapheneOS, does it perform more as expected?
I wish I thought of this before getting rid of the phone…
While not quite the same device, my Pixel 4a didn’t have that problem
Would you prefer your phone works more slowly as your battery drains, or just fucking shuts off at 15%?
All phones do this and for good reason.
If it’s known that the phone will shut off at 15%, the battery gauge should show 0% when it gets to 15%.
I’m not sure why the entire phone experience needs to be slowed down by some percent for every phone of a particular model.
I’m not sure why the entire phone experience needs to be slowed down by some percent for every phone of a particular model.
It’s not. The throttling is dynamic based on current battery state and current power demands. If you’re doing stuff that’s low-demand, you probably won’t be experiencing any throttling at all. If you do something demanding, only then does it slow down, and only to the extent needed. It may be as simple as dimming the screen brightness a bit while taking a video. Or maybe you’ve edited some video and need to export it. Instead of, for example, the five seconds that it would have taken, it will slow the processor down and take ten seconds. And then when you’re back to just scrolling web pages, the throttling may be gone again. The more severely degraded your battery is and the lower its charge level, the more you’ll experience throttling, but you’ll only experience throttling at the moments when, without it, your phone would have instead just shut itself off. It comes and goes as needed.
Thank you for being a reasonable person. These people have no idea how battery-powered computers work. And the idea that the sensor can tell exactly when a battery is at 0% like a tank of petrol is hilarious.
The computer doesn’t KNOW when it’s suddenly not going to have enough power, that’s insane! There isn’t a little tank of petrol inside your phone, your phone can’t predict how much power you’re going to be using when you’re on it, and your phone can’t see the exact amount of charge left in your shitty old dying battery.
What you just described… Does that become less true when the power is throttled?
If your phone gets significantly slower, then it’s still a thing.
My Motorola Edge 30 its still as fast as when I bought it a few years back. That’s how it’s supposed to be.
Hey, I’ve seen this one before
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Apple has begun making payments in a long-running class action lawsuit over claims it deliberately slowed down certain iPhones in the US.
Apple agreed to settle the lawsuit in 2020, stating at the time it denied any wrongdoing but was concerned with the cost of continuing litigation.
The US case dates back to December 2017, when Apple confirmed a long-held suspicion among phone owners by admitting it had deliberately slowed down some iPhones as they got older.
But it was accused of throttling the performance of certain iPhones without telling its customers, and the uproar resulted in Apple offering a cut-price battery replacement to fix the problem.
Mr Gutmann told the BBC he was pleased to hear about payments being made in the US, but warned it does not have any bearing on the UK case.
He said Apple was “fighting tooth and nail” against the UK class action, which will next appear at the Court of Appeal who will consider a call from the firm to halt the case.
The original article contains 425 words, the summary contains 170 words. Saved 60%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
For me it’s not the fact that they slowed iPhones down, since there was a reason for it. It’s the fact that they didn’t tell people they were doing it, and that they didn’t give people the option to disable throttling.
If they’d added an option in battery settings with an explanation of what it was for, then it would’ve avoided all of this.
But that would mean the user has control. Can’t do that with apple products. It’s against their laws
But you know what’s against the EU’s laws? Being a gatekeeper and not having the option to sideload apps.
Is this the one where people were suing apple because batteries in old phones weren’t lasting long enough? So in response, apple started throttling older phones CPU’s… to make the batteries last longer… then got sued for that as well?
Apple ain’t perfect, and I say that as a total sheep who would buy a rock if they made one.
But I feels like most cases against them are just people saying “hey apple has money… AAHH UUUMMMM your phone is too big for my hands to hold and that’s discrimination!gib money now!”
allow me to rebut:
It feels like in most cases Apple is saying “I can do whatever the fuck I want and you won’t remember a goddamn thing”, like the lovely lady in that movie Memento.Apple had a new phone out, they pushed a software update to slow down the old phones, and didn’t tell anyone they did it: end of story. I remember the very day this happened, no word of a lie. For it to take this goddamn long to actually be financially accountable for doing this is a crime unto itself.
