The IT Nerd

You can fully expect more statements like the ones that HTC and Motorola put out today to throw some shade on the Apple iPhone battery fiasco. From The Verge:

In emails to The Verge, both companies said they do not employ similar practices with their smartphones. An HTC spokesperson said that designing phones to slow down their processor as their battery ages “is not something we do.” A Motorola spokesperson said, “We do not throttle CPU performance based on older batteries.” The Verge also reached out to Google, Samsung, LG, and Sony for comment on whether their phone processors are throttled in response to aging batteries. A Sony spokesperson said a response would be delayed by the holidays, and a Samsung spokesperson said the company was looking into it. The responses begin to clarify whether or not throttling processor speeds is typical behavior in smartphones — as of last week, we knew that Apple was doing it, but not whether it was common practice among competitors. HTC and Motorola’s responses start to suggest that it’s not.

This is problematic for Apple. If other companies were doing this, then they have plausible deniability. This is a tactic that they used before when they said that antenna problems were common in the smartphone industry during the “antennagate” fiasco which bears some similarities to what I am now calling “batterygate.” But since they’re starting come out of the woodwork to say they are not, Apple is all alone on this. Thus their messaging and resolution has to be way better than it is right now.

This iPhone battery fiasco just got interesting.

A new lawsuit has been filed against Apple in France. Here’s the deal:

The move by Halte à l’Obsolescence Programmée (HOP – Stop Planned Obsolescence), an environmental association, comes after lawsuits were launched this week in the US against Apple for similar reasons.

The suit was filed on Wednesday in the Paris prosecutor’s office, HOP said in a statement.

“Apple has put in place a global strategy of programmed obsolescence in order to boost its sales” of new iPhones, the group said.

HOP believes that the US firm can be sued over the sale of all iPhones in France since the introduction of a law in August 2015 that made it a crime to “deliberately reduce the lifespan of a product to increase the rate of replacement.”

It believes Apple could be liable for a fine in line with the value of all its iPhone French sales since the law came into force.

Now this is interesting. But here’s the really interesting part:

The maximum penalty is a prison sentence of two years, a fine of up to 300,000 euros, and five percent of the firm’s annual turnover.

This has to concern Apple as this moves beyond having to potentially hand over some cash. It shows that perhaps their apology from earlier today may not be making any difference.

Tune in tomorrow to see how many new lawsuits are filed against Apple.

I guess the pressure on Apple when it comes to the iPhone battery fiasco was too much for Apple. Late today Apple put out a statement that said this in part:

We’ve been hearing feedback from our customers about the way we handle performance for iPhones with older batteries and how we have communicated that process. We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down. We apologize. There’s been a lot of misunderstanding about this issue, so we would like to clarify and let you know about some changes we’re making.

First and foremost, we have never — and would never — do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades. Our goal has always been to create products that our customers love, and making iPhones last as long as possible is an important part of that.

They then went into a bit of a science lesson about how batteries age. Then they said talked about the software changes that the did to address that. Then they said this:

To address our customers’ concerns, to recognize their loyalty and to regain the trust of anyone who may have doubted Apple’s intentions, we’ve decided to take the following steps:

• Apple is reducing the price of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement by $50 — from $79 to $29 — for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later whose battery needs to be replaced, starting in late January and available worldwide through December 2018. Details will be provided soon on apple.com.
• Early in 2018, we will issue an iOS software update with new features that give users more visibility into the health of their iPhone’s battery, so they can see for themselves if its condition is affecting performance.
• As always, our team is working on ways to make the user experience even better, including improving how we manage performance and avoid unexpected shutdowns as batteries age.

So…. My thoughts on this are:

1. The reduced battery replacement price basically is meant to take third party service centers who aren’t Apple authorized off the table. It’s also meant to give iPhone users who feel that they’ve been screwed by Apple a way to address the reason why they feel they’ve been screwed by Apple.
2. The software update that is mentioned in this statement is a good idea. You could get this sort of info from a Mac for years. It’s about time this sort of info came to iOS. If that’s what shows up in this iOS update, I am all for it.
3. This will not stop the nine lawsuits that have been filed. Nor will it stop future lawsuits that you know are coming. It just takes some actors off the stage.

Bottom line: It will be interesting to see how this plays out. But I don’t expect this to stop the criticism that Apple has been facing. I really think we have gone way past that at this point. But we shall see.

The controversy over Apple slowing down older iPhones isn’t going away. On top of the lawsuits that have been filed, the Korea Communications Commission wants to know what the deal is:

 The Korean broadcasting and telecom regulator has formally sought an explanation from Apple on allegations that it tried to defraud customers by deliberately slowing down devices without warning, according to industry sources on Dec. 28. 

“We are hoping to get some answers on whether Apple intentionally restricted the performance of old iPhones and tried to hide this from customers,” said the Korea Communications Commission. 

The only good news for Apple is that these guys can only ask questions. They can’t slap them with penalties or anything of the sort. But seeing as this is Samsung’s backyard, you know that Apple will choose its words very carefully when they answer.