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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday December 23 2017, @05:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the a-suit-or-a-straightjacket? dept.

Apple is facing a class action lawsuit in California over slowing iPhone speeds as batteries age:

Residents of Los Angeles, Stefan Bogdanovich, and Dakota Speas have been represented by Wilshire Law Firm and both of them filed a lawsuit with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The plaintiffs are accusing Apple of slowing down their older iPhone models when newer models are released and this has been happening without their consent or approval.

Another class action lawsuit has been filed in Illinois [Ecmascript required]:

A day after Apple acknowledged that their software updates slow down older iPhone models, five customers have filed a federal lawsuit in Chicago against the tech giant for what they're calling "deceptive, immoral and unethical" practices that violate consumer protection laws.

The suit was filed Thursday by two Illinoisans along with Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina residents, who had a range of models from the iPhone 5 to the iPhone 7. They claim that Apple's iOS updates "were engineered to purposefully slow down or 'throttle down' the performance speeds" of the iPhone 5, iPhone 6 and iPhone 7.

[...] Apple partially confirmed the theory on Wednesday, releasing a statement admitting updates would slow down phones, but only to prevent devices with old batteries "from unexpectedly shutting down."

TechCrunch's defense of Apple. Also at Business Insider.


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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday December 23 2017, @09:14PM (4 children)

    by takyon (881) <{takyon} {at} {soylentnews.org}> on Saturday December 23 2017, @09:14PM (#613696) Journal

    One of the original signature features in Android phones is all but dead [businessinsider.com]

    Out of the big Android smartphone makers, including Samsung, HTC, and Motorola, LG is the final holdout that makes removable batteries for its phones, most recently the G5 and V20 smartphones. Perhaps LG is getting rid of removable batteries because the G5 generated low interest, as reported by the Korea Times, and the V20 didn't fare much better, either.

    https://www.productchart.com/smartphones/sets/3 [productchart.com] (none with 4 GB RAM and 8 cores)

    https://thedroidguy.com/2017/10/5-best-android-smartphones-with-removable-battery-in-2017-1062773 [thedroidguy.com]

    LG V20 is a current-ish smartphone with a removable battery. But the newer LG V30 [wikipedia.org] ditched that feature.

    At the end of the day, you are still right. There are plenty of Android phones with user replaceable batteries. They just won't be as "premium" as an iPhone. There are plenty of Android smartphone brands nobody here has ever heard of:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_phone_makers_by_country [wikipedia.org]

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  • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday December 24 2017, @01:24AM (3 children)

    by jmorris (4844) on Sunday December 24 2017, @01:24AM (#613762)

    Stop only looking at overpriced flagship phones. Motorola makes phones NOW with replaceable batteries. I helped a cow-orker shop for one a few months ago. That was one of the features I was making sure it had since they are the sort who keeps a phone awhile. (The one being replaced was a slider.)

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday December 24 2017, @01:31AM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <{takyon} {at} {soylentnews.org}> on Sunday December 24 2017, @01:31AM (#613764) Journal

      I arredy sed: "They just won't be as 'premium' as an iPhone."

      We could compare apples to oranges and find that indeed, there are way more than 1 "current" Android phones with user-replaceable batteries. But at the premium iPhone-clone level, the batteries are getting locked in so they can advertise water resistance.

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      • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday December 24 2017, @06:55AM

        by jmorris (4844) on Sunday December 24 2017, @06:55AM (#613815)

        As written (and with the BI quote) your post strongly implied the only Android phones left with replaceable batteries were the brands nobody has heard of. Moto is still a fairly good brand.... although if it keeps doing the "passing from charnel house to charnel house" bit, Netcraft might have to call a time of death soon.

    • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday December 24 2017, @02:05AM

      by fyngyrz (6567) on Sunday December 24 2017, @02:05AM (#613775) Journal

      I helped a cow-orker shop for one a few months ago.

      cow-orker [zazzle.com]