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Apple is sending out checks for ‘batterygate’ class action claims

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/6/24028162/apple-batterygate-payments-issued-class-action-lawsuit

If you filed a claim in October 2020, you might have been paid.

Apple is sending out checks for ‘batterygate’ class action claims::Apple has begun sending money to people whose iPhones were intentionally throttled in the iPhone 6, 6S, and 7 lines, as well as the first iPhone SE.

16 comments

farcaster

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Can't wait for the EU's user-replaceable batteries regulation to take effect in 2027. Finally we can go back to what we used to have!

Alchemy

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How would this impact the phones water resistance, I wonder? A removable battery would require some sort of user serviceable (breakable) seal on the door.

Maybe they could put the seal at the connection on the battery to the phone instead of around the door where it is likely to get debris lodged in it.

trainden

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The Samsung Galaxy XCover6 Pro has a replaceble battery while being IP68 dust/water resistant, which means it can be submerged in water up to 1.5m/5ft for 35 min. It's definitely possible, but they just don't want to make such phones apparently.

Daveyborn

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I remember my s5 being decent and easy enough to swap batteries. Side note that was the last phone I had that actually survived me until it was too old to go on.

astraeus

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I think there’s a couple of market motivations to not make phones with replaceable batteries.

The first, most enticing is definitely gating repairs. Now that right-to-repair laws are picking up steam, that one is starting to fall apart.

The second one is minification, they want to make smaller phones, more lightweight phones, and unibody constructions make that goal easier. You have to incorporate seals and locking mechanisms on a battery door if you want to achieve the same level of water-resistance current unibody phones have. This one is also flimsy, they could design a smaller phone with these features if they wanted to put money into R&D for it, but they likely currently don’t care enough.

The last one is brand integrity. Apple specifically has a design language that many customers are familiar with, if they drastically change and break apart their design with big changes it could have an impact on how customers view the company. This one is probably the most ambiguous, I’m sure Apple has determined over 20 years the level of impact changing designs too much in a generation can have on their bottom line, they likely wouldn’t suffer much. Until this point there hasn’t been much motivation for them to do this.

wolo

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Personally I would rather they had to make phones a little thicker again to include a properly sealed battery compartment, the new ones look very nice but it's too hard to get a decent grip without accidentally bumping the edge of the screen.

Maybe the whole back side of the phone is the battery, and the two sides are independently watertight? The charger port and usb controller could be on the battery too, that way you can replace it if it breaks or you want to be compatible with a new fast charging specification, and you could charge it independently if you have more than one.

smajl

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Siemens M35

farcaster

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Good question. I imagine they could still make the internals of the phone waterproof. Getting your phone wet might destroy the battery but not the expensive phone. If they can make waterproof phones with USB-C ports which provide power then they should be able to make waterproof phones with a hidden "port" for the battery under a cover.

GreatAlbatross

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I remember getting my first waterproof phone (Z), every port had a flap over it. The only exception was a special docking connector, that took +5v and gnd. And I thought (at the time) "that makes sense, all the other jacks probably can't be waterproof".

Then 6 months later, I was handed the Z1, complete with waterproof 3.5mm jack.
Another year later, the Z3 had a waterproof charging port too.

It definitely feels like these things are gradually possible, if the manufacturer actually wants to achieve it.

Ganbat

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Only from around the 6? Haven't they been caught throttling since, like, the iPhone 3?

Ghostalmedia

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The questionable OS update went out on Halloween in 2016 as an update to iOS 10, then the shit storm began, that battery replacement program started, etc.

iOS 11 allowed people be notified about battery health problems and chose whether or not they wanted to throttle their CPU to preserve runtime.

fuckwit_mcbumcrumble

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No, those are just generic anti Apple conspiracy theories.

This all started with a bad batch of batteries in the iphone 6 or 6s.

autotldr

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This is the best summary I could come up with:

Checks are apparently hitting the bank accounts of people affected by Apple’s decision to slow down iPhones with older batteries back in 2017.

Indeed, the website set up for the settlement was updated in December to say the payments were expected to go out this month.

The company wasn’t upfront about the purpose of the slowdown before this, but later said the goal was to keep phones from randomly shutting down once the battery degrades beyond a certain point.

Multiple class action lawsuits cropped up, claiming the company’s actions drove people to upgrade early, rather than simply paying to have their phones’ battery replaced.

The company agreed to the settlement in 2020, and in August last year, one of the law firms representing customers in the lawsuit said a judge had cleared the last obstacle — a legal appeal — holding up the payouts, and that money would be sent soon.

At the time, the firm said that payments would be around $65, so if you filed an approved claim by October 6th, 2020, you may have a little more money than you expected coming your way soon.

The original article contains 269 words, the summary contains 188 words. Saved 30%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

just_another_person

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Probably like $0.32 for affected customers, and millions for the lawyers who filed the class action suit.

Total bullshit.

statue_smudge

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The first paragraph of the article says $92.

Ghostalmedia

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They there was also the battery replacement program that happened when all this shit went down. For about 2 years they would do a battery swap for $30 on phones with poor battery health.

Although I imagine a lot of folks just bought new phones.