Five countries want Apple to pay consumers more money to settle #Batterygate

Earlier this year, a virtual hearing was held via Zoom allowing U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila to give preliminary approval to a settlement between Apple and a number of plaintiffs who were members in a class-action suit against Apple. What Apple did, as you might recall, is add a feature to certain iPhone models in iOS 10.2.1 without the knowledge or permission of these iPhone users. After iOS 10.2.1 was installed, Apple had the ability to remotely throttle the CPU on certain versions of its handset.

Five countries seek 60 Euros from Apple for each person impacted by #batterygate

Prior to the release of iOS 10.2.1, some iPhone users were complaining that their phones were crashing and rebooting after handling complex tasks. Apple was accused of planned obsolescence, in effect creating these models with a limited lifetime forcing owners to eventually buy new iPhones. But what actually happened was that the batteries on the crashing iPhone units were too weak and Apple thought that by throttling the CPU, these batteries might be able to hold up better.

Apple finally spilled its guts in December 2017, apologizing for the stunt. CEO Tim Cook said that Apple would never do anything to shorten the lives of its products and offered $50 or 63% off the price of a battery replacement on the iPhone 6 line, the iPhone 6s line, and the iPhone SE. That took the price to replace the battery on those models down to $29 and made it nearly impossible to schedule a Genius Bar appointment for months. Apple estimated that it would replace one to two million iPhone batteries and ended up performing the transplant operation approximately 11 million times during 2018.

Apple offered to pay each member of the class $25 (even while the attorneys collect a total of $93 for their wisdom). A hearing will be held in December so that the judge can issue a final ruling on the settlement. According to Dutch publication iCulture, five European consumer groups are getting into the act as well. They are demanding compensation from Apple and say that they want the company to pay each customer affected by the throttling 60 Euros (equivalent to $67.47 at current exchange rates).

The aforementioned five European consumer groups represent countries including Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Brazil. The latter country is a member of the group even though it is not European. After translation, iCulture says, “The plan is to get Apple to pay 60 euros to iPhone users who feel duped because Apple is said to be ‘planned obsolescence,'” It appears that the European consumer groups decided to get involved after the French government settled with Apple in February; the tech giant paid the country 25 million Euros, equivalent to $27 million.

If anything good came from this, it is the inclusion of the Battery Health feature on the iPhone. Go to Settings > Battery > Battery Health. The Maximum Capacity percentage will tell you how much battery capacity remains on your iPhone’s battery compared to the 100% reading that appears when the component is news. For example, after five months with the iPhone 11 Pro Max, the Maximum Capacity of the 3969mAh battery is 98%.

On the Battery Health page, you can toggle on or off Optimized Battery Charging. This feature uses AI to learn when you normally tale your iPhone off of the charger every morning. To prolong the life of the battery, it will then charge to 80% and stop. The phone will then compute when it can start charging again so that it hits 100% exactly when you usually unplug the device every day. For example, if you normally unplug the charger at 9 am, the battery might stop charging at 7 am and charge to 100% over the next two hours. This way your battery doesn’t completely charge at 8 am and trickle charge over the next hour to stay at 100%. Trickle charging can reduce the longevity of a battery over time. When using optimized charging, when you plug the phone in to an outlet you will see an estimated time when the battery will hit 100%. If you need the device charged before then, tap on the “Charge Now” button to disable the optimized charging feature.