Apple Agrees to Pay $113M to Settle 'Batterygate' Case over iPhone Slowdowns

Re:Apple Agrees to Pay $113M to Settle 'Batterygate' Case ov... by Dylan16807 on Thursday November 19, 2020 @01:00AM (#25146681)

> All that tells me is that other phones aren't getting the most out of new batteries, and are instead limiting themselves to the performance of an old battery.

That's only one possible explanation.

Imagine two phones that can both draw 5 watts max. Phone A has a battery that can supply 5 watts brand new, and phone B has a battery that can supply 10 watts brand new.

It's true that phone A is "getting the most out of new batteries", and phone B isn't. But phone B isn't "limiting itself to the performance of an old battery". The 5 watt limit is there for efficiency and heat reasons, and it just so happens that the battery is never the limiting factor.

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Re:Apple Agrees to Pay $113M to Settle 'Batterygate' Case ov... by arcticbull on Thursday November 19, 2020 @01:23AM (#25146787)

Is there some reason to think that's the case? Batteries are pretty consistent technology, roughly equivalent across manufacturers and all sourced from a pretty small pool of OEMs. If that's the case I'd love to know more!

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Re:Apple Agrees to Pay $113M to Settle 'Batterygate' Case ov... by Dylan16807 on Thursday November 19, 2020 @01:39AM (#25146857)

Lithium ion chemistry can vary things significantly, but I was picturing simply putting in a larger battery for the hypothetical. The motivation is more hours of runtime, but as a side effect you have more peak watts available.

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Re:Apple Agrees to Pay $113M to Settle 'Batterygate' Case ov... by Retric on Thursday November 19, 2020 @08:31AM (#25149243)

Now you’re paying to change voltage, which adds cost and heat. Sure, users don’t really notice that something’s wrong, but they get a worse device that costs more money and needs to heat throttle anyway.

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Re:Apple Agrees to Pay $113M to Settle 'Batterygate' Case ov... by Dylan16807 on Thursday November 19, 2020 @03:18PM (#25153875)

Not a higher voltage battery. A physically larger battery. More watt-hours and more watts.

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Re:Apple Agrees to Pay $113M to Settle 'Batterygate' Case ov... by Retric on Friday November 20, 2020 @07:39AM (#25159856)

Voltage drop is minimally impacted by battery size, it only helps in that the battery would have less usage, but it still ages for time passing.

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Re:Apple Agrees to Pay $113M to Settle 'Batterygate' Case ov... by Dylan16807 on Saturday November 21, 2020 @01:17AM (#25168151)

> Voltage drop is minimally impacted by battery size

That makes the job easier! Just cut the battery in half. Let's say the original battery could handle 5 amps before the voltage drop got too bad. If a half-size battery can handle 4 amps, and you put in two of them, now you can handle 8 amps.

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