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iPhone battery lawsuit
ArcSyn
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Registered User regular
dailytech wrote:iPhone customer is upset with Apple over the lack of a user-replaceable battery
The iPhone has been parading through news headlines ever since its early January unveil at MacWorld 2007. When the bulk of the tech press was roaming around Las Vegas totally underwhelmed by the Consumer Electronics Show, Apple was spilling the beans on a product that had been long rumored.
During its unveil, Apple went over the bulk of the iPhone's features and reporters were quick to point out its deficiencies. A few minuses that were harped upon with regards to the iPhone included its lack of a physical keyboard and its sealed battery.
The lack of a physical keyboard has been overcome by many iPhones users who have become accustomed to the on-screen alternative, but many still harp on the lack of a user-replaceable battery.
Apple claims that the iPhone's battery is good for 400 charge/discharge cycles. The design specifications for the iPhone note that the battery will retain 80 percent of its charge after 400 cycles have been exhausted.
For those that weren't satisfied with 400 charge cycles or experience greatly diminished battery life, Apple announced its $85.95 battery replacement program. Under the program, customers would pay $79 plus $6.95 shipping in the event of an iPhone battery failure. And considering that users would be without an iPhone a week or more for repairs, Apple also announced that it would rent an iPhone ($29) to those who couldn't be without a phone.
iPhone users now have a cheaper option with AppleCare coverage. AppleCare extends the iPhone's warranty from one year to two years and is available for $69.
One iPhone customer wasn't happy at all with the iPhone's battery life or the two alternatives to replacing a defective battery and filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple as a result. In the suit, Jose Trujillo claims that:
Unknown to the Plaintiff, and undisclosed to the public, prior to purchase, the iPhone is a sealed unit with its battery soldered on the inside of the device so that it cannot be changed by the owner.
The suit goes on state:
The battery enclosed in the iPhone can only be charged approximately 300 times before it will be in need of replacement, necessitating a new battery annually for owners of the iPhone.
To the first point; the fact that the battery was not replaceable was disclosed to the public from the very beginning and is nothing new. Secondly, the suit claims that the iPhone battery can only be charged for 300 times before it needs replacement. Apple clearly states that the iPhone’s battery will retain 80 percent capacity even after its design specifications of 400 cycles.
The full text of the complaint can be viewed at Gizmodo, but it's doubtful that the suit will gain much traction in court.
It won't get anywhere, but I can't see how having a 400charge 100% life on a phone battery that with heavy usage needs to be charged up to 2x per day being a good thing. You sign up for a 2 year contract and they expect your battery to drop in capacity (which started out being lower than some smartphones, but better than some others) within a bit over half that time?
Granted, it's only 80%, but I just think it was pretty bad planning. I know there are physical limitations on fitting a battery into the size shell they wanted, but still. With it's screen and capabilities they knew this was coming and they plan on having people pay to replace them.
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Not unlike software, they need to "patch" (revise) their work, and make it what will eventually settle as a much better design.
SE++ Map Steam
It's a pain in the ass compared to simply buying a new battery (and it costs nearly twice as much) but I'm sure some other service will crop up like with iPods. The battery's practical life is 3-4 years and replacing it, like you have to do with all other phones, is irritating but absolutely not worth a class-acton lawsuit. Plus, really, Apple doesn't exactly run ads about the battery not being user replaceable, but it's not a well-hidden fact. If the guy had checked any iPhone review on the internet or Apple's own website, he would have found out about this.
This guy is basing his whole lawsuit on the fact that he's ignorant of the way li-on batteries work, and can't fucking see with his eyes that the iPhone has a closed case? As well, you know, the fact that EVERY SINGLE IPOD before it has had the same battery design?
Christ, what an idiot.
I'M A TWITTER SHITTER
Well i think he's more referring to the fact that you "could" replace the ipod battery given you didn't mind taking it apart. But the iphone battery is soldered in so you really can't take it apart easily, if at all, without ruining something.
Shogun Streams Vidya
No no no no no no. No. That poor woman gets FAR too much shit. Read this link. It's well-written and concise as to why you should reconsider the way you think about that lawsuit.
http://lawandhelp.com/q298-2.htm
Never. She will get shit from me until the day she dies. And then she'll get more shit.
Shogun Streams Vidya
When you are handed coffee, you are careful with said coffee. The fact that it was "too hot" is not complained about by most of the population and it's not McDonald's fault she spilled it on herself. That cup should have been in a cup holder or other stable position and not been held.
I don't care if it was "too hot" I hold firmly to the fact that if you screw up, it's your own fault.
If I burn myself with bacon grease while cooking bacon, I'm not going to sue the bacon company for the grease, the pan company for the pan, or the stove company for providing a flame that could heat bacon grease to a temperature that is "too hot" and could burn me. It's my own fault for getting hot bacon grease on me.
At this point, she'd be around 94 years old, so I'm pretty sure she's already dead.
But that said, Zack, that site told me nothing, and was bullshit, didn't change my mind a single bit. Know why coffee was served at that temp? Because it tastes better. It's a perfectly legitimate reason. The coffee is still able to burn even at present day temperatures -- would you rather they serve it lukewarm? Christ.
And regardless, still, it fails to address the real reason people reference it so often -- common sense. COFFEE IS HOT.
HOT = BURNS.
DO NOT SPILL COFFEE ON YOURSELF.
IT WILL HURT.
It doesn't take a rocket surgeon...
I'M A TWITTER SHITTER
Look, I get it. I understand that you should not spill coffee on yourself. Coffee does not taste good at 185F. Nothing tastes good at 185F. If you taste anything at that temperature, it's your own tongue getting burnt off. Coffee needs to be brewed at 200F, but you don't need to keep it there. Lowering the temperature slightly to, say, 150F would decrease the danger to customers greatly and not impact anyone's enjoyment.
When handed a hot cup of coffee, I'm careful. It's hot. But do I expect a liquid near boiling that can give me burns bad enough to necessitate skin grafts? No.
edit: beat, so hard.
Actually, my coworker with an iPhone was telling me that his battery dies rather quickly.
There are regulations as to how ot the coffee is allowed to be.
That McDonalds was keeping their coffee above that temperature.
When she spilled the soffee, which WAS her fault, she recieved burns that were FAR worse than they should have been had she spilled regulation temperature coffee.
THAT is why McDonalds was at fault. They gave her something that was hot above and beyond regulations, and to the extent that it could cause serious harm.
You don't get third degree burns and require a skin graft from spilling a regular cup of coffee on yourself. She didn't sue them because she spilled the coffee, she sued them because they had endangered her by heating the coffee to such a level where it could do that much harm.
If you STILL hold her at fault, all I can say is that I hope that someday what happened to her will happen to you too.
Hey, I drink my coffee hot and black, but if some one is serving me coffee that is SO awful that they have to superheat it inorder to hide the taste, well, I'm not drinking that shit.
The issue isn't that "she got burned" the issue is that she recieved third-degree burns which required skin grafts. If somethin is hot enough to do that to the outside of you, it's not exactly safe to put it inside of you either, no?
I'm not stoked that I have to pay that to have my phone out of commission for a week, but it doesn't really bother me.
Doing moderate internet browsing, calls, and other misc stuff (including ipod) I have to charge every other day, and even then, I never really hit the end of my battery. the iphone doesn't really drain the battery that badly. If you're pushing it to its extremes, the battery is going to die rather quickly, like anything would.
These people had better not get a dime.
PKMN White FC: 0046 2138 1298
The ONE thing holding me back, in all of this, is I'm not sure whether or not the fact that the battery is SOLDERED in place was ever explicit until some tech site opened one up.
That DOES make a difference, honestly, between it being possibly for a mildly savy consumer to, while voiding the warranty, replace tha battery himself, versus having to pay both for APPLE to replace it AND for a phone rental during the interim.
No it's not.
I'm not saying it's worse, but it's not really better. It's mostly just "on par"
The iPhone doesn't have some "amazing" battery life, it just doesn't have awful battery life.
I'm not going to argue with you over the internet.
But I have been using my iPhone every day pretty heavily and I've never, ever run out of battery. Not even close. I'm positive that I could get over five hours of talk time even at am 80% charge capacity. If you're just going to reply with "no u cant!" then please, don't bother.
PKMN White FC: 0046 2138 1298
?
Oh, I believe you.
And I get over five hours + talk time with my Treo, and that is not including data time spent retrieving my email every hour, and doing random websearches. Also, I use it to play Audible books during my long-ass comutes. In fact, the ONLY time it has ever run out of batteries was because I was downloading a whole lot of audible files DIRECTLY to it, through Audible Air, all at one time, rather than only a couple at a time, like normally do, so later that night the batter drained entirely. Nomrally, with all the usage I do, I'm still even in the clear if I forget to charge it at night, since it'll last me about two days at heavy usage.
Of course, some day the battery might fail. Luckily, my phone's manufacturer is so control obsessed that they refuse to let me replace the battery on an item that has become more or less a necessity in this day and age.
But regardless of that tangent, my point is that the iPhone battery isn't somehow better than the competition, it's just about the same.
Expect to wait a while; I use cup holders.
really, any 185 degree liquid being spilled on you at any time would be good enough for me.
I can see how you'd be a solid voice for Truth and Justice, what with your caring personality and all.
That one doesn't work as well though, because there really are brain scientists.
Yes, but they prefer the term "neurologists".
Dude. I'm sorry, but there needs to be a rule. If you're a grandparent, and your crotch gets skin grafts cause something a corporation did, you should get your medical bills paid and never have to worry about money again.
McDonalds was warned something like 800 times that their coffee was TOO GODDAMNED HOT and that their lids weren't safe enough, and they chose to ignore it.
That is exactly what it was about. Hundreds of people burn themselves on Maccy D coffee, and still they did nothing. Hell, they are only customers after all. It doesn't matter how they spilled it, perhaps it really is a world of morons, in any case any responsible corporation must allow for the fact that they are selling a product that can disfigure people and take appropriate measures. They did not. Fact is though, that accidental spillages are so easy to do, you can simply turn around with your purchased beverage and have the next moron in the queue walk straight into you and make you spill it all over yourself.
PSN ID : Xander51 Steam ID : Xander51
That's a pretty big selling point for me.
Yes but when you purchase coffee you expect it to be within a certain range of temperatures, not over 185F and capable of third degree burns.
And when you're McDonalds and can easily afford properly working coffee machines, but then ignore repeated warnings to fix your machine that is generating completely dangerous beverages in the interest of profit, and then you wind up scarring a woman permanently, you owe her at least her hospital bills.
WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT SHE ASKED FOR.
And she only got $400,000, which as you may know, probably just barely covered the medical bills.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
Oh, third degree burns to the thighs and vagina cost a hell of a lot more than $20,000 to correct in America. You're looking at a long road of skin grafts and plastic surgeries to try and restore your body to something other than completely disfigured.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
Actually, $20,000 is the correct number.
But enough of this, you guys can stop responding to these posts. They'd all been responded to a while ago. iPhone batteries.
Evander: The battery is soldered in place.
http://thinksecret.com/archives/iphonetakeapart/source/iphone23.html
I'm not defending what Apple did, but it does kinds look like every single square millimeter of the iPhone's internals is packed. Making a user-replacable battery would require installing contact points, latches for the back compartment, and having the battery get a nice, hard case around it. If Apple had to do that, from the looks of it, the phone would have had to be made thicker. Its current thickness is one of the biggest selling points to me.