“The iPhone has only been out for a month, yet there’s already a class-action lawsuit against it over its battery life,” Ed Oswald reports for BetaNews.
“Jose Trujillo filed the suit in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois. Among other things, he claims that the battery can only be charged for 300 cycles before needing to be replaced, and that he wasn’t made aware that the battery was soldered inside of the unit,” Oswald reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Apple.com’s iPhone tech specs have stated “built-in rechargeable lithium ion battery” since its preview introduction in January 2007. In addition, Apple.com’s iPhone batteries page – which went live before iPhone went on sale – states, “A properly maintained iPhone battery is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity at 400 full charge and discharge cycles.” In additon, Apple.com states (and has stated before iPhone went on sale) that iPhone “offers up to 8 hours of talk time 6 hours of Internet use, 7 hours of video playback, or 24 hours of audio playback on a full charge at original capacity. In addition, iPhone features up to 250 hours of standby time.”
Apple’s iPhone box clearly states on the label, “Battery has limited recharge cycles and may eventually need to be replaced by Apple service provider. Battery life and charge cycles vary by use and settings. See www.apple.com/batteries.
Apple iPhone’s one-year warranty includes replacement coverage for a defective battery. You can extend your coverage to two years from the date of your iPhone purchase with the AppleCare Protection Plan for iPhone. During the plan’s coverage period, Apple will replace the battery if it drops below 50% of its original capacity. If it is out of warranty, Apple offers a battery replacement for $79, plus $6.95 shipping, subject to local tax. Apple offers AppleCare Service iPhones for us for up to 5 days while iPhones undergo battery replacement. The service fee for the AppleCare Service iPhone is $29. iPhone owners just drop their iPhone’s SIM card into the loaner iPhone while the battery is being replaced.
Any judge or lawyer has already long since stopped reading due to fits of uncontrollable, shaking laughter. If you are still able to read this far, it’s likely that your name is either Jose or you are an ambulance chaser with a client named Jose. Either way, you seem to have absolutely no idea how the U.S. legal system works, but at least you have an ample supply of frivolity.
Dumbass.
If he had left his iPhone in his favorite pants and then sued his dry cleaners, he could have asked for $54 million.
@ TMF
But the packaging didn’t SAY that I should remove the iPhone from my pants before laundering!
Come to think of it, my pants didn’t say “remove your pants before laundering” so I wonder what would happen if I get myself dry cleaned. I can smell the millions already.
Mayb José’s brother is a blood-sucking attorney: Hose B
If an average person spends:
2 hours per day talking on the iPhone
1.5 hours per day surfing the web
they will drain the battery in two days. The 400 cycles would therefore last them Two years and two months (approximately). At that point, the battery would still hold 80% of the original charge. That means they would still have another two years before the capacity drops below 50%. This all assuming someone spends over three hours talking or surfing on this thing EVERY DAY! Do you know anyone who has three free hours of leisure time (EVERY DAY) to spend/waste on the phone?
Not to mention that talking two hours on the phone every day means spending equivalent of about 2,500 weekday minutes (unless those two hours are after 9PM). That would probably mean that your replacement battery wouldn’t be the most expensive of your troubles…
@ Banker
“LUL,
If US$79 +tax + shipping is a “fortune” to you, then you have my deepest pity, you poor bastard.
One thing’s for certain: you have no business owning an iPhone.”
Even the world’s greatest billionaires don’t appreciated being ripped off. Paying $79 + Shipping, and more importantly, losing my cell phone for 3 days is a complete ripoff.
The battery is a bad design, plain and simple. But it does fit into Apple’s philosophy of continuing to suck money out of the consumer long after the sale…
All that said, the class action lawsuit is plain silly. When you buy a iPhone, you know it has a sealed battery. If that’s a show stopper for you…………. Don’t buy it.
Thanks Shoeman
That’s my point exactly, I can easily afford many iPhones, but I realize that I’m the minority and I don’t appreciate others getting ripped off just because the “rich” can afford to wipe their asses with iPhones if they prefer.
Some of us “rich” were poor working stiffs once, so we know exactly how long it takes to earn $79 or $600. It wasn’t pleasent.
I can understand the rabid fanboyism, but sometimes it’s absolutely blind to the fact that a USER REMOVEABLE BATTTERY WILL BE GOOD FOR THEM.
Apple has replaceable hard drives and batteries in their laptops, should be the same concept to expensive iPhones.
$600 laptops have replaceable batteries…
“JUST return the friggin phone and get RAZR.”
…then you can file a suit for pain and suffering as well!
I don’t think the soldered in battery is that big a deal. It’s not nearly as aggravating as the 256MB RAM stick soldered into one of the two slots in my iBook. Now THAT just sucks.
LUL,
The craziness of this story is not a matter of whether the battery is OR should be replaceable or not. The point is that there are about a hundred ways for Mr. Trujillo to have known BEFORE he bought his phone that the battery wasn’t replacable. Not to mention that the premise of his suit — that the battery is only good for 300 charge cycles — is a outright, blatant, damnable LIE. This guy is the WORST kind of litigious idiot that there is. He is looking for some kind of windfall lawsuit lottery that is entirely motivated by GREED. And this despite the fact that no one who files a class action lawsuit ever gets rich: only the lawyers do. The “victim” (and it’s really bad when there actually IS a victim) gets hosed. Hosed by what brought on the suit, and then hosed by the lawyers who bring the suit “on the victim’s behalf”. But then here, there is no cause for suit, no validity to ANY of this jackass’s claims, and he’s been convinced by some ambulance chasing lawyer that he’s going to get rich from it. It’s a sickening lawsuit in a system clogged with sickening lawsuits that RUIN the American justice system for people who acutally actually NEED justice.
I won’t mention that I bought the first gen iPod at $399, have never replaced the battery nor had any problems with it, and before I would have ever needed to change the battery I bought a 3rd gen iPod, then a 5th gen iPod, then an iPhone. In which I can guarantee you I will never, EVER have to replace the damned battery.
Have the lawyers call Garmin tech support and ask how much it costs to replace the battery in the Nuvi 350 GPS unit.
Rob: “JUST return the friggin phone and get RAZR.”
…and cut your head off with it José.
I really hate those greedy kinds of people and their lawyers.
“@LorD 1776
not nearly as aggravating as the 256MB RAM stick soldered into one of the two slots in my iBook. Now THAT just sucks.”
Yes, and I have 4 iBooks G4’s (Wife, Son, Daughter, and my “Road Warrior”). Mine is an old 800 MHZ that I take on the road with me when I travel. Works great in most of the motels I stay at with WiFi…
Still, the 800 has ONLY a 128 MEG RAM chip soldered in. According to Apple, it should only be upgradable to 640 MEG. But it works fine with another 1 GIG stick so it doesn’t suck too bad…. (The other 3 are all the 1.42 GIG G4’s varieties which officially support a 1 GIG RAM chip)…
Still I agree, it’s not the best thought out design..
Different subject sort of. I just used Other World Computing to change my iPod battery. I didn’t want to do it. I sent it via Fedex from my front porch last Thursday. I received it this morning on my front porch. Super fast. Great service. If they do iPhones they would probably do Jose’s for free.
You can bet the design was thought out long and hard. If you want to cram that much functionality and technology in such a small package, you need to make compromises. A soldered in battery takes up a lot less space than a connectorized one with a removable door. As others have said, under normal use the battery won’t need to be replaced for over 2 years- longer than the contract obligation is for. By that time, the phone will most likely be upgraded with the new contract. It is a non issue.
If the iPhone was bulkier and had an ugly ass door on it for the battery, people would bitch about that too.
People had the same bitch about the iPod at first. I don’t see it slowly down sales of that device.
Well maybe after MS soldered a web browser to it’s operating software people are a little sensitive.
Actually with all the battery history (isn’t the iPod battery soldered) with explosions and recalls etc. I am surprised that the lawsuit has waited so long before rearing it’s ugly head. I think they should have started it before the iPhone launch, you know a preemptive lawsuit.
One spin on it though to watch out for and that is environmental toxicity. Having to send back the battery to the manufacturer is a good idea, it ensures that the battery is properly disposed of.
For those of you that think I am barking up the wrong tree you might want to try looking at the back of a battery operated radioactive smoke alarm or try to follow the instructions here:
http://www.firebrigade.act.gov.au/Preparedness/Household_Smoke_Alarms/index.html
Note the funny talk:
“Radiation authorities advise that the amount of radiation emitted from these devises is much less than natural background levels.”
I think perhaps it should read “ONE” of these devices. Even though they say that you can toss them into the bin they later on they state:
“No more than one smoke detector per bin of rubbish though. This will ensure that smoke detectors are well dispersed in the overall bulk of waste in landfill sites. Bulk disposal by this method is not permitted however – collections of smoke detectors must continue to be treated as radioactive waste.”
Hmmm collections of smoke detectors, makes you think.
At any rate, the collection of batteries by the manufacturer so that they can be properly disposed of, is an excellent environmental idea. That should put a lawsuit crimp, that is if it ever comes to see the light of day.
“If the iPhone was bulkier and had an ugly ass door on it for the battery, people would bitch about that too.”
Well yeah, the fanboys might. Obvious something that is “really beautiful” or “really gorgeous” is what is important to most Apple Fans…
I on the other hand tend to look at practical features. I can’t think of one other phone on the market that requires that you send it away for 3 days and have to rent a loaner while the battery gets replaced…
I tend to think of myself as an Apple user, not a drooling fanboy. To say that the inability for the user to change a battery is somehow an advantage is shortsighted at best, and blind fanboyism at worst. For the price they are asking for this thing, it’s missing lots of features. I hope that Apple incorporates additional features in it’s next gen iPhone – features that even the most basic cell phones contain (like the ability of buying a battery and putting it in)…
@Road Warrior
I don’t think that there have BEEN any reported explosions or recalls for iPod batteries, have there?
@Shoeman
First, how do you use bold and italic tags in your comments? I always feel like I’m yelling when I have to CAPS something when I want to just italicize it. And I’d rather save caps for when I’m actually yelling
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Second: in this case (non-replaceable batteries) it’s not a matter of fanboy-ness, at least not on my part. Most cell phones have replaceable batteries IMHO because all OTHER cell phones have replaceable batteries, not because they need one. I had a Treo 650 for several years before my iPhone, and the only time I even looked at the battery was when I had to open the back to hit the reset button. It never needed a new battery, and over it’s lifetime probably never would have.
I have heard of very few users actually having to replace the battery in their iPods. Sure, you hear the squeaky wheels talk about it on the net, but that’s because they are the squeaky wheels. I’ve never heard a single user of an iPod that I personally know have a single issue with their iPod battery. Myself included, and one of my iPods is 5 years old (I bought it almost as soon as it was available). I certainly use my cell phone less than I ever have an iPod, even AS an iPod the iPhone uses flash memory which is less draining on the battery than a hard drive, and the battery technology itself is far better now than five years ago. So what is the point of having a replaceable battery on the iPhone if no one is every going to have to replace one? From a financial standpoint that is just money down the drain for Apple. Yet people were complaining about it before the iPhone was even released. That’s just asinine. It doesn’t NEED a replaceable battery folks. That’s why it doesn’t HAVE one.
Notice how the article starts with the obvious and then idiots confuse Jose’s blatant and dishonest ignorance with their own personal want list?
Guys, it’s not about what you want.
It’s about Jose lying through his teeth to make a quick buck.
I don’t care about what you want. I do care that this scuzzball is misusing the courts for his own gain.