Another lawsuit filed regarding the iPhone battery
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Aug 17, 2007 at 12:07pm
Another day, another lawsuit. Sydney Leung’s nine-page class-action complaint, filed in a Northern District of California court on Monday, accuses both Apple and AT&T of fraud in neglecting to inform potential iPhone buyers of the costs involved in maintaining a working battery for the iPhone over the course of the handset’s lifespan, reports AppleInsider.
The lawsuit is nearly identical to one filed by Jose Trujillo last month. Both claim that the battery in the iPhone will last only 300 complete charges before depleting entirely and that the battery will need to be replaced every year by Apple as the sealed rear compartment prevents third-party technicians and users from swapping batteries themselves without voiding the warranty.
The accumulated costs of ordering the replacement, shipping, and the loaner iPhone would amount to over $100 each year on top of the three-day replacement process, the new lawsuit claims. But Apple nor AT&T provided warning about any of the costs involved in maintaining a useful battery until after the launch, it adds.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
Rick Prather Says:
Sad that the courts can’t just throw these suits out without wasting their time!
There is absolutely no basis for saying that the battery needs to be replace after 300 charges.
The Documentation from Apple says after 400 complete charge cycles the capacity of battery may drop to 80% of the original life.
Key here are the phrases “complete charge cycles” and “80% of capacity”.
This means in the fairly normal usage that I put my phone through I will average about a 25 % charge most nights. That equates to a full charge cycle every four days. Therefore the time it takes my battery to drop to 80% capacity is about four and a third years!
And at that point I still have a usable battery. And, I probably will have replaced the iPhone by then anyway!
Posted on August 17, 2007