iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages • Hacker News Board

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#151

Post by slantyyz » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 5:40 AM UTC

donarb wrote: post #132

slantyyz wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Apple has decided that people want to buy razorthin phones I wonder what percentage people who buy those razorthin phones end up adding a millimeter or more to their phones by adding tempered glass screen protectors and cases over them. IMO, that defeats the purpose of the thinness.

Actually, no. Due to the thinness, I can add a protector that adds just enough so the thickness feels right to me. A thicker phone would necessitate a thicker protector that would make it difficult remove the phone from my front left pocket where I always carry it.

One might make the argument that a thicker phone could be more durable and not require such a protector.

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#152

Post by sliken » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 5:42 AM UTC

Seems like everyone is forgetting the #1 failure in older phones. With today's technology phones are very power efficient, the manage a rather amazing number of circuits with different functionality. Things like CPU, GPU, display, backlight, battery monitor, accelerometer, gps, compass, bluetooth, wifi, wan, camera, NFC, microphone, dsp, light senors, proximity sensors, etc.

The vast majority of those circuits are sleeping pretty much all the time. However as you get older your battery keeps up.. except those challenging times when you activate too many things. Like say nav (that runs the GPS, GPU, 3D chip, CPU, radio, compass, etc). Then the phone just turns off because there's not enough voltage.

Many people complain about "crashing" phones, claiming less reliability over time. Seems like often it's just the battery that can't manage the needed number of volts under load. You can witness this when ever less intensive things crash, but they all work if you are plugged in.

The sad thing is that these new top of the line smart phones could be useful for 5-10 years. Fit/finish with glass/aluminum, top spec CPU/RAM, expandable storage, etc. Sadly the epoxied battery reduces the practical life to 2-3 years.

In what world would a modular/expandable phone (like has been attempted several times) decide you might want to add fancy speakers, fancy camera, 3d vision, etc. But STILL expoxy in the battery? WTF?

I wish the government would stem in and just mandate that phones have user replaceable batteries to keep them from just filling the landfills after a few years.

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#153

Post by baddox » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 5:42 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #128

derefr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's replaceable, just not as a DIY. Apple encourages people to take their phones into Apple stores/authorized dealers to get the battery replaced. (Also, the repair is free if the battery's capacity has declined to <80% while under warranty. If you pay for two-year AppleCare+ [$99], you've basically pre-paid for a free battery replacement [normally also $99] at the two-year mark, as long as you've used—abused?—your…

What people usually mean (and it used to mean only this) by a "removable"/"replaceable" battery is that you can change the battery entirely by hand in less than a minute, without needing any tools. Until recently, this was possible with just about every other smartphone except Apple's.

Wasn’t the first Samsung flagship to remove the replacement battery the Galaxy S6? It’s no coincidence that it was also the first in a line of Android flagships starting to even attempt to compete with Apple on build quality, which they now do.

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#154

Post by ballenf » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 5:47 AM UTC

ohyes wrote: post #96

Someone1234 wrote: post #6

I feel like more transparency would have been welcomed, but aside from that this is a "no win" situation, since you have to pick a winner: - Do you degrade performance but leave screen-on time relatively unchanged? - Do you degrade screen-on time but leave performance relatively unchanged? Most Android devices seem to do the opposite (lose screen-on time, but keep performance relatively unchanged). Different people w…

The solution is a battery you can replace, like every phone used to have. There aren’t only two solutions to this problem. (Technically you can still replace the iPhone battery, unfortunately it isn’t trivial like in the bad old days when phones didn’t have high def touch screens.)

iPhones do have replaceable batteries, only not DIY. It's like $80 w/o warranty or AppleCare.

I've bought dozens of Android replacement batteries and the only batteries worth the cost of shipping were actual real OEM ones. And those always cost >$60. Knockoffs would start out decent and then die within a few weeks to months.

Apple's approach gets my vote. You get the upside of built-in battery and the peace of mind when you do need a replacement.

[Just to balance that, let me be clear that Apple's choice with regard to crippling my phone pisses me off. I just replaced an iPhone 6 that felt painfully slow and now I know why (I had tested the battery and it was at 75% -- I didn't realize replacing it would speed up the phone).]

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#155

Post by jakobegger » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 5:49 AM UTC

MBCook wrote: post #62

MBCook wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything his seems like a reaction to the yearly ‘planned obselescense’ stuff where people claim Apple killed their battery life to make them upgrade. People don’t want to lose battery life? Ok, we can adjust so it doesn’t change much over the life of the phone. Of course that just lead to ‘Apple slows your phone down’. You’re right, it’s a tough spot.

Another idea: Apple could pop up a dialog at a certain point saying your battery is sub-optimal (but not doomed) and you should replace it for the best experience. I’m sure that would go over GREAT.

The battery settings do say "battery needs service" once the battery is degraded, and most people are aware that their battery is bad.

Most people don't understand that the degraded battery is the cause of the performance issues (its not very intuitive), so they should explicitely say that.

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#156

Post by baddox » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 5:53 AM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #135

CamperBob2 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Know how I can tell you haven't designed any consumer products with a battery, replaceable or otherwise? This is the engineering equivalent of saying, "Why doesn't someone just go to the Middle East, sit down at a round table with with the Israelis and Palestinians and Sunnis and Shiites and rebels and Baathists and Saudis and ISIS members and refugees and all those other guys, and help them work out their difference…

Let's not pretend that Apple's hand was forced here. This is the company that dreamed up a proprietary screw to keep people out of their phones and computers.

It sounds like you’re describing the pentalobe screw, but security screws have existed for decades. Torx created variants with rejection pins in the 1970s. One-way screws have probably been around much longer than that.

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#157

Post by xmpirate » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 5:57 AM UTC

I feel the same applies to Macbook as well. I've a Macbook Pro Retina 13 inch, early 2015 at a battery cycle count of 1001. From the last few weeks, the system is terribly slow. I randomly see the fan speed going berserk. :/

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#158

Post by avian » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 6:04 AM UTC

Nitpicking about an otherwise well written post: why show a kernel density estimate instead of a simple histogram? It can be normalized if you don’t want reveal the exact number of samples.

Calculating a kernel density estimate just seems to add an unneccesary step between raw data and the visualization. It can hide some shortcomings in the data (e.g. low number of samples), but doesn’t add anything.

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#159

Post by CamperBob2 » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 6:04 AM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #6

I feel like more transparency would have been welcomed, but aside from that this is a "no win" situation, since you have to pick a winner: - Do you degrade performance but leave screen-on time relatively unchanged? - Do you degrade screen-on time but leave performance relatively unchanged? Most Android devices seem to do the opposite (lose screen-on time, but keep performance relatively unchanged). Different people w…

c) You tell the user what's going on and let them decide whether performance or battery life is more important to them.

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#160

Post by saagarjha » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 6:22 AM UTC

xmpirate wrote: post #157

I feel the same applies to Macbook as well. I've a Macbook Pro Retina 13 inch, early 2015 at a battery cycle count of 1001. From the last few weeks, the system is terribly slow. I randomly see the fan speed going berserk. :/

Might be something wrong with your SMC or thermal throttling going on. Either way I'd suggest resetting the SMC and if that doesn't fix it check out Activity Monitor to see what's wrong.