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iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

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Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#171
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

> iPhones do have replaceable batteries, only not DIY

It really is DIY. There are thousands of guide that can be followed successfully.

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#172
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post is written as if it wasn't Apple that introduced the hard-glued battery. They made a consumable hard to replace and backed themselves fully willing into this "no win" situation. And now they are not being forthright about the tradeoffs they made and certainly aren't making an effort to fix any of it. That is planned obsolescence. These batteries can be replaced but Apples absolute refusal to enable customer…

> This post is written as if it wasn't Apple that introduced the hard-glued battery. They made a consumable hard to replace As others have pointed out in this thread the batteries aren’t hard to replace; this is just not something you can do directly as a user. That probably makes sense; it’d be difficult to make a super-thin smartphone while at the same time provide an easy way to replace each part.

These are completely unfounded guesses. You have no basis upon which to determine whether it's "difficult."

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#173
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't necessarily the replacement, even though it's certainly not for a large majority of iPhone customers. The problem is sourcing the battery in the first place. Apple certainly isn't supplying any of them. In the best case you get one that works properly, if you're unlucky you might get one that has lower capacity, and if you're very unlucky you might just get one that puffs up and catches on fire.

They’re not user replaceable. Apple and their certified shops will absolutely repair the battery for you, although I don’t know how many generations of iPhones they support.

That they are not user replaceable is not under any dispute. The question is why.

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#175
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My iPhone 6S CPU freq is now capped at 911 MHz, which is half the nominal freq. Battery settings say nothing about that.

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#176

Related: If you have a Mac, you can check the health of an iPhone battery via the Console app when the phone is connected via USB. Search for the string "BatteryHealth", logged by the phone's Springboard process.

Handy. It didn't log "BatteryHealth" but other Battery infos. Do I miss something?

Stuff that I could see is the battery percentage, example:

``` default 08:44:30.015519 +0100 coreduetd CDDBatteryMonitor: received batterycallback, currentPercentage:94.555824! ```

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#177
post #152

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 sl…

This is very enlightened. As a consumer, I personally do not care so much for a modular phone, yet I do pretty much care about maintaining the same level of performance for my current device. Swappable batteries to increase performance is/could be a good selling point for modular phones.

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#178
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has decided that people want to buy razorthin phones and there is just not way to fit a large battery in there. I wish there were phones built like the old IBM thinkpads. Bulky, square, ugly but also indestructible and fully user servicable with replaceable batteries.

They offer bigger batteries in the form of the Plus and now the X. They’ve obviously determined that it’s not worth it on the regular iPhone. I guess their surveys and stuff show that their customers would rather have the thin phone, on the whole.

The X has worse battery life than the plus so i got the 8+.

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#179
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A thicker phone (presumably due to a larger battery) doesn't necessarily solve the problem of fragile front and back materials (glass).

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#180
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I‘ve never seen this notification once, having had multiple iPhones that browned-out at 40%.
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