If it isn't fraud then it should be a user option. "Slow down phone as battery ages" yes/no
Or “Randomly turn off with lots of charge as battery ages yes/no”?
Apple faces lawsuits after admitting it slows down aging iPhones
81–90 of 133 posts
Re: Apple faces lawsuits after admitting it slows down aging iPhones
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is Apple’s marketing driven by benchmarks? I don’t think it is. They rarely talk about concrete performance or specs and focus more on the user experiences the device enables. Might have missed some campaigns though!
They used to show charts comparing new iPhone vs. old iPhone speeds in the launch presentations. Kind of necessary when the S versions were just speed bumps. The iPhone 6 presentation had a chart crowing about "sustained performance". It was about thermal throttling but kind of ironic thinking about it now. I don't recall any charts from the recent launch - they just seemed to lean on putting the word "bionic" in the…
Which S generation was just a speed bump?
Re: Apple faces lawsuits after admitting it slows down aging iPhones
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should apple replace batteries for free? Do you expect a car company to replace car-batteries or tires for free? Some components just wear and need to be replaced. Apple just provided a workaround that ensures your device doesn't crash due to the worn out component.
Apple decided to not let the consumer have the choice or ability to swap their own batteries. They've painted themselves into a corner here - and I think they should pay for this, indeed. Its clear that these moves were made solely to maximise profit for Apple, not to protect the consumer and provide them the best-quality experience.
It shouldn’t be hard for Apple to “prove” that there are benefits, outside of maxing profit, to having a sealed battery.
Re: Apple faces lawsuits after admitting it slows down aging iPhones
#84On the "slowdown with old battery" issue, does an old iPhone speed up when it's connected to a charger.
P.S. Just asking out of curiosity, in case someone has an old device and wants to run benchmarks.
Re: Apple faces lawsuits after admitting it slows down aging iPhones
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Holy shit. You people just throw away the old iPhone after buying a new one? That is a luxury almost no one in my country has. So weird that the people get to live the life on basis of how well the seed generator of Universe performed during their birth.
No one in the West (that I’ve ever met) literally throws away old iPhones. They either get handed down to a kid (merits of which are for another thread) or a friend or relative. Some folk do trade in their old phone and a lot flip them on the used market. I think getting more life out of those devices for the original purchaser is of paramount importance though if we are to stop polluting our environment with the con…
I upgrade my iphone every 2 years, and put in a sell order with a mobile phone recycler just before the keynote for the new phone starts, that gives me the best price (it goes down super quick once people see the keynote and decide to upgrade), and I get more than the upgrade on a new 2 year contract will cost ... win win.
Re: Apple faces lawsuits after admitting it slows down aging iPhones
#86I really like Linus' (Sebastian, not Torvalds) thoughts about this: https://youtu.be/TJUeHmdzSx4?t=11m22s Basically, Apple chose to tune the phones to run at a dangerously high configuration to increase benchmarks, knowing that the battery will degrade like this (and that when the iphone X2 comes out, nobody will be talking about this, instead they'll be talking about how much faster the X2 is than the X). His exact…
If Apple slowed the phone down upfront then people would complain that Apple were throttling as the user is “too dumb to look after their battery properly” so instead they are doing when they can point to a proven need to throttle the device. This feels like a no win situation for Apple unless they had/will put in “throttle my phone so it doesn’t go weird” switch in settings. Side note: we’ve known for years that ham…
Maybe the attitude to run the battery low before charging it comes from NiCd batteries which have the so called memory effect [1].
Could education be the answer? I've never bought an iPhone, do they include a few paragraphs about proper battery care?
Re: Apple faces lawsuits after admitting it slows down aging iPhones
#87When I first heard about this, it was apparently due to Apple throttling the CPU when the battery started getting old and losing capacity. When the battery gets older, it keeps less charge and therefore, if you want the battery to last a reasonable amount of time, you'd need to lower the power usage. I recently got my iPhone 6S battery upgraded since it started shutting off randomly below 40%, especially in the cold.…
coconutBattery.app (for the Mac) will show you the battery health of connected iOS devices.
http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/
[Another commenter shared this trick after I voiced the same feature request. I had been using coconutBattery for a while, but didn't know it had added this feature.]
Re: Apple faces lawsuits after admitting it slows down aging iPhones
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because cars don't lose 1/3rd of horsepower after 2-3 years due to manufacturer ECU being programmed to slow them down. A maintained car will lose less then 10% of its horsepower due to wear and tear over 150.000miles / 10 years. Note that I said "well maintained" - meaning there's a way to maintain the car to keep the advertised performance. There is no way to "maintain" iPhones to keep their performance over three…
> There is no way to "maintain" iPhones to keep their performance over three years Replace the battery? Free under AppleCare and $79 otherwise.
If you know that the battery is at fault (Apple hid that) and if Apple Store will replace it (they refused it for many people because diagnostics doesn't show an issue even if phone is throttled).
Apple is also actively fighting and lobbying against any kind of legislation that makes electronics repairable and maintainable.
Read up on the issue a bit more :)
Re: Apple faces lawsuits after admitting it slows down aging iPhones
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This feels like a no win situation for Apple... If Apple fucked up, why should there be a 'win' situation for them? The obvious solution would be Apple replacing the batteries for free. Instead Apple won't even let you pay them to replace the battery if it's not in EOL mode — despite throttling starting well before then.
Why should apple replace batteries for free? Do you expect a car company to replace car-batteries or tires for free? Some components just wear and need to be replaced. Apple just provided a workaround that ensures your device doesn't crash due to the worn out component.
You should expect Apple to freely replace the battery of a phone that may unexpectedly shut down because that's already what Apple said you should expect.
Apple publicly claimed that it affects a limited number of 6s and Apple would replace the battery. That offer is still up today [1]. Then they quietly [2] released an update that applies the 'workaround' to a larger number of devices. That's a fuckup at every level.
[1] https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6s-unexpectedshutdown/
[2] https://twitter.com/jcenters/status/944330221083381761 (Tidbits editor explains)
Re: Apple faces lawsuits after admitting it slows down aging iPhones
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is no way to "maintain" iPhones to keep their performance over three years Replace the battery? Free under AppleCare and $79 otherwise.
If you know that the battery is at fault (Apple hid that) and if Apple Store will replace it (they refused it for many people because diagnostics doesn't show an issue even if phone is throttled). Apple is also actively fighting and lobbying against any kind of legislation that makes electronics repairable and maintainable. Read up on the issue a bit more :)
> There is no way to "maintain" iPhones to keep their performance over three years
>> If you know that the battery is at fault (Apple hid that) and if Apple Store will replace it (they refused it for many people because diagnostics doesn't show an issue even if phone is throttled)
You narrowed your scope. (Note that Apple basically never refuses to replace a battery if you pay the $79. They will, occasionally, quibble about the 80% requirement for an in-warranty replacement.)
I agree that Apple should be better about communicating that batteries should be replaced after a couple years of use. My objection is to the claim that there is "no way to maintain iPhones".