41–50 of 878 posts
Are there any battery experts who can chime in with their opinion on this?
This smells like a direct response to latest lawsuit from France [0]. [0] - https://www.thelocal.fr/20171228/french-lawsuit-launched-aga...
Company internal investigation followed by public facing change is pretty much the death knell in a civil/monetary lawsuit.
> First and foremost, we have never — and would never — do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades. Didn't they degrade the user experience by slowing down the cpu? I definitely wasn't enjoying my slow iPhone
Rock and a hard place for Apple, after 600 cycles or 2 years 'average usage' (based on reports I've seen in the past) the battery might only have 50-60% of the design capacity, so their choice is between reducing battery consumption (via throttling) or having users whose phones are totally drained in significantly less than an 'average working day'.
What theyre doing to fix it: "Apple is reducing the price of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement by $50 — from $79 to $29 — for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later whose battery needs to be replaced, starting in late January and available worldwide through December 2018. Details will be provided soon on apple.com. Early in 2018, we will issue an iOS software update with new features that give users more visibi…
This basically means they're giving you the battery for free. Takes 30-45 minutes of semi-skilled labor to replace it, loaded cost of the employee for even 30 minutes has got to be pretty close to the $29 they're charging. Wonder if this means we'll see 12-24 month phones popping up on eBay with battery health reports, or receipts showing the owner(s) had them changed out just prior to sale.
To your second point, I'm curious to see if Apple only offers this to original owners, or if a subsequent purchaser can get it swapped at this price also.
What theyre doing to fix it: "Apple is reducing the price of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement by $50 — from $79 to $29 — for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later whose battery needs to be replaced, starting in late January and available worldwide through December 2018. Details will be provided soon on apple.com. Early in 2018, we will issue an iOS software update with new features that give users more visibi…
This basically means they're giving you the battery for free. Takes 30-45 minutes of semi-skilled labor to replace it, loaded cost of the employee for even 30 minutes has got to be pretty close to the $29 they're charging. Wonder if this means we'll see 12-24 month phones popping up on eBay with battery health reports, or receipts showing the owner(s) had them changed out just prior to sale.
Thank you! I've always thought phones should provide info about battery health.
Reducing the battery replacement by $50 is a great move. While I think this is a completely manufactured scandal, this will definitely take away the last argument people have against them. I'm sure some people will still hate them for something, though.
How is it "completely manufactured"? Apple programmed (and hid) the slowdown because it knows the batteries it is shipping with its phones won't last more than a year. Linus compared it to a car performing worse after 1 year of usage..
> First and foremost, we have never — and would never — do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades. Didn't they degrade the user experience by slowing down the cpu? I definitely wasn't enjoying my slow iPhone
Rock and a hard place for Apple, after 600 cycles or 2 years 'average usage' (based on reports I've seen in the past) the battery might only have 50-60% of the design capacity, so their choice is between reducing battery consumption (via throttling) or having users whose phones are totally drained in significantly less than an 'average working day'.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The right call is actually targeting performance at a level that would allow for longer consistent performance state. If they're having to go to measures this drastic to keep their phones from shutting down, their batteries are underspec'd and their processors are overspec'd.
The issue only affected the 6/6S generation (EDIT: with overwatch for the 7); presumably Apple identified and fixed the issue for the 8 onwards.
The iPhone 7 came out a year ago. iPhone 7 users are also being offered the $29 battery replacement.