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A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

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Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#111

Post by tschwimmer »

I think this is a good response, and I think a lot of the outrage over this issue is overblown. At the end of the day there's a fundamental tradeoff that Apple needs to make on behalf of their customers: performance or stability. They chose stability, and I think they have a convincing argument as to why: "It should go without saying that we think sudden, unexpected shutdowns are unacceptable. We don’t want any of our users to lose a call, miss taking a picture or have any other part of their iPhone experience interrupted if we can avoid it."

I have two concerns:

1) They still haven't fully eliminated the sudden shutdown behavior. My old 5S would shut down randomly under 20% without warning. Sometimes it would make it all the way to 1-2%, but most of the time it was between 5-15%. You'd think they'd scale performance throttling untilt this wasn't an issue.

2) I think their messaging with respect to battery health and the battery being a consumable is pretty poor. As far as I can tell there's no built-in battery health indicator in iOS. Sure there are those dodgy "Super Battery Health Plus Pro" apps, but it seems like a diagnostic menu in settings would go a long way. Even more puzzling is that techs at the Apple Store have access to some sort of diagnostic that does this already. Last time I went to get another issue fixed the guy said that my battery was at 70% capacity and the voltage was pretty low. Why wait until '2018' to ship a self-serve version of this?

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#112

Post by puzzle »

netsharc wrote: post #48
leadingthenet wrote: post #11

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.

I like this comment referring to someone else's (Linus Sebastian of Linus Tech Tips) opinion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16013565 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..

I am no Apple fan, but part of what they sell you is an experience where details like that are hidden from you. Before everybody got a Mac, didn't techies complain about Apple dumbing down computers?

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#113

Post by MBCook »

jsnk wrote: post #96
leadingthenet wrote: post #11

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 this a "completely manufactured scandal"? Tens of millions of old iPhone users were left in the dark why all of a sudden the phone was slowing down to the point where it was becoming unusable. Millions of people probably spent hundreds of dollars otherwise they wouldn't need to spend if they know this was something they can fix with a new battery. I personally have been using iPhone 6 for 3 years until this CP…

If Apple hadn’t made this change those phones would have randomly turned off instead. Those people probably would’ve gone and bought either a new were iPhone or switch to android like you did.

On the whole I don’t think this would have caused anyone to spend money they wouldn’t have otherwise. Perhaps they would have stayed with their phone longer.

It’s hard to tell, and this is certainly worse than if they had just told people about the battery in the first place (although I imagine THAT would’ve become a scandal two).

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#114

Post by michaelt »

l4yao wrote: post #5
buryat wrote: post #2

> 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

It's choosing the lesser of two evils. The two options are to have the phone run slower, or have the phone shut down unexpectedly with shorter battery life. Personally, I agree with Apple's call on this one.

That's a false dichotomy; Apple has many options other than slowing down the phone and having it randomly restart.

For example, they could have altered the calibration of the battery indicator so 0% charge corresponds to the charge level where random restarts/throttling starts to occur.

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#115

Post by jmull »

> Apple is reducing the price of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement by $50 — from $79 to $29...

> Early in 2018, we will issue an iOS software update with new features that give users more visibility into the health of their iPhone’s battery, so they can see for themselves if its condition is affecting performance.

There we go.

It took too much trouble and too long for it to happen, but Apple is stepping up and doing the right thing.

Actually, the cost of battery replacement is now excellent. If they hadn't screwed this up by not communicating what was going on, I think they could have easily justified $49 - $59.

So I take the drop to $29 as a tangible apology, which I appreciate. (Well, personally, I've already replaced my battery using a $25 kit from Amazon, but obviously that's not viable for the great majority of iPhone owners.)

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#116

Post by viraptor »

reaperducer wrote: post #87
netsharc wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this comment referring to someone else's (Linus Sebastian of Linus Tech Tips) opinion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16013565 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..

> Linus compared it to a car performing worse after 1 year of usage I hate to break it to him, but a one-year-old car will perform worse than a brand new car. A car is a hugely more robust piece of machinery than a telephone, so the degradation is less noticeable, but it's there. Why do you think the car depreciates the second you drive it off the lot?

Good point until:

> Why do you think the car depreciates the second you drive it off the lot?

Because of the dealership and "new car" markup. There's next to no difference between the car that left the parking lot and a "new" one. If you don't care about this silly game, you can save a lot by buying an ex-display model with a few hundred/thousand km done.

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#117

Post by banachtarski »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #59
satysin wrote: post #41

To be fair that is a pretty decent response. The reality is batteries do degrade over time and they have to manage that. They should have been transparent about what they were doing and I'm not sure giving the user control over it is all that sensible. Are there any battery experts who can chime in with their opinion on this?

I'm not a battery expert, but it needs to be pointed out that other smartphone manufacturers do not have this problem. It was Apple specific - it's not as if every device with a lithium battery shuts off at 40%. So it still feels like they're doing it to mitigate a fault with the device, and should've been more transparent about that in the first place.

> op: [request for a battery expert to chime in with professional opinion]

> response: [non-battery expert with subjective opinion]

sums up why I hate HN comments sometimes.

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#118

Post by on_and_off »

oblio wrote: post #36
nixgeek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They wouldn't have to give anything for free if, like for many other phones, the owner could replace the battery in 1 minute flat with no special tools...

I would love HN to force people to explain why they are downvoting something.

Batteries fail after a while, it has been a constant for a very long time.

What has changed is that in many recent phones it is a pain to replace it yourself.

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#119

Post by Game_Ender »

reaperducer wrote: post #107
marklyon wrote: post #73

My wife’s 6+ was incredibly slow after the iOS upgrade. My 6+ drained the battery incredibly quickly. I was told that upgrading the iOS would fix that problem [0]; it didn’t. Instead it slowed my phone to the point of being unusable. If I’d have known replacing the battery would have fixed both of them, I’d have done that. Instead, I stupidly bought two new, very expensive phones. Since we were already locked into th…

> This does nothing to compensate or win back the trust of customers like me. What is it that you want Apple to do to make you personally feel better?

They could offer to buy back any functioning iPhone 6S at an above market rate from anyone who recently purchased a new phone. Its sort of a crazy idea, but close to what people want.
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