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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

#231

Post by benashford »

tschwimmer wrote: post #111

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 ou…

I don't think Apple ever applied throttling to devices prior to the iPhone 6. As you say, old 5Ses would shutdown at 20% (or lower), but it was with the iPhone 6 and later where devices would occasionally stop at 50%, so became a much bigger issue. Presumably this was due to the A8 CPU having a wider-range of power consumption (this is a guess, if anyone actually knows why I would be interested to know).

For point 2, there is Coconut Battery on MacOS. This is telling me my old iPhone 6 has 90% capacity after 400 odd cycles, which is probably par for the course, but I have no idea if that's bad enough for the performance throttling to kick in or not. Hopefully the new screen is going to be detailed enough to say how much throttling has been applied.

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

#232

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

jmull wrote: post #115

> 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 u…

Isn't this a time-limited offer? I understood it was valid for a year only.

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

#233

Post by hk__2 »

krutzger wrote: post #139
MBCook wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>If Apple hadn’t made this change those phones would have randomly turned off instead. Why is apple the only company with this problem?

> Why is apple the only company with this problem?

It’s the only one people care about enough. Apple gets a major "scandal" almost each year about something that affects every single smartphone company on the planet. Think of the antenna-gate or the bending issues. Lots of non-Apple phones have shown these issues, and the random shutdowns are no exception [1].

[1]: http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/12/20/some-nexus-6ps-have-...

(updated to add a link)

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

#234

Post by pishpash »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #214
jhack wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It took too much trouble and too long for it to happen, but Apple is stepping up and doing the right thing. The right thing would have been for Apple to either stop this behaviour or give users the option (retain performance or retain battery life). They're doing neither.

The rigt thing would have been a model recall changing the battery with something that has enough voltage margin to keep the cpu running after the usual degradation for at least the 500 cycles it’s rated for This is an engineering issue on evaluating margins properly repackaged as “we’re improving battery life” to hide stability issue caused by bad assumptions on cpu stability across voltage ranges.

Exactly, this does nothing to prevent Apple from shoving a dinky battery in future phones and selling $99 annual battery replacements (after 2018). Battery itself costs nothing. $29 may be at-cost for labor. $99 is a large margin.

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

#235

Post by ceejayoz »

jhack wrote: post #217
austenallred wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trade-offs that come with that would completely destroy everything that makes iPhones great.

Maybe if they made their iPhones that fraction of a millimetre thicker, they'd have the courage to bring back a headphone jack into their $1000 phones.

Wasn't the point to have better waterproofing? IIRC the keynote mentioned it being the main spot for water intrusion.

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

#236

Post by chrisballinger »

djsumdog wrote: post #195
jmull wrote: post #115

> 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 u…

This isn't the first time this has happened to Apple. They use to not sell replacement batteries for the original iPods, and when people called in to complain, they were often told to buy an entire new iPod. This was settled in a lawsuit: http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/apples-ip... Another important note is this battery replacement cost only cover the iPhone6 and up. That's only the 2015 release.…

The iPhone 6 was released September 9, 2014, which is about 3.3 years ago.

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

#237

Post by tzs »

I'm curious about how much slimness people would be willing to give up for easy, cheap battery replacements for phones.

One could design a phone the thickness of the original iPhone that would be able to take AAA batteries.

8 AAA Eneloops have about the same energy as the batteries in iPhone 6s or iPhone 8, and just shy of an iPhone 7.

If one would accept a phone about 40% thicker than the original iPhone, 3 or 4 AA Eneloops would do it.

I was comfortable with the thickness of my original iPhone, so I would be willing to consider an AAA powered phone. I'd probably even be OK with AA--it would still be thinner than my wallet, which I have no problem with.

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

#238

Post by russh »

lytedev wrote: post #206
djsumdog wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't the first time this has happened to Apple. They use to not sell replacement batteries for the original iPods, and when people called in to complain, they were often told to buy an entire new iPod. This was settled in a lawsuit: http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/apples-ip... Another important note is this battery replacement cost only cover the iPhone6 and up. That's only the 2015 release.…

Hahaha "lubricous" - what a fantastic typo!

Had to look that one up, it was worth the effort.

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

#239

Post by spondyl »

samb1729 wrote: post #210
djsumdog wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't the first time this has happened to Apple. They use to not sell replacement batteries for the original iPods, and when people called in to complain, they were often told to buy an entire new iPod. This was settled in a lawsuit: http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/apples-ip... Another important note is this battery replacement cost only cover the iPhone6 and up. That's only the 2015 release.…

I think you mean ludicrous instead of lubricious, just fyi.

Apparently it's a real word!

Here's the excerpt from dictionary.com

------

lubricious [loo-brish-uh s] adjective

    arousing or expressive of sexual desire; lustful; lecherous
------

It kinda defeats the purpose of using the word if no one else understands what it means :)

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

#240

Post by megaman22 »

austenallred wrote: post #202
PacketPaul wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The batteries are not free. How about a user replaceable battery design?

The trade-offs that come with that would completely destroy everything that makes iPhones great.

It was pretty fantastic on the Samsung hardware that was contemporaneous with many iPhone designs.

Sadly the Galaxies have jumped on that bandwagon.

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