Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 878 posts

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

#401

Post by metasaval »

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...

What "many other phones?" Samsung, Google, Motorola, LG, and others have all gone to sealed battery design. It led to thinner phones and, down the road, better water resistance. Samsung tried water resistance and removable batter with the S5 and it was inconsistent at best. I'm sure there are some phones out there that still have removable batteries (BLU comes to mind), but by and large all flagships have sealed designs now. Whether the trade-off is worth it is up to the person (I prefer a sleeker phone with water resistance myself, but I'm also capable enough to replace an iPhone battery on my own), but the idea that there are "many other phones" where one can replace the battery in 1 minute with no special tools is just not true.

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

#402

Post by dilap »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #278
dilap wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's a completely manufactured scandal, although most of the reporting was deceptive (as is, I'm starting to suspect, most reporting, full stop). I think the non-manufactured part of the scandal is having your phone throttle itself w/o telling you it's doing that is pretty annoying. You're left wondering, is my phone running slower or is my mind playing tricks on me? I think Apple's response here is gre…

> I think the non-manufactured part of the scandal is having your phone throttle itself w/o telling you it's doing that is pretty annoying. If you have a laptop then I have bad news; your CPU throttles itself. Especially if you play games. It gets too hot and slows itself down to prevent damage. There’s not even a direct way to detect this. Which I do admit is annoying. Apple deserves this PR egg on their face. But t…

fair point, tho there are a few salient differences:

the laptop always does this; it's not something where it magically (and mysteriously) gets slower as it ages. it's also obvious when this is happening, even if not directly indicated: the fan will be cranking and the laptop will be really hot to the touch.

and, there's also somehow more of a feeling that a phone is a controlled system that will "just work," whereas computers/laptops are always screwing up in one way or another...

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

#403

Post by xanadohnt »

nikisweeting wrote: post #45

This whole battery scandal is ridiculous. It's literally the opposite of planned obsolescence, they're prolonging the usable life of these phones by underclocking them enough to stay functional for a full day, when otherwise they'd be shutting off randomly. I wish I could underclock even with a fresh battery in order to have solid 2-day battery life.

Not. Even. I felt forced to upgrade my 6 because it was unbearably slow. The battery? Excellent. In fact, at the time of trade-in, it was lasting longer than my iPhone X does brand new. More proof - the 6 was actually almost brand new itself; 3 months prior I smashed the screen and Apple replaced the entire unit (yes, generous on their part) instead of a screen swap (the body was bent enough to not allow a screen replacement). New unit, new battery, and thus not just anecdotal evidence.

Perhaps there is _some_ good intention on Apple's part. But I think it hides a just-as-motivating factor as forcing upgrade purchases. My opinion is their position is disingenuous at best. I would rather see them move toward the customer having the control to choose the experience or not instead of - as they explained - only adding transparency into the decisions into which Apple is forcing you.

Plainly, my experience was: I had perfectly healthy hardware, yet my 2-gen old device was almost too slow to be useable. And now here I sit with a $1200 unnecessary replacement.

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

#404

Post by new299 »

goialoq wrote: post #311
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It’s also a waste of human labor to throw away devices when they could still be made useful with some simple repairs. To go further, it is wasteful to design hardware to be disposable rather than repairable and reusable. People with jobs I wouldn’t want to do work very hard to bring us these devices, and the earth gives up resources to mine, transport, and shape the materials. Throwing things away when they c…

> It’s also a waste of human labor to throw away devices when they could still be made useful with some simple repairs. Are you sure? Assembly line production is highly efficient, that's why warranty service usually means "throw way the old one into the refurbish or recycle pile and give you a new one", not "fix your old one"

My guess is it's not really much of a waste of human labor, but it is extremely energy inefficient. Energy used in production is generally many multiples of that used during operation. So extending usable lifetime versus manufacturing a new device is more energy efficient in most cases.

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

#405

Post by tigershark »

misio wrote: post #364
tigershark wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly you should wait at least 6 months before declaring unconditional love to an android phone as I learnt by myself..

That's the second time I've seen that timeframe mentioned in this thread. What was your experience? I don't like upgrading so I tend to keep my Android phones for years and just keep the OS updated. I was getting a good day from my S4 after years of ownership.

I bought a new Nexus 5 about ~6 months after reveal to supersede my aging iphone 4 that was 4 years old at that point. At the beginning I was super excited about the very good performance, just after less than 6 months the performance started to become sluggish, battery life was noticeably worse and while with my iphone 4 I had probably 4 reboots or freezes in 4 years, in 6 months with the nexus 5 I had many more such problems. The worst was a loop boot after 1 year and something that killed my battery from 80% to 0 very quickly and, very luckily, after it was dead it didn't continue loop booting. It happened to me another one or two times if I recall correctly. The phone was 100% stock, I never flashed anything at all, I just performed the android updates. Arrived at the point of having a quite strong desire to throw it against the wall pretty much every day, I sold it to my friend's father when it was 1 year and 8 months old. I begged my friend to thoroughly test it before getting it and I gave him a really good price and he was very happy with the performance (I still can't fathom how in the world it is possible...). After 8 - 10 months his father could not use it anymore because it won't charge.

After that awful experience I would rather get a kick in my genitalia than an android phone.

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

#406

Post by jmull »

joering2 wrote: post #301
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…

How long ago did you updated your kit from Amazon? I did days of research and did not come up with any seller with genuine quality batteries. Since two mildly exploded and one bloated to triple the size destroying the phone (mostly the case), I would be careful putting Amazon $25 batteries kit into expensive phone.

It was the "YONTEX" kit. It's worked very well so far, but that's only about a week or so.

Time will tell, I guess.

I'm not completely sure if I understand the problems you've had but if your original batteries are bloating, you have a pretty serious problem and I would NOT look at a third-party battery to solve it. I'd contact Apple and go from there. Also, if it's not a model known to have this kind of problem, wrack your brain to see if you can figure out if there's an environmental issue. (E.g., something like the locker you leave it in when you go to the gym in the morning is actually in direct sunlight at the time you go in the season when you had the problem. Not to let Apple off the hook, just pointing out that if you've had two swollen batteries for a model of phone not known to suffer from that, then the easiest solution could be something more proximate to you.)

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

#408

Post by tigershark »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #319
tigershark wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3.3 years on the iPhone 6 charging it once a day is 1000 cycles, well above 500..

Because you’re being throttled, duh

Better being throttled than having to endure boot loops, daily crashes and a battery dead at 5 pm honestly..

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

#409

Post by mark-r »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #295
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.…

Agreed. It’s also a waste of human labor to throw away devices when they could still be made useful with some simple repairs. To go further, it is wasteful to design hardware to be disposable rather than repairable and reusable. People with jobs I wouldn’t want to do work very hard to bring us these devices, and the earth gives up resources to mine, transport, and shape the materials. Throwing things away when they c…

I was surprised to find out my son's robotics team used old phones as robot controllers. No idea what software they used.

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

#410

Post by afarrell »

madez wrote: post #378
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…

You realize you are locked-in into a proprietary ecosystem. Clearly, that is bad for you and customer-unfriendly. But I wonder why you don't take action, and get alternatives that don't lock you in. Is this an example of the sunken cost fallacy?

Not really. It is an evaluation of the cost of migrating to a different ecosystem and set of workflows.
Post reply on HN