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

711–720 of 878 posts

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

#711

Post by blensor »

stouset wrote: post #593
blensor wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you think a Popup "Hey you're battery is going bad. Do you want to [keep the performance] or [save the battery life]?" Would be too much??

Multiply this idea times the six thousand other locations people think this should be done and you suddenly get an frustratingly unusable device. Everyone gets upset that their pet setting isn't available, but nobody stops to think about the consequences of having everyone else's pet setting available.

And with that comment we are back at the root of the problem. Apple is the one to evaluate what is and what is not important to the user. And many people who are currently upset think they had their priorities wrong.

We can argue all day long what is and what really isn't important. The fact is they decided it isn't and the backlash showed quite strongly that it was wrong.

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

#712

Post by mmjaa »

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 think the outrage is justified, for one particular reason: none of this would have happened if Apple hadn't devolved the feature: user-replaceable batteries.

It is Apples' arrogance that painted them into this corner, and nothing less.

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

#713

Post by raverbashing »

mmjaa wrote: post #712
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 think the outrage is justified, for one particular reason: none of this would have happened if Apple hadn't devolved the feature: user-replaceable batteries. It is Apples' arrogance that painted them into this corner, and nothing less.

Incorrect

I had the same problem with a user-replaceable phone battery

It took me a while to realize it was the battery to blame. Yes, replacing it was easier, but you need to identify the problem first

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

#714

Post by misio »

staunch wrote: post #170

On the upside, there is now a very easy way to see which "tech journalists" understand the concept of engineering trade offs. The tech reporters at NY Times, Linus Techtips, etc have never actually created products. They are not technical experts. They're personalities and communicators. And in this case, wacky conspiracy theorists.

My god it's like all the comments on this post are Apple shills.

"If you don't accept this you're a wacky conspiracy theorist"

Fuck me. That's right out of the handbook mate.

The problem that's been complained about for years is decreased performance on upgrade, and no decent downgrade path.

Where were the legions of complaints about random shutdowns that prompted such severe throttling?

People accepting this explanation blindly have never worked for a large company in a PR storm. They don't suddenly start telling the whole truth, especially if the truth was as benign as they state this is. If it's such a non issue, why not mention it in release notes?

Because it was hidden, because this is bullshit.

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

#715

Post by taauji »

iPhone's battery deteriorates to a point of not being able to sustain ideal usage after mere 1-1.5 years. That is a very bad case as per mobile phone standards. $1000 for 18 months averages to about $56 a month after which your phone will start deteriorating to a point of being not usable anymore.

Not acceptable no matter how valid their argument is.

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

#716

Post by [deleted] »

hk__2 wrote: post #233
krutzger wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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-6…

[deleted]

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

#717

Post by emn13 »

MBCook wrote: post #452
emn13 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by "fundamental battery issue" you mean that all phones have this issue or some comparably severe tradeoff, then no, this is not a fundamental issue. Batteries don't all degrade at the same rate, and even given a specific battery tech, the way it's implemented in the device can have a dramatic impact on the longevity. Temperature, rate of charging, the degree (i.e. voltage) up to which it is charged, the degree (i…

There are ways to try and mitigate it, but when I was really getting at is that if you use ANY device with the lithium ion battery long enough something like this will end up happening. Some other phone may be designed so it takes an extra year and a half or two, but it will still happen one day.

Technically, I suspect they could easily make em last 10 years without too many drawbacks. And if you're willing to be a bit more compromising, much more even than that. But why engineer that kind of life expectancy into a device that's going to be hopelessly outdated before then?

But a little more honesty in expected degradation would be nice, including the warranty that if degradation exceeds some minimal specification, the phone will be fixed at the manufacturer's cost, and not just for a year. 10 years may be unnecessarily long, but 1 year is definitely too short; and the level of acceptable degradation is too vague.

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

#718

Post by mtone »

Karunamon wrote: post #176
RayVR wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The outrage doesn't seem overblown to me. For years I knew that my iphones were becoming obsolete not entirely from the passage of time but instead from upgrading the OS. Apple insisted they were not slowing down devices. Now they claim that they started this in iOS 10.2, without notification. My experience has been that upgrading the OS results in degraded performance 100% of the time. Whether intentional or not App…

Does this include running the new OS after a factory reset? I find that even on Android, you drop some performance after a full system upgrade and it doesn't come back until a full reset is performed with the new OS. It's stupid that this is required, but that can be explained as a technical problem rather than planned obsolescence. On top of that, there's the variable of increased system resources to consider, which…

Yes, the "upgrade" to ios 11 slowed down app load/switch times on my ipad by several seconds, even after a full reset (made no difference). It's nonsense that I am now stuck with it.

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

#719

Post by mthoms »

polack wrote: post #676
RayVR wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The outrage doesn't seem overblown to me. For years I knew that my iphones were becoming obsolete not entirely from the passage of time but instead from upgrading the OS. Apple insisted they were not slowing down devices. Now they claim that they started this in iOS 10.2, without notification. My experience has been that upgrading the OS results in degraded performance 100% of the time. Whether intentional or not App…

What people are missing here is that while Apple now confess that they did slowdown the iPhone 6 and 6s when they released the 7, they are not saying anything about earlier models. They are however lowering the price to exchange batteries even for older models. Why would they do that if they where not affected? Why don't they say this practice started with the IOS 10 update? They just say they did it in the 10 update…

This was a perfect opportunity for Apple to come out and explicitly state they have never slowed phones down other than in this instance. That would certainly go a long way to restoring confidence.

Instead they came out with a weasely-worded statement that is designed to give the impression that they only recently starting doing this. But... they don't actually make that claim.

Apple lawyers are very good at what they do. Well played Apple indeed.

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

#720

Post by nofilter »

asendra wrote: post #687
nofilter wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when I was still an Android user, I had a Nexus 4. After a year of use, it also started shutting down at random points if battery was below 20%. Before that I had HTC Desire (the first one), which did the same, at reaching 10% of battery, after about a year of use.

But I bet you knew it was a battery problem, and how to fix it without buying a new phone. That's the main problem here.

Well, yeah. But to be honest, I'd rather the performance decline than knowing I have 20% of battery and am waiting for a critical call and then the battery dies.
Post reply on HN