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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

#751

Just going to throw this one out there. I swapped from an Nexus 5 to an iPhone 6+. I bought the iPhone 1.5yrs second hand to get a significant amount off its price. It is dented significantly on the back, but still serves me like a new phone apart from a noticed slow-down. On the other hand, the Nexus randomly started shutting off and the battery only lasted half a day after charging every day for the following 2 yea…

Same here. I bought Nexus 4 back in the day (February 2013). Couple of months later, I've got iPhone 5 from my company. Google's support for Nexus didn't lasted a year, if I remember correctly. I switched it on Cyanogen and gave it to my daughter, and the phone had constant issues with overheating (she was much more gamer than I) and finally the screen stopped recognizing touches at the top, so the drawer was impossible to open.

In the meantime, iPhone 5 went first to my wife, then to my daughter and finally to my younger daughter. It was supported until the last release of the OS, it's still in use, just got batter replacement a year ago. I'm not happy with Apple behavior lately, but they need to screw up something much, much bigger to make me think to switch to something made by Samsung or Google.

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

#752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a third option: invest in software that doesn't have strict absolute hardware requirements. A lot of the hardware requirement inflation is due to unoptimized software. Which is not a quality failing as much as a deliberate choice. Apple could absolutely include older device performance in their QA testing.

Mobile CPUs have quadrupled since 3.5 years when the 6 came out. Most normal people want cool new features. If you are in the minority, don’t expect it to be fixed just for you — especially since the old OS is optimized for you and you can use it just fine.

> Most normal people want cool new features.

The problem is not new features, but bloat. Look at stack traces on recent versions of iOS, or at the view hierarchy, or at the method table of NSObject. Apple is rushing out junk software by adding another fat layer of duct tape every year.

iOS 11 is just as terrible on the 5s as iOS 9 was on the iPhone 4s. Within two years, the OS has caught up with a 4.5x increase in CPU performance! I'm not talking about 3D games, just unlocking the phone, taking pictures, launching apps, chatting on iMessage/WhatsApp. And iOS 11 should actually be more lightweight since it has dropped support for 32-bit apps.

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

#753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you own an affected phone? Ridiculous is my $800 year-old device stuttering like it was Android 1.5.

Yes, I own an iPhone 6 and it works fine. My battery is around ~75% health and I sometimes get underclocked, it's still fast enough for me though.

We must be getting completely different experiences then. I have a couple of friends with the same issues as mine, I know I'm not alone. It started immediately after upgrading to iOS 11.

Pulling down search on the home screen: freeze. Typing into search input: freeze. Unlocking from notifications screen: freeze. Freezes every two or three times an app is opened or closed. Screen transitions always stutter a little, Safari hangs, screen becomes unresponsive, sometimes it just starts draining battery and gets hot with no app running at all.

I think my mention of Android triggered some emotions here (many downvotes). My first smartphone was a Dell with 1.5 that ran horribly slow, around 2010. That one was really bad, couldn't even answer calls most of that time due to unresponsive UI, and is still my benchmark for bad experience. This iPhone is getting quite close.

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

#754
post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a free battery replacement "quality program" for that issue. [1] Also (unrelated, but will apply to many here), if you have a MacBook or MacBook Pro that the anti-glare coating has started to come off screen (typically around the edges), you can get a new screen for free. [2] [1]: https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6s-unexpectedshutdown/ [2]: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/17/apple-extends-free-stai... (A…

No, the replacement program is for iPhone 6s, not iPhone 6.

[deleted]

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

#755
post #138

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…

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…

That has been my experience as well.

Perhaps with each upgrade, Apple can let us know how much of a performance hit we will be taking.

That way I can weigh the benefit of the new/improved features of the new OS vs the performance penalty.

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

#756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

step one should be removing google from your phone (android or otherwise) and limiting reliance on all their services.

How would you remove Android from an Android phone?

LineageOS with microG [1], microG in general, or installing another port of an OS such as Ubuntu Touch or SailfishOS. The Fairphone [2] can run any of these OSes, without unlocking the bootloader and without rooting the phone.

[1] https://lineage.microg.org

[2] https://www.fairphone.com

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

#757
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…

Battery performance is just one of the ways your phone becomes useless. Apple is notorious for pushing iOS updates that basically make a phone useless. Apple has been trying to trick me into upgrading to iOS 11 which will make my phone useless junk.

Is iOS 10 still receiving security and reliability updates?

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

#758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Make batteries easily replaceable.

Yup, but Apple innovated the non-user replaceable battery with the iPhone. They set the trend, the rest followed. Before that, in the 90s and 00s we had user replaceable batteries.

On top of that, the iPhone 7, 8, and X make it significantly more difficult and cumbersome to replace the battery. See the iFixit guides. Even with the iPhone 6 you need special screwdrivers and tools.

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

#759
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Questions like this always perplex me. People aren't asking for apple to do something. They're asking for them to not do something.

How about free battery replacement? That's not asking much. The solution to underclock to make sure the device doesn't go off is a hack. A cool hack, because it ensures the device stays somewhat useable, but a temporary one. Which also targets devices which don't suffer from the problem.
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