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

841–850 of 878 posts

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

#841

Post by hateduser2 »

mthoms wrote: post #832
hateduser2 wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give me a break please. From the post: >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. Our goal has always been to create products that our customers love, and making iPhones last as long as possible is an important part of that. I see 0 weasel words or dodging here. Give me a break ha…

Notice all the qualifiers? Notice that the above statement, while technically truthful does not tell the whole story? This is not a time for vague promises IMHO, it's time for specific and clear statements. Why not just say you don't slow phones full stop?

What qualifiers? They said they haven’t and never would do anything to shorten or harm device life. That’s as direct as it gets. This isn’t a weasel word message, sorry.

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

#842

Post by 1123581321 »

te_chris wrote: post #727
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…

My iPhone 6 was snappy, then ios 11 came along and now it's not. Also, it's not the battery - I smashed the screen and they replaced the phone in April. It's just classic Apple: programming for the latest CPUs and damn the rest. As an example, siri used to load instantly when I held down the home button, on ios 11 it takes 5 seconds.

Siri buffers your speech as soon as you hit the button or say, “Hey Siri.” You don’t need to wait for the screen to load.

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

#843

Post by dogweather »

I believe this is a poor response because,

* In the first paragraph, they only apologized after limiting the limiting the scope to "some" customers who "feel" slighted. Like an irrational person on the defensive, giving a non-apology apology.

* They didn't address issues like: the CPU throttling is 24/7, whether the device is running off A/C or not. (!) Completely unnecessary and also — inconsistent with the battery-voltage argument.

* Affected users like me have been stuck with a barely functioning phone for a year. Since it stayed nearly unusable even when plugged in, I assumed it was simply due to Apple bloatware affecting older devices.

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

#844

Post by hk__2 »

yoodenvranx wrote: post #292
hk__2 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having a too small battery is the exact definition of planned obsolescence! That’s not true. Having a too-small battery on purpose is planned obsolescence. Having a small battery (what does "too small" means? Compared to what?) has nothing to do with that. That’s the purpose of "planned" in "planned obsolescence".

> what does "too small" means If a battery has not enough capacity to carry the phone trough a whole day after 1-2 years of use then it was too small to begin with. I have the feeling that iPhone batteries are just large enough that the phones survives a day of medium use if the phone is brand new. After 1 or 2 years the battery is so bad that it barely holds enough charge for a few hours of usage.

> I have the feeling that iPhone batteries are just large enough that the phones survives a day of medium use if the phone is brand new. After 1 or 2 years the battery is so bad that it barely holds enough charge for a few hours of usage.

That’s just a feeling. I’ve had my iPhone for 3 years now and the battery is completely fine.

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

#845

Post by TheKarateKid »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #644
TheKarateKid wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The build quality of phones back then usually didn't last longer than the battery. Keypads would die, screens would stop working, accidental damage, etc. With phones that are now waterproof, dustproof, and have powerful CPUs and cameras, the time to replace them has lengthened. I know a bunch of people who have owned iPhones for 4+ years and were very satisfied until they finally upgraded.

The phone I have is a Google Galaxy Nexus. It only has 3 buttons, power, volume up and volume down. 6 years old, still works. I don’t think replaceable batteries were phased out on flagship phones that long ago.

Still works is different than still working really, really well and feeling comparable to phones on the market today.

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

#846

Post by staunch »

misio wrote: post #714
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 explana…

You're literally inventing conspiracy theories with zero evidence.

Decreased performance on upgrade is an extremely common feature of most software. Servers, desktops, and smartphones are just computers running operating systems and applications.

Upgrades bring new functionality, which usually has a cost in terms of system resources like CPU/memory.

This is the primary explanation for "slowdown on upgrade" problems. If you didn't know this, you're probably not an engineer who works on these problems i.e. an expert.

This is just one example of how non-technical people get themselves very confused and start inventing conspiracy theories.

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

#847

Post by j_coder »

garmaine wrote: post #591
j_coder wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is about battery life. This is how the battery should be measured: 100% -> Doesn't charge more 0% -> Do no provide enough voltage/current for safe operation at current power mode. At 5% the phone could switch (configurable) to extended battery mode (low power mode) and alert the user. As the battery ages the user will notice better a faster battery discharge (from 100% to 0%) and not the performance slowdown.

Your demonstrating the same ignorance the post you’re replying to is complaining about. It is not physically possible for the phone to draw sufficient power off a degraded battery to power it in high performance modes. The battery just doesn’t provide enough electrical current. Apple isn’t stepping back performance on degraded batteries to keep battery life. They are doing it to keep peak current draws at a level the…

It is the opposite. Batteries degradation acts as an internal resistance at rest (Rd) that increases over time. There is a second resistance (Rc) that increases as you discharge the battery. As you draw current (I) from the battery the nominal voltage decreases according to Omhs law V = Vn - I*(Rd + Rc).

You can plot different voltage charts as the battery discharges at different stages of degradation (increased Rb). As you know the peak current that phone drains at maximum load you know the minimum voltage it requires to operate. At this minimum voltage you show 0% (or a little higher so the phone can have enough power to gracefully shutdown).

What Apple is doing is slowing down the processor so it drains a smaller current reducing the minimum voltage the phone needs to operate extending the battery life (that also measures the time between 100% to 0%). This way you don't complain that an one year old phone battery is discharging too fast probably because of battery fault or wrong specification. There also a good side effect for Apple of decreased performance perception that induces to premature phone upgrades.

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

#848

Post by tqkxzugoaupvwqr »

baby wrote: post #787
te_chris wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My iPhone 6 was snappy, then ios 11 came along and now it's not. Also, it's not the battery - I smashed the screen and they replaced the phone in April. It's just classic Apple: programming for the latest CPUs and damn the rest. As an example, siri used to load instantly when I held down the home button, on ios 11 it takes 5 seconds.

Apple if you're reading this: let us downgrade to iOS 10 please.

Downgrades are not going to happen. They take pride in saying “Look at this chart, the vast majority of users is running the latest iOS”. That is also why you get annoying update reminders that you can never dismiss permanently, only choose “Remind me later”.

This in itself wouldn’t be so bad if Apple didn’t nag-force these updates onto models that are clearly not capable of providing a pleasant experience. On one hand Apple applauds itself for being environmentally friendly, on the other hand they purposefully make millions of devices obsolete with every major iOS release. Hypocrites.

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

#849

Post by ovao »

krutzger wrote: post #839
ovao wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Others may tout Android phones as “cheap”, but does Apple? I don’t actually recall Apple doing any negative marketing against Android.

Are you kidding me? How many WWDC and product introductions have you attended?

I’ve never been to WWDC. I watched the most recent iPhone announcement and I don’t specifically remember any negative commentary against Android. Hence my comment and my question.

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

#850

Post by ComputerGuru »

akvadrako wrote: post #706
ComputerGuru wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is. The “fix” was introduced to avoid these crashes by throttling instead of browning out. It’s in the article.

The fix, the throttling, is the controversial part, NOT the sporadic shutdowns. It's absurd, because throttling is much better than brownouts, but that's what the lawsuits are about.

I don’t get it. You are acting as if the brownouts are typical behavior of a year-old battery in a phone?

The real scandal is the shoddy design and engineering that led to brownouts that necessitated either a massive recall or this throttling.

Post reply on HN