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Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair

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Re: Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair

#61

Post by addicted »

sschueller wrote: post #18
sjwright wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won’t be for no reason. If their battery health tightly calibrated to report on Apple’s OEM battery, it could provide misleading information about third-party batteries. My guess is that Apple is bored of dealing with complaints about devices which have been modified by third parties.

Well, if they made the batteries easily replaceable without the device having to go to service they would not have this many issues. Of course their replacement batteries would need to be reasonably priced...

Or available.

Re: Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair

#62

Post by metalliqaz »

mstolpm wrote: post #40

To give another perspective: I bought a used iPhone SE about a month ago and was worried about battery health because many sellers didn‘t mention it. After passing some more shady offers I found an SE for cheap (around 100€) that claimed 95% battery health. And I could verify that in the settings. Seller mentioned the iPhone was never serviced and only used as a backup phone. Perhaps that should have ring an alarm, b…

This anecdote so closely matches Apple's messaging on the topic, it makes me wonder if you are an Apple employee. However since it involves aftermarket sales, I suppose it's prudent to assume not.

Let's look at it from a different angle. You got to take advantage of an aftermarket in order to find a cheap phone. In this case you got scammed, but for the time being you still have the option of getting a cheap battery replacement to fix your device with minimal losses.

Apple's moves are clearly designed to squash an aftermarket. I'd prefer to have the option to buy cheap old phones. I'd especially prefer to be able to replace the batteries on my own old phones.

Re: Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair

#63

Post by JustSomeNobody »

eridius wrote: post #58
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm willing to bet Apple has seen counterfeit batteries that claim to be Apple batteries and this is a reaction to that. People are still going to send Apple their phone and say, "why is my phone displaying this message?", which support is going to have to deal with. This isn't going to all the sudden save Apple money on support.

No but it's going to prevent a PR disaster when a phone's "Apple" battery explodes.

How would it be a disaster? All they have to do is determine it's a third party battery and all the tech blogs move on.

Re: Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair

#64

Post by metalliqaz »

aejnsn wrote: post #38
roboys wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is Apple is bored of truly innovating and now has to resort to nickle-diming customers to hit quarterly numbers. Tim Cook put on his "Make Changing Batteries Expensive Again" hat.

Don't go buy a BMW anytime soon. Have to recode the battery, and it's been that way for years.

I, for one, hate when my car is in the shop. That's why I haven't been buying BMWs.

Re: Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair

#65

Post by cujo »

rhegart wrote: post #27

Worse for climate change than all their supposed good deeds. An iPhone could easily last 5 years instead of 2, and millions of poor people could have a few extra thousand in their pockets if they just allowed proper repair.

Are you suggesting the only recourse you have now is to get a new phone when your battery dies? Come on.

Re: Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair

#67

Post by dilippkumar »

buildzr wrote: post #41
Betelgeuse90 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, you'll get the "service battery" message even if you place an original Apple battery in the iPhone. A used device that was serviced perfectly well but not by Apple will still display this message. All this means is that the battery wasn't replaced by Apple themselves.

Theoretically they could properly detect a crappy replacement too by doing some basic math to determine approximate capacity. I'm not sure of the situation on iOS but on Android tools like Accubattery do a decent job of this. As such, even requiring an Apple original battery would be poor practice in my opinion.

> Theoretically they could properly detect a crappy replacement too by doing some basic math to determine approximate capacity

sigh

If such "basic math" exists, can someone please point me to it? Estimating capacity on a fully known, completely characterized cell is the bane of my existence.

Basic math that can help estimate approximate capacity of an unknown replacement battery- that's a billion dollar startup worthy technology right there.

Re: Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair

#68

Post by dmonitor »

metalliqaz wrote: post #62
mstolpm wrote: post #40

To give another perspective: I bought a used iPhone SE about a month ago and was worried about battery health because many sellers didn‘t mention it. After passing some more shady offers I found an SE for cheap (around 100€) that claimed 95% battery health. And I could verify that in the settings. Seller mentioned the iPhone was never serviced and only used as a backup phone. Perhaps that should have ring an alarm, b…

This anecdote so closely matches Apple's messaging on the topic, it makes me wonder if you are an Apple employee. However since it involves aftermarket sales, I suppose it's prudent to assume not. Let's look at it from a different angle. You got to take advantage of an aftermarket in order to find a cheap phone. In this case you got scammed, but for the time being you still have the option of getting a cheap battery…

I have had a similar experience, so it is not very uncommon for used phones.

My phone's battery actually started expanding and nearly pushed the screen off of the back. Apple wouldn't touch it, though, so I just took it to another 3rd party battery replacer.

If there was a way to have known that the battery was replaced by a shit one before I had bought the phone, I would've had a much easier time

Re: Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair

#69

Post by metalliqaz »

MiroF wrote: post #34
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we going with "lock down the hardware and software" anti-consumer Apple, or "spy on everything" anti-consumer Google?

Google'a shit is more easily mitigated if you're smart and want an only slightly less great browsing experience

Google's phones track you in several ways that aren't through a browser. Want to see every place you've ever visited since you got your Android phone? Google has it and you can see it in your dashboard.

Google keeps location tracking a secret from you until you view your data, then once you go look at it, they start sending you monthly summaries of your travels.

Any don't get me started on the facial recognition in Photos. Take a photo of someone else's kids, and it will show you a helpful popup asking if you want to send the photo to the kid's parent.

Re: Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair

#70

Post by rootusrootus »

buildzr wrote: post #48
Nextgrid wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The chip could keep encryption keys in RAM (since it’s always powered by the battery and there’s always gonna be enough juice in there to power it given its tiny power consumption) and if the chip loses power (due to being desoldered) the keys are lost preventing the phone from authenticating it.

Great, leave the device unplugged for a few weeks and any residual charge will drop off enough to invalidate your battery keys. That'd be a shit show.

If the battery voltage drops that low, the battery will never charge again anyway.
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