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Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair

ifixit.com

71–80 of 259 posts

Re: Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair

#71
post #24

I am going to pay 49€ for iPhone 6 original battery replacement in coming weeks. It’s still many times cheaper than buying new phone. Ifixit wants 20€ only for compatible part, so I think, Apple’s 49€ inclusive half hour technician work is very good deal. I work as an electrical engineer and understand Apple’s position very well. Nobody wants, that user try to service their devices. Some get lucky and device works fi…

It's ridiculous that you need to pay someone to plop in a battery.

Re: Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair

#72
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.

FWIW, Apple is making a huge push into services. Services revenue is dependent on a large installed base, rather than quarterly unit sales. This gives them a huge incentive to make sure customers have a great experience for as long as possible after purchase (on top of just wanting to make their customers happy). If they're doing this, there's probably a pretty good reason for it.

That makes sense. ChBaaS (Changing Battery as a Service) is probably a huge opportunity for them.

Re: Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair

#73
post #5

To be clear, you can replace the battery with whatever battery you want, it will just show a message saying it can't be verified as an Apple battery. The only user impact is being unable to see battery health. I don't even think I can see my battery health on my Android so I don't see it as a big deal, but definitely not great if they are hiding this functionality for no reason.

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.

In the article, they say that Apples OEM batteries are also affected.

Re: Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair

#74
Is there any benefit whatsoever (even in a theoretical sense) that locking down the battery enhances user privacy in any way? To elaborate: Is there something similar to an attack where we chill a computer's RAM to recover a cryptographic key, for instance?

Re: Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair

#75
post #32

Have we all forgotten that mobile phone battery replacement was just this easy[0] not too long ago? Now, even a phone listed in "9 Best Phones With Removable Battery In 2019"[1] has a battery replacement process like this[2]. [0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sxdXuKbivQ&t=1m0s [1] https://thedroidguy.com/2019/06/9-best-phones-removable-batt... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY07MujU2pM

Last time I remember having any easy access was the Galaxy S3. Pop open the back, swap battery. Done. I would even carry spares when on vacation if I needed some extra juice.

Re: Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair

#76
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…

I’m not sure how this is supposed to help you in your situation. In fact it has muddied the waters for all situations because now even perfectly fine batteries will show a bad battery status.

Presumably when the seller showed OP the phone, before money had changed hands, the battery would have shown "non original" or simple "battery no good" and the OP would not have bought it (or bought it for a reduced price knowing he would need to replace the battery with a genuine one)

Re: Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair

#77
People put these things in their pockets and fly with them. Forcing people to use batteries with a decent level of quality control is a good thing.

I don't feel like dying because someone spent $15 on a replacement battery purchased at the same place they by their Vape juice.

Re: Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair

#78
post #6

EDIT: Per Betelgeuse90 comment below, my characterization of the situation was incorrect. Apple's behavior is anti-competitive. I am leaving my original comment here for posterity. Original comment: I love jumping on the apple hate train as much as the next person, but this is not a valid reason to do so. Depending on the aftermarket battery, those reported values could be completely wrong / misleading to the user. I…

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.

The only way for apple to make sure that the replacement battery is original is by doing the replacement themselves.

Or DRM. Do you want battery DRM?

Re: Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair

#79
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very big deal to me. Apple needs a good smack to their financial jaw. This is ridiculously anti-consumer and it utterly pisses me off.

I partially disagree. The simple truth is that the market for third party non-Apple replacement parts is super sketchy. In the US and other countries where it's convenient to purchase from a reliable site like ifixit, you have legitimate options. For the rest of the world, you have AliExpress. It's not a matter of finding a local reseller, you really just don't have many good options. I opted for my own 3rd party rep…

What's stopping Apple from selling the parts that they manufacture to third parties, though? If anything this is an argument for right to repair laws, not for manufacturers to further restrict how consumers can use their devices. The Massachusetts right to repair laws for vehicles already provided a good framework for such an electronics repair law.
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