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Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

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Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#461

Post by deschutes »

mmcnl wrote: post #290
ornornor wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having easily replaceable batteries (and pardon me but I don’t consider requiring 79 lbs of equipment and a 1200$ deposit “easy”) in modern phones is akin to selling cars with the tires welded on. It is ridiculous, consumer hostile, and wasteful. Batteries are consumable, they should not be a reason to throw the phone away once they stopped working. You don’t throw your house away when the garbage bag is full or…

This analogy only supports Apple's method? Car shops have a lift for easy access to the car and machines for balancing your tires. Very expensive equipment that almost no one has, which also goes for the tools for replacing an iPhone battery. Also Apple is not "consumer hostile", come on. That's a ridiculous accusation.

Anyone can mount a wheel. Clearly the author is talking about a hypothetical vehicle where the wheel has been welded to the axle assembly.

Actually replacing the tire on a wheel has practical engineering constraints that leave it best suited for shops. Even changing bicycle tires is non trivial and the performance and durability demands there are negligible in comparison.

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#462

Post by mym1990 »

tinus_hn wrote: post #303
mym1990 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all the stupid things that apple does to their devices, they can surely find a way to remove a cover. The truth is that almost every phone manufacturer would rather your phone reach end of life so that you can take a mini loan for another one.

You sound like one of those people complaining about the Steve Jobs reality distortion field, while you are also demanding Apple distorts the fabric of reality so they can create devices that meet your demands. Because without that, you can’t build a device with an easy way to remove its cover, while also making it thin, light and waterproof (and cheap, preferably). If ‘almost every manufacturer’ is in some kind of c…

You lost me at reality distortion field honestly.

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#463

Post by Animats »

Sirened wrote: post #449
Animats wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the way. The tools this guy used are common, dead-common in China. Go to any repair mall in Shenzhen and you’ll see hundreds of these. This is an issue with hobbyist electronics projects in the US. The US hobbyist market is still using 1970s packaging technology - 0.10 inch pin spacing, solderless proto boards, and through-hole parts. I designed a hobbyist board that was all surface mount. Smallest parts were 0.5m…

This was quite a wakeup call for me too. I was always into hobby electronics but a couple of years ago I got into multicopters. A _lot_ of parts were these tiny SMDs. I remember having to figure out how to attach FETs and even (once) a little BGA microprocessor. It was a very steep learning curve and nobody else in the hobby scene here had really done anything with it, so it was a lot of trial and error. Industry has…

nobody else in the hobby scene here had really done anything with it

Sparkfun has tutorials.[1]

There are surface mount practice kits, where you get a little board and a bunch of dud parts to practice on. It's not all that hard, but it takes practice. It takes a while to get skill with tweezers under a microscope. Cheap USB microscopes are very useful. Figure on ruining a few of those cheap practice kits.

It's not rocket science, but to do consistently good assembly you need the right tools and some reasonable hand tool skills.

[1] https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/category/2

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#464

Post by Nullabillity »

jeffbee wrote: post #347
madeofpalk wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> show just how deep the hole Apple has dug for themselves really is I guess it shows this hole to the public , but Apple's know this the whole time. They scale out in-store iPhone repair to 500 stores around the world where they have low-paid retail workers performing the repairs.

And it's a great service, too. You pay $50 and wait a few minutes. You get a new, genuine OEM battery with a warranty that extends the life of your phone indefinitely. The right-to-repair people have just lost contact with reality. This is the way people want it to work. It is a great product experience.

Remember when you could just buy a battery off the shelf, pop out the old battery, and pop in the new one? Without waiting for service or finding a brand store that's at best hours away? And without having to worry about whether the manufacturer has deemed your phone too legacy to allow you to replace the battery anymore?

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#465

Post by blagie »

dylan604 wrote: post #333
asveikau wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in this case the user is charged $69 to repair it themselves.

So if that's the case, then it looks like the labor for the replacement is free when having Apple do it. Everyone keeps talking about it being a $5 battery, but where can you get the battery for $5? If it costs Apple $5, then you're dreaming if you think Apple is going to ever sell for that. Nobody sells at cost and stays in business. Also, you're forgetting about it being a $69 kit. It's the $5 battery and $64 dolla…

For the record, $5 is about the top for what I pay for similar batteries on Fleabay. Here's a bunch for $3.50 for my phone, in quantities of 3: https://www.ebay.com/itm/202981911712

OEM will cost a little bit more to manufacture -- some of the Fleabay ones are a little bit sketchy -- but not a lot more.

Tear-down sites give similar costs: https://imageio.forbes.com/blogs-images/chuckjones/files/201...

That's my experience from industry as well (not Apple), but that's NDAed.

I think $5 is a fair estimate. I would be shocked if Apple paid more than $10 for the battery. Not surprised, but shocked. That points to a fair retail price in the $10-$30 range, depending on markup, distribution costs, etc.

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#466

Post by Nullabillity »

ctbeiser wrote: post #426
ksec wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You pay $50 and wait a few minutes. I would have no problem if this was true. But it is not. $49 only for non-Face ID Model. $69 for FaceID, or pretty much all current iPhone lineup except iPhone SE. You also have to wait 30 min to hours depending on store. Not few minutes unless you are the only one doing Battery Swap which is highly unlikely given how they are always fully booked. Depending on which part of the wo…

iFixit is charging $39 for an iPhone mini battery, or $25 for an iPhone SE battery. Paying $25-30 for half an hour of labor—on a $400-1200 device—every two years sounds… totally fine to me?

Not when that labour is only required because of Apple's (and other manufacturers', but Apple was the first and worst to do this) malicious design in the first place.

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#467

Post by bsder »

giantrobot wrote: post #310
iosjunkie wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or consumers could stop buying phones that can’t be easily disassembled or repaired.

Modern smartphones have a lot of constraints to deal with and still meet consumer demand. People want large displays, all day battery life, no slow downs, fast wireless, and the phone needs to fit in a normal pocket. Oh and the phone should be durable against drops and immersion in water. A large display, fast processor/GPU, and wireless are all battery hungry components. These require a large battery to not only sup…

> People want large displays

That's not clear. "Larger display" is easy and obvious from a marketing standpoint. But it's not clear that buyers are benefiting from them.

I can, in fact, point to the Galaxy Tab S8 as an example. My wife wanted AMOLED for the display, but that forces the 12.4" display (or bigger) which my wife didn't really want.

Manufacturers like Samsung and Apple are delivering what is convenient for the manufacturers--what the consumer actually wants is a second level consideration.

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#468

Post by Sirened »

Animats wrote: post #463
Sirened wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was quite a wakeup call for me too. I was always into hobby electronics but a couple of years ago I got into multicopters. A _lot_ of parts were these tiny SMDs. I remember having to figure out how to attach FETs and even (once) a little BGA microprocessor. It was a very steep learning curve and nobody else in the hobby scene here had really done anything with it, so it was a lot of trial and error. Industry has…

nobody else in the hobby scene here had really done anything with it Sparkfun has tutorials.[1] There are surface mount practice kits, where you get a little board and a bunch of dud parts to practice on. It's not all that hard, but it takes practice. It takes a while to get skill with tweezers under a microscope. Cheap USB microscopes are very useful. Figure on ruining a few of those cheap practice kits. It's not ro…

Ah, no, I was more referencing my local community. We have a fairly vibrant electronics DIY community but the technical skill caps out at around SMD stuff. Thankfully though while the community is largely stuck in the 70s, we aren't actually stuck in the 70s and have the internet to try and figure things out.

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#469

Post by fartcannon »

hatware wrote: post #339
fartcannon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never understood this kind of compliance. The hordes that buy their disposable garbage aren't going to care, they've shown repeatedly that they're insensitive to, sometimes even aggressive towards their own autonomy. So why do this? Just to _waste_ more? It's so petulant.

You can thank the finance and legal departments for their lack of creativity.

How much you want to bet Tim laughed? "Oh that'll teach them!", he grinned.

Re: Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery

#470

Post by paulryanrogers »

mikestew wrote: post #439
paulryanrogers wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because something is worse doesn't mean we should ignore the problems of the first.

If you've ever heard someone talk about frying fish, and how they have bigger ones that need frying, they're probably speaking metaphorically.

Some things are mutually exclusive. User serviceable phones and more sustainable transportation are not.
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