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Comment by leeoniya | Hacker News Reader

> This will likely feed into the “planned obsolescence” narrative.

well, non-replaceable battery and all...

It's replaceable, just not as a DIY. Apple encourages people to take their phones into Apple stores/authorized dealers to get the battery replaced.

(Also, the repair is free if the battery's capacity has declined to <80% while under warranty. If you pay for two-year AppleCare+ [$99], you've basically pre-paid for a free battery replacement [normally also $99] at the two-year mark, as long as you've used—abused?—your phone heavily enough to wear its battery down by then. So, Bad Life ProTip: if you have AppleCare, make sure to run your battery flat a lot to get its capacity down, so as to get your money's worth.)

> If you buy 3-year AppleCare, you're effectively pre-paying for at least one battery top-up.)

Unless I'm missing something, AppleCare on new iPhones is limited to two years ... which, in my experience, is just shortly before iPhone batteries degrade noticeably.

The AppleCare itself lasts two years, but that’s in addition to the year you get by default. The two don’t run concurrently.

Edit: no, they do run concurrently. See child post.

GP’s edited the reference to 3 years anyway.

Curious if you have a source on that? I see otherwise here: https://www.apple.com/support/products/iphone.html

I bought a new iPhone about 48 hours ago and was told the same thing as shown above.

Hmm, you’re right.

I think my confusion was that Mac AppleCare used to be advertised as an additional 2 years (you could buy it as your standard warranty expired) but it’s now advertised as 3 years from device purchase too. Wonder when that changed…

You are correct. derefr and tolien are incorrect.

iPhone comes with 1 year warranty. AppleCare+ extends that an additional year for a total of 2 years from purchase date.

From the site you linked above: "Every iPhone comes with one year of hardware repair coverage through its limited warranty and up to 90 days of complimentary support. AppleCare+ for iPhone extends your coverage to two years from the original purchase date of your iPhone and adds up to two incidents of accidental damage coverage, each subject to a service fee of $29 for screen damage, or $99 for any other damage, plus applicable tax. In addition, you’ll get 24/7 priority access to Apple experts via chat or phone."

@tolien: Yeah I remember when AppleCare for Mac did that too. Not sure at what point it changed to "within 60 days of purchase."

Early this past summer when AppleCare for Mac became AppleCare+ for Mac.

In fact, both are true. It just depends on where you live.

What he said is the case within the European Union due to some EU law regarding warranties. I believe in the EU an extended warranty like AppleCare only goes into effect after the original warranty has expired. There are also statutory warranty periods of a year (I think) for devices like the iPhone.

In the United States, on the other hand, AppleCare replaces the original warranty rather than adds onto it.

Here's a page describing AppleCare within the UK: https://www.apple.com/uk/legal/statutory-warranty/, which lasts for three years instead of the two within the United States.

As you say there could be some legal jiggerypokery but Apple claim it's still only two years for an iPhone:

> Up to 2 years from date of purchase for Apple TV, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Apple Watch or Apple Watch Sport

With the price of iDevices rising there's probably a "reasonability" court case brewing where someone argues that a £1200 iPhone X should last longer than 1/2 years.

Edit: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua... says the default statutory warranty should be 2 years. What a mess.

You can DIY. It's really not that bad. I replaced the battery twice on my iPhone 6. The first time took me maybe 40 minutes, the second time went faster since I knew how to do it.

https://www.ifixit.com/Store/iPhone/iPhone-6-Replacement-Bat...

Haven't replaced the battery (yet) but did have to replace the screen on my iPhone 5, it really wasn't that bad all things considered...and by "all things" I mostly mean having to pay something like $120 to Apple.

Battery should be a cake walk.

The <80% is such a junky metric though, as it's by whatever they calculate. Mine was determined to be 83% but the thing lasted till like Noon at the latest with minimal use.

Exactly. I don't trust their testing method at all. My new battery wasn't covered by Applecare because the phone also tested at 82% or 83%. I decided to look around the store at some new Macbooks for about 20 minutes and the phone completely died while still plugged in for testing.

They admitted that was unusual and just gave me a new battery.

What people usually mean (and it used to mean only this) by a "removable"/"replaceable" battery is that you can change the battery entirely by hand in less than a minute, without needing any tools. Until recently, this was possible with just about every other smartphone except Apple's.

Wasn’t the first Samsung flagship to remove the replacement battery the Galaxy S6? It’s no coincidence that it was also the first in a line of Android flagships starting to even attempt to compete with Apple on build quality, which they now do.

Apple says that battery replacements are $79.

https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/battery-power

> Apple encourages people to take their phones into Apple stores/authorized dealers to get the battery replaced.

Not in my experience. Bring your iphone to an apple shop and ask for the battery to be replaced. Apple will most likely refuse unless the battery is shown as severely damaged in the settings.

After having retired a couple of phones due to crappy battery life, my most recent phone purchase has a removable battery. I'll probably buy a new battery in ~4 months, when the phone is a year old. I'm happy I decided to follow that path, because I really like the phone (LG G5), and a replacement battery is less than $20 USD.

I imagine most users would prefer their iphone to stay on for a reasonable period over being super zippy. And like the other commenters said, replacing the battery will fix the problem.

This was the final straw for me to move to Android. My 6S was unusably slow with iOS11. I'd rather this be something _I_ can control.

At the very least, the performance should improve if you plug in the phone, and it doesn't.

Edit: other thing I remember is that when I upgraded iOS10 at one point my battery _stopped_ being reliable. I was getting the unexpected shutdowns at <50%.

Another weird thing I had experienced: after every update, my battery percentage would be totally screwy. I'd burn from 100% -> 1% in no time, then sit at 1% for hours. Over charge cycles, it'd figure it out again, but that'd be reset every time I upgraded.

Edit 2: looks like I angered the fans. This is simply my experience. My geekbench scores were awful, so I was certainly impacted by this issue. I thought I'd done something wrong until this news came out.

Another anecdata:

Last night, I finally succumbed to iOS11 (the only reason I did was that I wanted to enroll in Heart Study, for which your iphone device has to be iOS11).

Indeed I had been pushing it away because I usually associate the word "upgrade" to device death when it comes to mobile devices.

But wow... it did not screw my 6S up. In fact, I think it's faster and 'zippier' with this iOS11 upgrade.

iPhone 7 user here and iOS 11 also made my device much, much faster.

My 6S+ was also literally unusable after the iOS11 update. 5 second hangs on some actions, jittery scrolling.

It improved after a few weeks. Not sure if it was an .x update that fixed it, or maybe it needed time to reindex (?) but it's fine now.

Except that it gets unbearably un-zippy. If battery life really gets so bad that Apple believes it will reflect poorly on their brand, then they could do in-store same day battery replacements. But that would cut into their profits wouldn't it.

You think they don't make money on $80 battery replacements?

Profit on the $80 is much less than profit on a $700+ new phone.

You can replace the batteries at both Apple stores and independent retailers. https://www.cnet.com/how-to/iphone-battery-replacement-diy-o...

The issue IMO, is it's not obvious that the battery needs to be replaced and when. It's not holding charge > new battery is far more obvious than it's slow > new battery. Most people probably prefer a slow phone than one without charge however Apple should have some indication of what's going on.

You really can't though. I had a phone with an awful battery-- it would shut off around 25% randomly. I brought it into Apple 3 times, it even had apple care-- and because the f*ing diagnostic suite identified the battery as good, they wouldn't replace it.

They wouldn't even LET ME PAY FOR THE REPAIR.

> LET ME PAY FOR THE REPAIR.

Then you would know that it is totally their fault and the liability would be on Apple to fix other people's devices.

Same here. I went to a 3rd party place and they replaced it cheaper anyway, with no problems.

Agreed. I've been in 3 times. Every time I want to just pay for the replacement; they won't even offer the battery replacement if the diagnostic utility says the phone is good.

My phone randomly shuts down or rapidly loses battery once it is below 40%. It's even worse when it's cold.

That's exactly what's happening to me as well. I think it shows a battery percentage based on (old) current voltage which dramatically decreases with low temperature, i.e. when you pull your phone from warm pocket in cold weather.

But it's not as cheap or easy as just popping the back of your phone and slipping in a new battery. Mind you, most flagship phones these days can't be refurbished in that way.

Have you tried the nearby "We repair iPhones" store? They can replace your battery for a lot less than a new phone.

> You can replace the batteries at both Apple stores

Or you know, Apple could make it easy for the user to replace the battery by themselves. But they chose not to.

Know how I can tell you haven't designed any consumer products with a battery, replaceable or otherwise?

This is the engineering equivalent of saying, "Why doesn't someone just go to the Middle East, sit down at a round table with with the Israelis and Palestinians and Sunnis and Shiites and rebels and Baathists and Saudis and ISIS members and refugees and all those other guys, and help them work out their differences peacefully?"

Thats besides the point. Is it possible to design phones that can be serviced in some ways by your users? the answer is clearly yes. Does Apple care about that? The answer is clearly no. They have been making designs that can't be easily opened for a long time now.

Let's not pretend that Apple's hand was forced here. This is the company that dreamed up a proprietary screw to keep people out of their phones and computers.

It sounds like you’re describing the pentalobe screw, but security screws have existed for decades. Torx created variants with rejection pins in the 1970s. One-way screws have probably been around much longer than that.

And every single one of those had drivers you could buy in a pack with 50 other at Amazon for $10. They could have used any of them.

And yet, they didn't. The world didn't need yet another security screw.

Wow, Nintendo in the 1980s must have had Godlike powers, then: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=donkey+kong+battery+cover&...

Please don't link to google searches. Everyone sees different results.

Yeah, I'm sure you can build a half-trillion dollar company by selling phones in the same form factor as a Donkey Kong game.

If the market wanted such a thing, then guess what... the market would get it.

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