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Comment by chipperyman573 | Hacker News Reader

I really like Linus' (Sebastian, not Torvalds) thoughts about this: https://youtu.be/TJUeHmdzSx4?t=11m22s

Basically, Apple chose to tune the phones to run at a dangerously high configuration to increase benchmarks, knowing that the battery will degrade like this (and that when the iphone X2 comes out, nobody will be talking about this, instead they'll be talking about how much faster the X2 is than the X).

His exact quote is that "they are running them so close to the red line that surely they must know, when they're shipping these things (Because it's not like LiOn batteries are especially new tech at this point, and Apple has done TONS of research in this field), Apple knows pretty much exactly what's going to happen with this, pretty much perfectly, and they're making the conscious decision to do this"

Before I heard this I thought "Oh come on, Apple truely is protecting your phone here", but after hearing his argument I changed my mind.

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If Apple slowed the phone down upfront then people would complain that Apple were throttling as the user is “too dumb to look after their battery properly” so instead they are doing when they can point to a proven need to throttle the device. This feels like a no win situation for Apple unless they had/will put in “throttle my phone so it doesn’t go weird” switch in settings.

Side note: we’ve known for years that hammering a battery day in day out causes problems, my wife and I have had our 6S phones for the same amount of time - I plug mine in as much as possible (over charging is not a problem anymore) and she runs hers into the red all the time. After 2 years my phone runs fine and, when needed, I get a days charge out of it but she barely gets 4 hours and is noticeably slower. If people looked after their batteries better this would be less of a problem.

On that note, it'd be nice if Apple were more user-friendly about battery cycle counts. I don't think there's a way for me to see battery health without installing an app, and I've never seen a message asking me to replace the battery in my two-year-old iPhone.

If the battery does degrade to the point of needing to be replaced, there is a message in the battery settings page: http://media.idownloadblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/iP...

LiOn is all about loading cycles. In the same amount of time (let's say 5 days) she has used up way more cycles than you did. You probably charged 5 * 20% while she maybe charged 5 * 90%. Obviously she is using up her load cycles much faster than you are. So no surprise her battery isn't very good anymore.

I don't think you two are using the phone equally much (meaning using up the same loading cycles in the 5 days). Like for example, she charging 2 * 90% and you charging 4 * 20% and 1 * 10%.

Do you have a source on lithium ion batteries working this way, because all of the sources I'm finding (and it's not the first time I've researched this) say that shallow cycles dramatically improve battery longevity.

My understanding is that "cycles" are used in discussing battery lifespan for the purposes of warranties and the like because they're an easy-to-define user behavior, not because they actually reflect how the batteries perform.

> shallow cycles dramatically improve battery longevity.

Not necessarily; cycle depth is a big factor, but the interval covered is very important as well. I.e. a few cycles to a high charge end voltage ages cells more quickly than more cycles to a lower charge end voltage. This obviously directly relates to the amount of energy stored. The correlation is approximately exponential: you get somewhere between two to eight times the cycles for lowering charge voltage by 50-100 mV. You very quickly get to zero cycles raising it.

Another factor is cycle length, i.e. cell current, and temperature, as always.

>There’s no need to let it discharge 100% before recharging. Apple lithium-ion batteries work in charge cycles. You complete one charge cycle when you’ve used (discharged) an amount that equals 100% of your battery’s capacity — but not necessarily all from one charge. For instance, you might use 75% of your battery’s capacity one day, then recharge it fully overnight. If you use 25% the next day, you will have discharged a total of 100%, and the two days will add up to one charge cycle. It could take several days to complete a cycle. The capacity of any type of battery will diminish after a certain amount of recharging. With lithium-ion batteries, the capacity diminishes slightly with each complete charge cycle. Apple lithium-ion batteries are designed to hold at least 80% of their original capacity for a high number of charge cycles, which varies depending on the product.

From https://www.apple.com/ca/batteries/why-lithium-ion/

Oh, I think I misunderstood your original comment. You were saying that she charged 90% each time, not charged from 90%. In that case, we're saying the same thing.

Part of what I was talking about was, for example, I believe the Mac system profiler counts a cycle as any change from positive to negative discharge (or at least it did once upon a time), regardless of discharge depth. This gives Apple employees more opportunities to pull up your information and say "nope, sorry, your battery is expected to be dead after this many cycles", and make you feel like it's reasonable that you need to replace the battery.

> This feels like a no win situation for Apple...

If Apple fucked up, why should there be a 'win' situation for them?

The obvious solution would be Apple replacing the batteries for free. Instead Apple won't even let you pay them to replace the battery if it's not in EOL mode — despite throttling starting well before then.

Why should apple replace batteries for free? Do you expect a car company to replace car-batteries or tires for free?

Some components just wear and need to be replaced. Apple just provided a workaround that ensures your device doesn't crash due to the worn out component.

Apple decided to not let the consumer have the choice or ability to swap their own batteries. They've painted themselves into a corner here - and I think they should pay for this, indeed. Its clear that these moves were made solely to maximise profit for Apple, not to protect the consumer and provide them the best-quality experience.

It shouldn’t be hard for Apple to “prove” that there are benefits, outside of maxing profit, to having a sealed battery.

Its also not hard to prove that it was a big mistake and they shouldn't have devolved this feature.

Why do you keep insisting there's a problem with a battery? There's no problem with the battery, it behaves like any other battery in any other phone. The problem is that phone's compute ability stops matching its advertised value soon after purchase.

Because before apple came along, batteries were considered the consumable and were user replaceable. Now apple wants the whole phone to be the consumable. This not good for users nor the planet. Only people who would want a marginally thiner phone in exchange for buying a new one every year and apple's profit margins benefit.

I fail to see why is it relevant to the current issue. Its not like you know 100% that if the battery would be swappable easily, they would suddenly decide to tell you instead of silently slowing the phones down.

Honestly, it feels like people, who have grudge on manufacturers for making non-swappable battery, just need an excuse to bring the swapping topic afloat.

It is also important not to affect any potential lawsuits against Apple by implying, that swapping batteries on affected phones would solve the problem. Because it would not: Apple should also cover damages to people, who had to buy new iPhones after being misguided.

The point is that we wouldn't have a need for these slow-downs if we could just replace the batteries ourselves.

The whole thing is geared to make Apple more money, and consumers stupider.

I understand your point, but now you can see how my fear of talking battery replacements came true. Probably millions of people bought new iPhones this year because they were deceived. Next day after my comment and all the discussions Apple announces they will make replacements cheaper. But those millions are still basically f*cked. And Apple will get away with it because most people complained about replaceability of the battery, while the only real issue is straight up illegal deception. Talking about battery swappability only serves Apple by driving conversation away from it. They will never make battery swappable unless there's a regulation to force it.

They're going to have to suffer some way, before they'll change their attitude. And they've got a few billions of dollars worth of buffer between them, and suffering, so .. you may indeed be right. Lets see.

I disagree this is "straight up illegal deception", in fact, I find the slowing down perfectly rational and a desirable feature. The problem isn't the slowing down, but it is shining light on the irreplaceability, which IMHO is the true crime against the planet. That our legal infrastructures haven't caught up to it is irrelevant, planned obsolescence is a cancer, and if this is the only time people will notice, damn straight I'll use it

It's quite selfish to assume what's OK for you is ok for everyone else in a same situation.

It is, but I don't think I did here. I'm saying it's bad for the planet because of the ecological cost of making an iphone being artificially pinned to that for a battery, in spite of their having very different lifetimes. If people in general thought those lifetimes should be equal, there would be no uproar to this revelation (the slowing down thing).

The fault is Apple decided on our behalf that we spend $1000 to replace the phone instead of spending $100 to replace the battery.

Completely impartial decision. I call that a FRAUD. Apple can call it "caring for me". Either way, Apple made the choice that costs me $900 more than it could/should.

I'll keep using my (jailbroken) devices, and I am looking for the day that this "tweak" will be revered in Cydia, and Apple will never see another $1k from me.

I, for one, am definitely not asking for Apple to give me a free battery. I just do not trust them at this point :)

Can’t you pay them £79 for a new battery whenever you want and they will do the swap for you?

You should expect Apple to freely replace the battery of a phone that may unexpectedly shut down because that's already what Apple said you should expect.

Apple publicly claimed that it affects a limited number of 6s and Apple would replace the battery. That offer is still up today [1]. Then they quietly [2] released an update that applies the 'workaround' to a larger number of devices. That's a fuckup at every level.

[1] https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6s-unexpectedshutdown/

[2] https://twitter.com/jcenters/status/944330221083381761 (Tidbits editor explains)

The obvious solution is that this should have been a user-configurable setting.

Maybe the attitude to run the battery low before charging it comes from NiCd batteries which have the so called memory effect [1].

Could education be the answer? I've never bought an iPhone, do they include a few paragraphs about proper battery care?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_effect

Apple has had a web page about batteries and good maintenance practices [1] for several years now. But most people wouldn't know about it or read it unless they searched for it.

[1]: https://www.apple.com/batteries/

Not quite the issue. Batteries have known charge-loss curves, and they lose capacity in a way that can be predictably engineered for. This is why during the first month or so, they seem to stay on for days barely losing charge, then they seem to keep on about a day or two at general use after that.

So the battery loses down to maybe 90% capacity very quickly, then falls a little more slowly to somewhere around 70% by the next year or so, and will much more slowly lose after that.

But engineers that choose the batteries and design the electronics know this, so they plan the phone around the battery having that 65-85% capacity, never the 100%. That's what I think Apple did knowingly wrong and against good conventions.

Apple designed those iPhones in a way that either prematurely decreased the life and ability of the batteries they chose to power them (evidenced by the shut-offs), or they used inferior batteries that unpredictably or improperly lost the ability to maintain the required draw. That they only issued the scaling patch after shut-offs became an issue tells me that this was an engineering failure, whether by Apple, ATL, or TLB- not user error.

For those interested this is Linus Sebastian (or his last name "Tech Tips"), not Torvalds... As the video was loading I was wondering if Torvalds had started commenting on general tech news.

Well, Linus Torvalds posts at RWT.

I love this hack. It's awesome that a device was made adaptive to its context. Tunable. We can chip our cars to optimize performance. We can even remotely update satellites, probes, rovers to extend their lives. Awesome.

Better would be a "check engine light" when a new battery is needed.

Best would be full transparency. I want coconutBattery functionality on the iOS device. I want the option of running the diagnostic utilities the Genius Bar uses.

This is just sensationalist poorly sourced crap.

> "they are making these devices that it's difficult to replace the battery for..."

No. It's free under AppleCare and a whopping $79 out of warranty, and you can do it via mail.

> "they are running them so close to the redline that they can only handle it for a year"

No source cited for this. There is no indication that iPhones are regularly degrading beyond 80% within or shortly after one year.

> [compares to volkswagen emissions cheat]

Seems reasonable. :-/

It's ironic that this guy invokes the specter of benchmark cheating when Apple actually has been one of the only manufacturers that hasn't engaged in it.[1]

[1] https://www.xda-developers.com/benchmark-cheating-strikes-ba...

Many throttled 6S phones show up as "green" on Apple diagnostic which means that Apple stores will generaly refuse to do the battery swap.

I'm one of the people defending Apple's charge for battery replacement as reasonable, but his point is it's actually a physically difficult thing to do, to replace the battery. It takes real skill to replace a modern iphone battery without ruining it.

> "they are running them so close to the redline that they can only handle it for a year"

As for this, he's citing the fact the iPhone 7 is affected - a phone that came out just over a year ago.

It doesn't really take that much skill. I did it in 15 minutes for the first time with no advance reading/watching. The kits you can buy online come with a full set of tools and instructions.

Counter anecdote: my housemate totally ruined his girlfriends phone trying.

when you have to open up your phone and void your warranty, or bring it to someone "certified" to work on Apple devices and show up for an appointment and pay extra just to replace a battery... when up until this smartphone era, replacing a battery was as simple as removing it from the back of a device and putting in a new one...

It's highly discouraging to replace an iPhone battery. Doesn't matter how much skill it takes. It appears daunting and unapproachable.

The average iPhone user needs a website like iFixIt just to feel confident enough to replace a battery on their own. Go back 10 years and replacing a battery on a device didn't require researching a 20-step guide, a community forum, and special tools.

What does "running them close to the red line" mean? Do iPhone batteries degrade faster than other phones?

Optimizing for speed instead of device survivability. Basically, instead of running at 110% for the first year then throttling to much less so the device doesn't break, they should have shipped them running at 90-100% so they can last longer. (Those numbers are random but the point is still valid)

I don't think that's a fair representation of what's happening though. The reality is that running it at 110% (for whatever that means) is using a new battery at its maximum discharge rate. As the battery ages, its maximum discharge rate decreases, and would have whether run at 110% or 90%. You need to go way out of spec to prematurely age batteries by discharging too fast. They age mostly by being exposed to high temperatures, stored fully charged, and by being fully discharged (partial charge cycles are better). Artificially limiting performance to the post-degradation level can be seen as wasteful, can it not?

Now the way Apple handled it, silently, throttling performance without a configuration option is interesting. I think the benchmarks may not be truly representative of what is happening, and it's probably closer to a TDP limit on the CPU where it runs real fast until it realizes it can't then it ... doesn't. That comes across as maximally efficient in real life but slow in benchmarks.

This is all in the marketing. Either you can look at it as "iPhone find a way to squeeze every last bit of battery life out of both new and old devices" or you can look at it as "my phone slows down over time" -- the reality of the chemistry of lithium ion devices.

IMO this should be handled with a configuration switch and a notification when performance starts to become limited, though how many would be totally confused by this? That hundreds of millions of users took years to notice should be an indication this whole thing worked pretty well IMO.

> That hundreds of millions of users took years to notice should be an indication this whole thing worked pretty well IMO.

People absolutely have been noticing, this has been a very popular and long running issue. It took years for Apple to admit it, not for people to notice.

I think this could have been better handled by throttling according to the actual condition of the battery, rather than controlling it via software updates. The former seems reasonable, the latter is pretty shady. (Maybe this is actually what is happening and the press has confused what is going on.)

They are throttling it according to battery's condition (but actual throttling apparatus was added via an update). If you replace old battery with a new one, phone starts running at full speed again.

> People absolutely have been noticing, this has been a very popular and long running issue. It took years for Apple to admit it, not for people to notice.

The behavior in question was introduced in 10.2.1 which was first released in Feb 2017.

So no, it was not a conspiracy going on for years. The annual slowdown was just poor unoptimized software. Occam's razor.

Hmm, just a bit skeptical about that. I'm pretty sure that peak "110%" usage rarely happens throughout the day; Maybe during video playback or gaming.

This is especially true since the iPhone 7, with its two low power cores who's entire purpose is to extend battery life.

IIUC the low power cores could be configured to both extend short-term battery life (daily cycles), and decrease long-term battery life.

The uproar is strictly re: long-term battery life.

It's like overclocking your CPU very close to the limits of your cooling ability. You will get great benchmark scores, but your CPU will also last a lot less as well (though with CPUs it doesn't matter if they now run for 20 years or 32 years, but if you push it a lot more you might damage it. But hey, at least you got great benchmark points).

Wouldn't you also get more hardware errors, causing e.g. sudden kernel panics and stuff like that? And wouldn't that damage the brand more than the speed improvement is worth?

Yeah. One could argue that if you are getting hardware errors you are already at the red line (and not just close to it).

Regarding damage: It depends what your goal is. Some people want to get as much performance out of the CPU as possible since they maybe upgrade after a year or two anyway. Some people even try to set records by using crazy cooling systems.

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