A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance | Hacker News Reader

A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

apple.com

1,176 pointsjayachdee832 comments

I think this is a good response, and I think a lot of the outrage over this issue is overblown. At the end of the day there's a fundamental tradeoff that Apple needs to make on behalf of their customers: performance or stability. They chose stability, and I think they have a convincing argument as to why: "It should go without saying that we think sudden, unexpected shutdowns are unacceptable. We don’t want any of our users to lose a call, miss taking a picture or have any other part of their iPhone experience interrupted if we can avoid it."

I have two concerns:

1) They still haven't fully eliminated the sudden shutdown behavior. My old 5S would shut down randomly under 20% without warning. Sometimes it would make it all the way to 1-2%, but most of the time it was between 5-15%. You'd think they'd scale performance throttling untilt this wasn't an issue.

2) I think their messaging with respect to battery health and the battery being a consumable is pretty poor. As far as I can tell there's no built-in battery health indicator in iOS. Sure there are those dodgy "Super Battery Health Plus Pro" apps, but it seems like a diagnostic menu in settings would go a long way. Even more puzzling is that techs at the Apple Store have access to some sort of diagnostic that does this already. Last time I went to get another issue fixed the guy said that my battery was at 70% capacity and the voltage was pretty low. Why wait until '2018' to ship a self-serve version of this?

The outrage doesn't seem overblown to me. For years I knew that my iphones were becoming obsolete not entirely from the passage of time but instead from upgrading the OS. Apple insisted they were not slowing down devices. Now they claim that they started this in iOS 10.2, without notification.

My experience has been that upgrading the OS results in degraded performance 100% of the time. Whether intentional or not Apple would not acknowledge the issue. The phone shutting down at X% charge has always started after an OS upgrade.

What people are missing here is that while Apple now confess that they did slowdown the iPhone 6 and 6s when they released the 7, they are not saying anything about earlier models.

They are however lowering the price to exchange batteries even for older models. Why would they do that if they where not affected? Why don't they say this practice started with the IOS 10 update? They just say they did it in the 10 update. For me it's obvious this is just a PR "puff piece" and looks like a majority here is buying it... So well played Apple.

> For years I knew that my iphones were becoming obsolete

The clock down feature is new so your past experiences are very likely unrelated.

Does this include running the new OS after a factory reset?

I find that even on Android, you drop some performance after a full system upgrade and it doesn't come back until a full reset is performed with the new OS.

It's stupid that this is required, but that can be explained as a technical problem rather than planned obsolescence.

On top of that, there's the variable of increased system resources to consider, which will account for some of it, and is a no-win scenario from the manufacturer standpoint no matter what they choose.

Battery performance is just one of the ways your phone becomes useless. Apple is notorious for pushing iOS updates that basically make a phone useless.

Apple has been trying to trick me into upgrading to iOS 11 which will make my phone useless junk.

>>My experience has been that upgrading the OS results in degraded performance 100% of the time.

Well yeah, since more features mean slower performance.

I saw a noticeable performance decrease when I went from Windows 7 to Windows 8. That doesn't mean Microsoft started throttling the CPU.

That has been my experience as well.

Perhaps with each upgrade, Apple can let us know how much of a performance hit we will be taking.

That way I can weigh the benefit of the new/improved features of the new OS vs the performance penalty.

> My experience has been that upgrading the OS results in degraded performance 100% of the time.

I have the same experience on Android. Of course I rarely received OS updates, but even that's better than Google making the device practically unusable.

Be it a marketing ploy, a conscious decision trying to protect me, or just a mistake, I don't care. It's bad.

> My old 5S would shut down randomly under 20% without warning. Sometimes it would make it all the way to 1-2%, but most of the time it was between 5-15%.

"avoid unexpected shutdowns on iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, and iPhone SE[...]we recently extended the same support for iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus"

They did not apply the change to the 5S.

The change definitely didn’t fully solve the problem in the effected models either. (Can’t comment on if it was partially effective.) Recently had a sudden shutdown from 50%->0% on a 6S.

It’s a decent response by Apple, although would have been better if they didn’t require a scandal to reduce their absurd markup on batteries.

I had the same issue with the 5S I'm typing on now, and replacing the battery a few months ago entirely solved that issue for me.

My iPhone 6 was snappy, then ios 11 came along and now it's not. Also, it's not the battery - I smashed the screen and they replaced the phone in April. It's just classic Apple: programming for the latest CPUs and damn the rest. As an example, siri used to load instantly when I held down the home button, on ios 11 it takes 5 seconds.

Siri buffers your speech as soon as you hit the button or say, “Hey Siri.” You don’t need to wait for the screen to load.

Apple if you're reading this: let us downgrade to iOS 10 please.

I don't think Apple ever applied throttling to devices prior to the iPhone 6. As you say, old 5Ses would shutdown at 20% (or lower), but it was with the iPhone 6 and later where devices would occasionally stop at 50%, so became a much bigger issue. Presumably this was due to the A8 CPU having a wider-range of power consumption (this is a guess, if anyone actually knows why I would be interested to know).

For point 2, there is Coconut Battery on MacOS. This is telling me my old iPhone 6 has 90% capacity after 400 odd cycles, which is probably par for the course, but I have no idea if that's bad enough for the performance throttling to kick in or not. Hopefully the new screen is going to be detailed enough to say how much throttling has been applied.

I think the outrage is justified, for one particular reason: none of this would have happened if Apple hadn't devolved the feature: user-replaceable batteries.

It is Apples' arrogance that painted them into this corner, and nothing less.

Incorrect

I had the same problem with a user-replaceable phone battery

It took me a while to realize it was the battery to blame. Yes, replacing it was easier, but you need to identify the problem first

It still sounds like a false dilemma to me. I've never had reboots on my Android phones because of battery problems.

Maybe Apple just needs to buy better quality batteries? And perhaps higher capacity that are also capable of more charges before they lose too much of their original capacity?

Upthread at the moment there is a Samsung owner who does have shutdowns from battery problems.

Part of it has to do with how the battery has been treated. Wild swings in charge daily cause damage. Hot temperatures cause damage. I'd guess most iPhone owners have little to no damage. But for those who do, slowing the phone and giving a warning is a good alternative to shutting down.

I had plenty of reboot, freezes and boot-cycles on my not even 1 and half year old nexus 5. Maybe you just use your phone to do an odd call or two if you never experienced anything strange?

Do you live somewhere cold? My old devices are perfectly fine indoors but if I step outside in the winter they shut off in a few minutes

I've had my HP laptop running Windows (one of the best models a few years ago) shutdown randomly because of an aged battery. Replacing the battery made it usable again. I don't believe this is an Apple-only issue or even a smartphone-only issue. If it hasn't happened to someone, it may be due to many other factors at play.

The parent post actually mentions this happening on the 5S, a phone which did not get a software update choosing stability over performance. The 6 can slow down and run with a 20% battery while the 5S runs fast and must shut down due to the voltage drop.

https://plus.google.com/+YgorCortes/posts/CZ2GhoxgHk3

I disagree, I think this was a terrible response. They start with the following:

"First and foremost, we have never — and would never — do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades"

... and then proceed to explain why that's exactly what they did. Also, I have no reason to believe getting a new battery will fix my iPhone, especially after they lied so blatantly about planned obsolescence.

> ... and then proceed to explain why that's exactly what they did.

Well they didn't, because "[...] to drive customer upgrades" is the key part they state they are not doing.

> lied so blatantly about planned obsolescence.

Again, they didn't, they aren't admitting to 'planned obsolescence', only attempting to prevent shutdowns.

> I think this is a good response, and I think a lot of the outrage over this issue is overblown

No it is not, unless you don't own iPhone 6(S) OR haven't updated iOS.

I don't know any good reason for them not to make ast2 and the battery health check available directly, other than to promote sales and additional door swings at their retail locations.

I've always hated how opaque iOS is; Android allows wayyyy more insight into data/battery stats, and most Android phones (unless carrier locks them down) allow the user to dial a #code to test most features.

Hopefully, Apple will change their tune going forward.

You can get some of the battery stats via the (Mac) app coconutBattery: http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/

There are iOS apps to check the battery stats on an iDevice. Example: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/battery-life-check-runtimes/...

(I have no affiliation with the app, just a satisfied user)

I agree it's a good response, both marketing wise (the compensation in the form of cheaper upgrade) and technically (the improved health visibility).

Regarding your concerns:

1) The software update that improved the power management was released for iPhone 6 and later only according to the article.

2) They state "Early in 2018". I think this is a pretty conservative, yet realistic estimate, considering they don't want to risk the user experience.

"Early in 2018" might mean beginning of January, because 2017 seems unrealistic for a feature like that, especially since today is the last working day for this year.

My wife’s 6+ was incredibly slow after the iOS upgrade.

My 6+ drained the battery incredibly quickly. I was told that upgrading the iOS would fix that problem [0]; it didn’t. Instead it slowed my phone to the point of being unusable.

If I’d have known replacing the battery would have fixed both of them, I’d have done that. Instead, I stupidly bought two new, very expensive phones. Since we were already locked into the Apple ecosystem (with paid apps and media), we bought iPhones.

This does nothing to compensate or win back the trust of customers like me.

[0] https://i.imgur.com/OYZr7zd.png

And, cynically, they don't care as much as they should about this lost trust, because:

> Since we were already locked into the Apple ecosystem (with paid apps and media), we bought iPhones.

I feel that iPhone vs Android is the current Holy War [1], and it's just as contentious as Mac vs PC, Windows vs Linux or even vim vs emacs. (PC, Linux and vim, of course!)

1: http://catb.org/jargon/html/H/holy-wars.html

> This does nothing to compensate or win back the trust of customers like me.

What is it that you want Apple to do to make you personally feel better?

This is the first real argument I've heard on this. Everything else has been noise about apple slowing phones to rip people off.

Thank you very much for sharing your experience.

To be fair, they said iOS upgrade may help fix the problem, and I agree that they were probably just saying "update so I can check that off my list of things to recommend."

The battery issue is unrelated to your slowdowns if you were experiencing them constantly. Lost in all the media reports is that the throttling only happens at peak system power demand. My 6s Plus also was constantly slow until last week, when I backed it up, wiped it, and restored. Now it's as fast as ever, on the latest iOS.

We take the underlying computer for granted, but apparently the iPhone can benefit from a clean install to clean out always-running rogue processes.

I had a very similar experience with my 6+ but instead of buying iPhone I finally jumped ship and bought Essential Phone (Android). (I also changed my Apple Watch 1 to Nokia Steel HR as a result of ecosystem change)

If only I knew that replacing battery would make my 6+ usable again I would remain iPhone user.

> Since we were already locked into the Apple ecosystem

How is that a thing? Media - you should be able to move. And how much do the apps that you actually use cost? You could apparently afford 2 new Apple phones... you can't be truly locked in

I traded my 6 in early but I put the blame of slowness on the iOS upgrades reasoning that each version added more bloat. I do enjoy my 8s and don't regret the upgrade. I only annoyed at most that Apple didn't fully disclose the issue and perhaps the performance hit they chose was a bit over the top

> This does nothing to compensate or win back the trust of customers like me

You simply behaved exactly the way that Apple predicted you would (preferring to spend money over the inconvenience of migrating your data to Android).

What does "locked in the Apple ecosystem" imply? Apps that don't have a satisfactory equivalent on Android, integration between Apple devices or general usability/user experience?

Well, can you return the two new phones?

You might not have trust but yet you have 2 new iPhones.

You realize you are locked-in into a proprietary ecosystem. Clearly, that is bad for you and customer-unfriendly. But I wonder why you don't take action, and get alternatives that don't lock you in. Is this an example of the sunken cost fallacy?

My guess is that iOS 11 is much more to blame for slowdown that users are experiencing, myself included. Unfortunately, that is unlikely to be resolved -- even if I replace my battery for $30, my iPhone 6 will still be worse than it was in August.

> Apple is reducing the price of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement by $50 — from $79 to $29...

> Early in 2018, we will issue an iOS software update with new features that give users more visibility into the health of their iPhone’s battery, so they can see for themselves if its condition is affecting performance.

There we go.

It took too much trouble and too long for it to happen, but Apple is stepping up and doing the right thing.

Actually, the cost of battery replacement is now excellent. If they hadn't screwed this up by not communicating what was going on, I think they could have easily justified $49 - $59.

So I take the drop to $29 as a tangible apology, which I appreciate. (Well, personally, I've already replaced my battery using a $25 kit from Amazon, but obviously that's not viable for the great majority of iPhone owners.)

This isn't the first time this has happened to Apple. They use to not sell replacement batteries for the original iPods, and when people called in to complain, they were often told to buy an entire new iPod. This was settled in a lawsuit:

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/apples-ip...

Another important note is this battery replacement cost only cover the iPhone6 and up. That's only the 2015 release. That's still lubricious. If we had devices as powerful as today's cellphones that cost $500+ in the early-90s, losing support after 2~3 years would be lubricious.

In 2012 I remember seeing someone with the first generation iPhone EDGE (pre-3G). That's right; the thing was like 6? 7 years old? He really only used it on Wi-Fi. EDGE data was painful, but it was still his primary/only phone for another year.

The throwaway economy saddens me, and this move doesn't really do enough to prevent the continuing pileup of e-waste being shipped on boats to China and Africa.

Agreed. It’s also a waste of human labor to throw away devices when they could still be made useful with some simple repairs. To go further, it is wasteful to design hardware to be disposable rather than repairable and reusable.

People with jobs I wouldn’t want to do work very hard to bring us these devices, and the earth gives up resources to mine, transport, and shape the materials. Throwing things away when they could last 5-10x as long consumes our precious resources and wastes our collective capital.

Finally I’ll say that a lack of open software support contributes to this. If I could flash alpine linux on an old iPhone, Nexus, or Samsung, I could find great uses for the old hardware. Such a project is now underway (Alpine linux for Mobile), but mobile devices are still a morass of unpatchable secret binaries with glaring security holes.

I know we can better use our resources than to throw a two or three year old flagship phone in the trash or let it waste away in an old drawer, but it will take us demanding more of manufacturers and calling them out for their waste before they take action on it.

I think you mean ludicrous instead of lubricious, just fyi.

I'm still using my 2009 Nexus One. It is painfully slow, and won't run any modern apps, and I've tried to find a suitable replacement several times but it seems a shame to throw away a perfectly good phone and I just haven't found anything that is of comparable size and build quality without having to sacrifice screen resolution, FM radio, removable battery or microSD slot.

The update that ‘caused’ this issue only did so for the iPhone 6 and up so a replacement wouldn’t be necessary for older models.

Also, if you must keep using these old phones when they are no longer supported and have known and unpatched vulnerabilities, please be a good citizen and keep them off of our internet.

There's a huge second hand market for iPhones so I'm guessing the majority of devices get trade/sold or at least held onto as spares until they are no longer viable.

The iPhone 6 was released September 9, 2014, which is about 3.3 years ago.

Even back when batteries were easily replaced, I don’t think that stopped people from getting new phones every couple years.

I still have a perfectly useable Android with a replaceable battery.

People still upgraded right past it to built in batteries.

My concern is that is some lawmakers get their way; this is not just a US concern but there is an interesting lawsuit in France pending; we could end up never owning devices.

As in, if the mandated lifetime exceeds what is efficiently manufactured one direction they could go is the phone is never owned by the consumer. Its a lease.

Option number two is simply higher prices with replacement costs built into the sale price but not disclosed as the reason for the elevated cost.

Option three, We could end up having devices with reduced battery time so they can use the space in a managed manner to give similar run time over the course of the mandated lifespan. Initially they could increase battery size which normally would give more time but instead limit how much per charge you get to use. (example, my car has 18kw but only 14.2 is usable per run)

Hahaha "lubricous" - what a fantastic typo!

The first generation iPhone was released in 2007 so the device you're talking about would have been at most 5 years old at the time. Nevertheless that's still considered extremely old for a modern device.

(For reference, my current device is a 4 year old iPhone 5S because I like the form factor, and it still does what I need. It's just about getting to the point where I'd like to upgrade it, but that's mainly because I keep running out of storage space.)

> The throwaway economy

Apple is thinking about this, see the Liam[0] robot that takes an iPhone down to constituent parts, and consider that the aluminum, steel, and glass are all quick turnaround raw materials.

It's a start.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYshVbcEmUc

Still got my iPhone 3G and it’s suprisingly fast with iOS 4. Had to downgrade though to get back some performance

You act as if there is no method to replace batteries for the previous generations of iPhone.

What about those of us that already paid to have the battery replaced? I was having the automatic shut down issue and Apple was telling me the battery was just fine. Since they refused to warrantee the battery I just ended up paying for another battery.

This was before the issue was really well-known. They were acting as if I was making it up. But yeah, anytime the phone was below 50% battery life I was in danger of having the phone immediately turn off. In my line of work this is not acceptable. Above anything else I need a working reliable phone.

> What about those of us that already paid to have the battery replaced?

Devil’s advocate: one doesn’t complain if they buy something the day before it goes on sale at a store. It’s just bad luck.

If you had it replaced in an Apple Store I'm guessing they'll make it right for you. Call the store and tell the automated system you want to speak to a manager. It'll get you to a real person and given the PR around this issue I'd be surprised if they didn't give you something of at least this much value.

What about the people who bought new phones because of performance issues?

Your issue wasn't because of a faulty battery though, it was normal battery degradation. You would have had to pay for a new battery in any case. If it was less than a month ago you might want to try to press them to refund the difference, but otherwise you did get a tangible benefit from the new battery in the time since you replaced it, so there's a cost for that.

Go to Apple and ask them to refund the difference. If you got it replaced at an Apple store, they'll have it all logged and will do this if it matches the issue being described.

> It took too much trouble and too long for it to happen, but Apple is stepping up and doing the right thing.

Because they were hit by lawsuits.

Do not expect that this is a sudden understanding of customers' needs by Apple. They knew perfectly well what they were doing and made the choice to hide this feature. They would not have changed it without these lawsuits.

> So I take the drop to $29 as a tangible apology

I take it as an admission of guilt that they were overcharging consumers 50$ of pure margin for this.

> It took too much trouble and too long for it to happen, but Apple is stepping up and doing the right thing.

The right thing would have been for Apple to either stop this behaviour or give users the option (retain performance or retain battery life). They're doing neither.

I disagree. I think they're doing the right thing here.

Most users shouldn't need to manage their battery performance actively at all. What's next? Users should manage their own RAM usage? Absolutely not.

They're giving away batteries for free, and giving users more visibility into the health of their battery in an upcoming update. That's the right thing.

Ah, so you prefer your phone just shutting down unexpectedly when you open your picture-taking app, update the public transportation app to buy a ticket because they updated the server, or exit the metro into the freezing cold of winter? Right.

Not an Apple customer (never was, probably never will), I use a Samsung Android, and I wish my phone were doing that performance limitation thing, because I do feel the issues caused by unexpected shutdowns on a daily basis. I constantly carry an extra battery to be able to reboot my phone when that happens.

So the right thing is to have phones crash as the battery age?

This is not a question about battery life in terms of how many hours the phone can run. This is a question about the phones ability to draw high amounts of power for short intervals.

I don't think Apple would ever introduce a switch that could allow the phone to randomly power down.

Correction, it's "retain performance and experience random shutdowns or, reduce performance and avoid random shutdowns". You can't choose performance 100% of the time without compromise on battery power. That goes for literally any device.

After they figured out that it's a current draw issue with old batteries that caused it, they would _never_ give you a checkbox option to allow unexpected shutdowns.

How long ago did you updated your kit from Amazon? I did days of research and did not come up with any seller with genuine quality batteries. Since two mildly exploded and one bloated to triple the size destroying the phone (mostly the case), I would be careful putting Amazon $25 batteries kit into expensive phone.

Isn't this a time-limited offer? I understood it was valid for a year only.

>So I take the drop to $29 as a tangible apology, which I appreciate. (Well, personally, I've already replaced my battery using a $25 kit from Amazon, but obviously that's not viable for the great majority of iPhone owners.)

Seems pretty cheap from the worlds richest company considering it's a $5 battery in question that takes minutes to replace. Why could they not offer full RMA service?

That's great. But they charged me over $100 to get mine replaced some months ago.

I'd like to see them and everyone else reintroduce removable batteries. If you're "in the field" all day, it's very convenient to have a second battery to swap out and those external battery powered chargers can be just as inconvenient as being tethered to an outlet.

Considering how much a new iPhone costs and the obscene margins they get from selling these devices, Apple could just do the courtesy of replacing the battery for free a couple of times per device and would still have a decent margin.

Why not just SEE but choose what level of performance I want, based on the "conserve battery" setting. Just put it in the control center for swiping!

I’ve replaced things on my iPhones before, the only issue after that was dust ingress on camera lens.

How does your kit ensures it?

Except the battery is not the problem, everybody's problem started when we updated to the last iOS version. This is just bullshit and misdirection to make people spend even more money to replace something that already worked.

The real question to me is what else do consumers don't know about the products they are buying from Apple, Amazon and other big companies. Look at the great length we have to go to make sure there was no foul play.

Why can't they just state something like...

if battery total capacity < x % then set max CPU clock speed = x Ghz?

Or whatever KPIs they use like battery wear level.

The current release doesn't say anything more than what was previously known.

The main reason i moved away from iPhone was terrible battery life and phones obviously slowing just as the new models came out. Doubt I'll go back. Haven't missed them at all tbh.

A late apology, but they do save the brand from further damaging and retain my trust a little bit. For one, I accept their bribe as a customer.

>So I take the drop to $29 as a tangible apology

It's more like a middle finger to all the independent smartphone repair shops that have been replacing screens, batteries, speakers, LCDs, and cameras for years.

Apple has the resources to subsidize the cost of shipping and labor for battery replacements thus undercutting the Mom & Pop repair shop by a wide margin.

  So I take the drop to $29 as a tangible apology

I take it as public relations and crisis management wrapped in a minor loss-leader. Plus, it automatically boosts store traffic to capture sales/upgrades that wouldn't have happened yet otherwise.

Nothing truly unexpected.

Just one more shinny, almost perfect PR reaction... after the fact actually facts which "just incidentally?" helped the sales of newer/replacement products?

That does neither give money back to ppl. who actually replaced their phones for big bucks "because it was slow" nor undoes the unnecessary waste, tactics like this produce, in which waste I guess the Management-Team of the company would not like their children to play in.

We know, we know totally unintended... "the corporation" says after being caught. U It's simple: gauge your internal enterprise tendencies towards the right-thing-to-do-by-default (in some countries by-the-law btw) or pay up big time.

It's new kind of mass-market tech news too; vw and other car makers, now apple, many more to come:

very nasty tricks we benefit(ed) from and got caught doing.

> but Apple is stepping up and doing the right thing.

Nope. I don't want "visibility into battery health". I want a damn toggle to undo this stupidity. This is just a cash grab plain and simple.

> So I take the drop to $29 as a tangible apology, which I appreciate.

The physical battery costs Apple about $5 to make (https://technology.ihs.com/api/binary/595761), and probably no more than $5-$10 to ship and install. They're profiting off of their own screw-up and spinning it as a kindness.

>but Apple is stepping up and doing the right thing...

People are letting them off the hook too easily. I don't believe having even a perceived legitimate reason to slow down the phones explains why they didn't own up to it earlier. In fact, seems all the more reason they should have explained it, especially given the rumors that have swirled for so long.

In short, they certainly benefitted from the upgrades encouraged by the slowed phones, and it conspicuously complements their philosophy of releasing incremental upgrades to customers, which means they were certainly motivated to provide that extra nudge. I have trouble believing that's all coincidence.

They've had it their way on the front-end and profited handsomely. Now, on the backend, they are dictating the terms of their own penance. Pretty sweet deal for Apple.

> A chemically aged battery also becomes less capable of delivering peak energy loads, especially in a low state of charge, which may result in a device unexpectedly shutting itself down in some situations.

I think the people in the Silicon Valley need to take a step back and understand that people in the rest of the world don't change phone every year. If a phone become unusable because of its battery (according to them) during the expected lifetime of the device then batteries need to be easily replacable.

Easy replacement of batteries is a problem only if you don't have an Apple store or Apple authorized service center nearby (which could be the case for many people across many countries). The batteries have been replaceable for a fee by Apple or an Apple authorized service provider.

We have very different ideas of "easy". My phone died last night after a day of heavy use, so I pulled the battery out and swapped it with the spare one in its wall charger ($14 for both, shipped) and I was back at 100%.

That’s not actually true. That’s androids Demo, not apples.

There are tons of people who buy used Apple hardware because they can't afford to buy it new. If anything, Apple hardware is probably used for longer than Android phones. People who want a cheap Android phone will just buy a new low-end phone instead of a used flagship phone. People who want a cheap iPhone have to buy a used phone because there are no low-end Apple phones.

I'm really infuriated about this. Since mid-2016, my iPhone 6 Plus started to act "weird". It'd shut down sporadically, would reach 40% and then suddenly deplete, and started to get slow. But the problems were not consistent. I went to the Apple Store, and the phone passed all their diagnosis checks, even the battery.

A few months later, after my AppleCare+ expired, the problems intensified. And I spent most of 2017 with a very slow and unreliable phone. I honestly thought it was iOS 10. Had I known it was the battery, I'd have paid to replace it. Or I'd have forced them to upgrade it for me for free when I had AppleCare+.

I upgraded to an iPhone X, thinking the 6 Plus had reached its EOL, but now I think I've been lied to!

Your issue isn't this "scandal" though. This is about preventing sporadic shutdowns by throttling, so if your phone was shutting down it was an undiagnosed bad battery, which is a legit complaint.

Same here i had a iPhone 6s and i had exactly the same problems you described.

1) Drop from 30% to 5% in some minutes. iOS 10.x fixed this issue.

2) Now with iOS 11 the battery does even last a day and the phone was extremely slow.

Sure i had issues in the past after 2 years with my Nexus 5 and Galaxy Nexus but both were kind of mid range price ~400 Euros.

But with a high end phone that cost 800 Euros I would expect better quality and also better costumer support.

This xmas i just got myself a ~350 Euros Android and i'm much more happy. After 2 years if the phone has battery issues or whatever i will not be so furious has i am now.

I've been recently moving away from Apple mainly due to Quality / Price ratio. I have a 2012 iMac which is basically useless except from Browsing on the Web. Other companies like Google, Amazon etc... ship good quality devices for much cheaper price. So for me i'm not thinking in buying anything else from Apple.

For 6s, the shutdown probably has to do with the faulty battery. But maybe there was a batch bad for 6+ as well.

https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6s-unexpectedshutdown/

Not sure if they checked when the battery was manufactured. But now given $29 I guess no longer relevant...

Were you on a version of iOS 10 before 10.2.1?

Just going to throw this one out there.

I swapped from an Nexus 5 to an iPhone 6+. I bought the iPhone 1.5yrs second hand to get a significant amount off its price. It is dented significantly on the back, but still serves me like a new phone apart from a noticed slow-down.

On the other hand, the Nexus randomly started shutting off and the battery only lasted half a day after charging every day for the following 2 years.

The phones are now effectively the same age and Apples fix has prolonged the apparent age of my phone, I guess (thanks).

But I think people are being harsher because Apple products have longer expected life but use the same battery technology. This isn’t really fair, is it?

Ftn. I have designed and manufactured 3 battery assemblies for electric vehicles in a racing context.

Same here. I bought Nexus 4 back in the day (February 2013). Couple of months later, I've got iPhone 5 from my company. Google's support for Nexus didn't lasted a year, if I remember correctly. I switched it on Cyanogen and gave it to my daughter, and the phone had constant issues with overheating (she was much more gamer than I) and finally the screen stopped recognizing touches at the top, so the drawer was impossible to open.

In the meantime, iPhone 5 went first to my wife, then to my daughter and finally to my younger daughter. It was supported until the last release of the OS, it's still in use, just got batter replacement a year ago. I'm not happy with Apple behavior lately, but they need to screw up something much, much bigger to make me think to switch to something made by Samsung or Google.

Your sample size is too small. You may have gotten a lemon phone. I don't know what point you are trying to make based on your personal experience with 1 nexus phone. I have personally never experienced what you are talking about.

Reducing the battery replacement by $50 is a great move. While I think this is a completely manufactured scandal, this will definitely take away the last argument people have against them.

I'm sure some people will still hate them for something, though.

How is this a "completely manufactured scandal"?

Tens of millions of old iPhone users were left in the dark why all of a sudden the phone was slowing down to the point where it was becoming unusable. Millions of people probably spent hundreds of dollars otherwise they wouldn't need to spend if they know this was something they can fix with a new battery.

I personally have been using iPhone 6 for 3 years until this CPU-Battery disaster struck. So I ended up buying an Android phone. I love my Android phone now, but it's still money I wouldn't have had to spend.

This is a huge scandal. I like the response by Apple, but it's too late and millions of people already spent money they could've avoided spending. Good bye iPhone. I won't be coming back.

I don't think it's a completely manufactured scandal, although most of the reporting was deceptive (as is, I'm starting to suspect, most reporting, full stop).

I think the non-manufactured part of the scandal is having your phone throttle itself w/o telling you it's doing that is pretty annoying.

You're left wondering, is my phone running slower or is my mind playing tricks on me?

I think Apple's response here is great.

I could not care less about which company did this, it could have just as easily been Samsung, LG, <put your favorite brand here>

BUT, what I do very much care about is that the company who did this does not get away with it without losing some feathers, because they did intentionally hide something from the user that did affect them quite noticeably and if they would not have been called out could have had even more serious effects in the long run.

Imagine the following scenario. The battery of your phone is happily degrading and the manufacturer of your phone puts in some serious effort to develop a strategy so you as the user don't notice it. You keep using your phone thinking everything is fine, all the while your battery keeps degrading faster and faster. Then some day you actually need the power (in terms of processing power and in terms of stored energy) because, let's say you are taking a longer high quality video of a wedding. But since your phone is now running on full throttle your battery keeps discharging uncharacteristically fast because it is already in a bad state, or the software can't keep up with the data compression and has to start dropping frames and the video of the event you wanted to keep in good memory now looks awful.

Sure, this is only a very benign scenario but it still illustrates that the manufacturer should not try to hide such important information from the user. And as I have mentioned in another thread, no one can tell me that not a single Apple engineer during this whole process has stepped up and said "Hey maybe it's also a good idea to tell the user that we are throttling the whole system so it may live a few months longer"

Personally I think this is great news. I like my 6s. I like my headphone port. I don't do anything CPU intensive on the phone. As long as security updates continue to be issued, I don't see a need to upgrade.

I got lucky and wasn't affected by the battery shutdown issue even though my serial # was eligible for a free battery replacement, so I was able to put off the free battery replacement for a couple years and get a new one free. In another 2 years I'll probably swap it again for 25 bucks :D

I like this comment referring to someone else's (Linus Sebastian of Linus Tech Tips) opinion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16013565

How is it "completely manufactured"? Apple programmed (and hid) the slowdown because it knows the batteries it is shipping with its phones won't last more than a year. Linus compared it to a car performing worse after 1 year of usage..

Props to Apple for doing the right thing. Sad that it took a manufactured scandal for iOS to provide elementary transparency into the behavior of known-to-degrade battery component.

If you're ready to dismiss other people's complaint because you don't have one fuck you

If this is an issue that affects every iPhone say past 2 years (although I think I've heard reports of the issue affecting much newer iPhones), then wouldn't a much better solution (for the future) be to make iPhones with user-replaceable batteries? Why do people have to come in to the Apple Store to replace their batteries? Is Apple just counting on the fact that not too many will take them up on it?

To be fair that is a pretty decent response. The reality is batteries do degrade over time and they have to manage that. They should have been transparent about what they were doing and I'm not sure giving the user control over it is all that sensible.

Are there any battery experts who can chime in with their opinion on this?

I'm not a battery expert, but it needs to be pointed out that other smartphone manufacturers do not have this problem. It was Apple specific - it's not as if every device with a lithium battery shuts off at 40%. So it still feels like they're doing it to mitigate a fault with the device, and should've been more transparent about that in the first place.

As posted above, Android phones do show this behavior, too. However, and I'm no battery expert, I think that Apple was running the CPU incredibly close to the red line and draining the batter faster than necessary. They already have the fastest phone CPU by quite a large margin, they could probably run it at a lower frequency that the batteries can better match, leading to slower degrading.

One thing that Apple hasn't addressed is if the Geekbench results [1] over-represents or exaggerates the the throttling effect. Since Geekbench pushes the iPhone to its limits for the duration of the benchmark, iOS needs to throttle performance to prevent shutdown while being tested. This results in lower-than-expected test scores every time. But how much does this map to real-life, visible performance drop?

Edit: Another question I have is how do other devices handle battery degradation? Do Android phones just let devices shutdown unexpectedly or is there also performance throttling? Or is the problem non-existent on non-Apple devices somehow?

[1] https://www.geekbench.com/blog/2017/12/iphone-performance-an...

The problem isn't very prevalent in Android devices, because they have more "voltage headroom". The chipsets are not pushed to the limits / the red line, so battery degradation won't result in performance drops or sudden shutdowns.

Sudden shutdowns do still occur for some devices, but it is nowhere as iPhone devices pre-throttling. It's also something that didn't affect previous iPhones before the 6, because those devices did not have a very thin redline.

I still think Apple should sue some publications for defamation for the manifestly bad reporting about this story [1]. Here's John Siracusa about it [2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15995018

[2] https://overcast.fm/+CdQP59ws/56:00

Unfortunately, this is just how Apple is treated by much of the industry. People love to hate Apple, so there will always be: "Fingerprint Scanner: how Apple is stealing your identity and eroding your privacy", "Thin phones: how your phone will break in half", "WiFi On/Off: Apple & NSA tracking you even when you think your WiFi is off" articles, etc. This battery thing is just the latest Apple FUD and panic with a perfectly reasonable explanation.

I work with a guy that doesn't use Apple products at all, yet _always_ forwards this stuff to me. I don't even argue about it or defend Apple—it isn't worth my time and it isn't worth Apple's time either.

Maybe they have a defamation case, but really who cares?

(edit grammar)

John sort of skated by the point that these phones were designed to have this problem. Spontaneous shutdowns with aging batteries are not a standard feature of all smartphones. Apple made a trade-off in the phone design that caused this hardware problem and then used software to try to workaround it but didn’t tell people that this would slow down their phones. My wife has an iphone 6 with this problem and was considering a new iphone to fix her performance problem. Whether apple meant to or not, their lack of full disclosure caused people to needlessly replace their phones. To say apple did nothing wrong is fanboyism.

Was the reporting bad? Sure. Was apple in the right? Definitely not.

This would be a bad PR move. A giant insanely-rich company suing news publications?

Apple has dealt with overblown controversies before (Antennagate, etc.) and the best way to deal with them is to do what they're doing: communicate better, improve their software, make repairs or returns more affordable.

I had to turn off that episode after Casey opened the segment by condescendingly dismissing any concerns about the behaviour. Quite rude and annoying.

Marco doesn't see the value in tracking podcast listeners, but I'd think he'd benefit to know what causes people to stop when listening to their show.

Reportage: Apple secretly slows down your phone.

Reality: Apple secretly slowed down people's phones.

Why would they, if other people throw mud on their brand, respond by throwing more mud?

The proper response is to clean their brand. That’s what they do now. I think it is better late than never, but it also is somewhat (depending on how picky they will be on replacing those batteries, and on whether they will pay back people who replaced their battery recently because of this problem) classy.

I also think this is intended to, and will, stop the class action suits being filed before they have even started.

From the statement...

    "All rechargeable batteries are consumable components"

If they are "consumable", why aren't they user replaceable. As far as I'm concerned any company that seals consumable parts inside a device isn't acting the interest of their users.

They can be replaced for $29.

The elephant in the room is, of course, Apple's obsession with thinness which makes it near impossible these days to get a usable laptop because PC makers totally copied Apple alas. It also gave us nonreplaceable batteries and any successful lawsuit that comes out of it is totally justified.

No one asked for this. Lighter, somewhat, yes but thin to the point where batteries are barely functional? Samsung's colossal Note failure is just another symptom of this. I had a Panasonic CF-Y5, a 14" 1.5kg laptop ten years ago and somehow it managed to be that light without this thinness craziness.

> Apple's obsession with thinness

You mean the obsession customers have with buying thin products, which Apple is simply satisfying, and extremely well, judging from sales.

> No one asked for this.

Yes actually, I asked for this, like many other customers who bought much thinner Apple products instead of thicker, bulkier, heavier competing products.

I totally agree with you. I'd rather have a slightly bigger laptop with the ability to replace the battery easily.

I slightly disagree with this though:

> but thin to the point where batteries are barely functional?

My previous MBP (mid-2014) was still very usable after 3 years of intensive use. Overall, I can't say I suffered from not being able to change the battery easily. (I passed the problem to the next owner...).

>makes it near impossible these days to get a usable laptop because PC makers totally copied Apple alas.

I'd say that is only the Ultrabook market which goes for super thin. There are plenty of other laptops out there that are thick enough to even have a CD drive. On top of that there are the gaming laptops which are even thicker.

Is it also why we have these awful keyboards on the new mbp ?

I feel them absolutely awful to type on (I have never complained about a keyboard before but I just can't stand this one), although it is subjective, some people are fine with it.

What is unquestionably bad though is that you need to replace the whole keyboard if one key has an issue (and apparently it happens a lot). I know several people for which Apple had to reset the whole laptop after a keyboard issue, but I can't make sense of it.

Not all laptops are thus compromised. My HP Elite X2 G1 1012 matches the Surface physical attributes and yet has a user-replaceable battery (and screen, and m.2 SSD.)

Lots of people saying that Apple only had two options - make old handsets slower, or have them randomly shutdown.

Might be a reflection of the culture those commenters are from, but it's disingenuous to assert.

Other options existed -- notably to advise the user, as part of the update, via mail-out, etc, that this choice had been made from them, and (optionally) what they could do about it.

Agreed. The comments here apologising for Apple are so disheartening. Inform the user that the battery has degraded or failing that at least allow the batteries to be user or third-party serviceable.

I know car analogies are overused but … I would be classed as literally insane if I replaced my car because the battery had become degraded. When this happens you get a mechanic to replace the battery. (Or, if the owner is very competent they replace it themselves.) If we do it for cars, why not for phones?

I would absolutely love if this issue got regulated across the board the same way the charging cable connection (everything has to be usb-micro or usb-C) got regulated. Though somehow Apple didn't comply and didn't get penalised.

What are they gonna do about it, "Yes I do want my phone to shut down immediately instead of continuing to be able use it"?

The Nexus 6P recently had a big consumer backlash and refund process bc phones would shut off randomly below 20% charge once they got older. I would guess the same thing is happening here. I would have much rather had reduced performance than a phone unusable under 20%. Luckily I got a free upgrade to the Pixel to fix it.

Yeah, I have owned various Android and iPhones over the years and this was a pretty common issue especially with an older phone in either a hot or cold climate.

Same issue here. Google won't do anything now. A lot of people took advantage of the Pixel handouts. (I'm not defending them, it's total BS.)

Usually they send you to Huawei who wants a few hundred bucks to fix it. ...no.

That's well and good, but this letter avoids the elephant in the room. Apple has gone way too far in sacrificing functionality for style.

I'll accept a seam in the phone, and a slightly thicker phone, if I could replace the battery myself. (That might also avoid the camera bump.)

The latest MBP really shit the bed with that poorly conceived touchbar, and the horribly inferior keyboard.

And in general, for many years now, Apple laptops have gotten far less serviceable in the name of sleekness.

Then there is the issue of software quality. That is a different issue, although perhaps the decline reflects corporate priorities, (sleek hardware is more important than anything). ITunes and Photos are just terrible. Bloated, confusing, inconsistent even within themselves, and certainly across releases. I dread having any contact with Apple's cloud -- it just never acts the way that I want it to, and I tread very carefully to avoid propagating deletes to places I don't want them to go. I don't want files to move seamlessly from one place to another, and to be downloaded on demand. It chews up my phone's monthly data allotment, and it doesn't work at all when I have no connection. Sharing is a disaster. I don't share anything because it is unclear who gets access to what.

Another aspect of software quality is a noticeable uptick in bugs. That iOS 11 texting bug (couldn't type "I" correctly) was a huge embarrassment, and it took an astoundingly long time to fix. And I heard many reports of crashes with iOS 11. My iPhone 6 is staying on iOS 10. Then there was the MacOS login-as-root-with-no-password bug.

I am seriously thinking about my non-Apple computer future. I have a mid-2015 MBP -- the last good one, as far as I'm concerned. I'm hoping that when I need an upgrade there will be some nice hardware compatible with Linux (fingers crossed for Razer). I'm stuck on the iPhone (because I trust Google not at all), so I'll need to figure out how to get that to coexist with Linux.

Inferior keyboard? I LOVE the new keyboard. And Touch Bar works great.

> First and foremost, we have never — and would never — do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades.

Didn't they degrade the user experience by slowing down the cpu? I definitely wasn't enjoying my slow iPhone

Would you rather have a slightly slower phone, or one that shuts off at random due to the battery not being able to provide peak current.

I think the only major mistake Apple made here was not being originally transparent about this. I don't think that Apple is being 100% noble in its intents either. In addition to driving users to buy new devices, there's the much less obvious side-effect which is a lot of people attempting to get their batteries replaced at roughly the same time as devices age. Which creates a tremendous support burden at Apple Stores around the world as people pile in to get their batteries replaced. (Although more daring consumers may attempt the DIY route, but I expect that to be a very small minority).

It's choosing the lesser of two evils. The two options are to have the phone run slower, or have the phone shut down unexpectedly with shorter battery life.

Personally, I agree with Apple's call on this one.

Rock and a hard place for Apple, after 600 cycles or 2 years 'average usage' (based on reports I've seen in the past) the battery might only have 50-60% of the design capacity, so their choice is between reducing battery consumption (via throttling) or having users whose phones are totally drained in significantly less than an 'average working day'.

“degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades” (emphasis mine because you left that important part out)

If you bought a new phone strictly because your old one was slow, you might have an anecdotal point to make.

They said they wouldn't degrade the UX to drive upgrades but said nothing of other reasons to degrade the UX.

Why is it that low power mode is usable but slowed down mode because of a battery is sometimes almost unusable?

Slowing down the CPU is a better experience than your phone shutting off or battery lasting half a day...

Keep reading the article and you will find out.

What theyre doing to fix it:

"Apple is reducing the price of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement by $50 — from $79 to $29 — for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later whose battery needs to be replaced, starting in late January and available worldwide through December 2018. Details will be provided soon on apple.com.

Early in 2018, we will issue an iOS software update with new features that give users more visibility into the health of their iPhone’s battery, so they can see for themselves if its condition is affecting performance."

This basically means they're giving you the battery for free. Takes 30-45 minutes of semi-skilled labor to replace it, loaded cost of the employee for even 30 minutes has got to be pretty close to the $29 they're charging.

Wonder if this means we'll see 12-24 month phones popping up on eBay with battery health reports, or receipts showing the owner(s) had them changed out just prior to sale.

This is great, and it's going to really hurt some independent shops that offer battery replacements.

Also, I wonder what percent of people will walk into an Apple Store intending to get their battery replaced and will end up walking out with a shiny new iPhone. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple offered incentives to folks who want to just trade in and be done with the old device. At the very least, they've got you hanging out in their store for 15 mins.

I wonder how big a hole this is going to dig in Apple’s balance sheet. I have known many people who bought new iPhone because old one was getting too slow, not because they wanted even more thinner phone. This is especially true with families where cost of replacing iPhone is so prohibitive that no one wants to do it unless it’s absolutely needed. Now that this issue hasn’t got so much media attention I would think iPhone upgrades will hit major breaks.

This is a great response imho. It doesn't fully tackle the issues I'm having with the approach Apple is taking, but at least Apple acknowledges its customers in a human way. This is almost un-Apple.

How many times have Apple written "We apologize" in press releases this year?

I think I read one during the whole disk encryption fiasco a few months ago..

Edit: no, that was the username: root, password: (blank) fiasco. And literally less than a month ago.

I believe this is a poor response because,

* In the first paragraph, they only apologized after limiting the limiting the scope to "some" customers who "feel" slighted. Like an irrational person on the defensive, giving a non-apology apology.

* They didn't address issues like: the CPU throttling is 24/7, whether the device is running off A/C or not. (!) Completely unnecessary and also — inconsistent with the battery-voltage argument.

* Affected users like me have been stuck with a barely functioning phone for a year. Since it stayed nearly unusable even when plugged in, I assumed it was simply due to Apple bloatware affecting older devices.

I think part of what's missed here is the fact that Apple's products aren't just the physical things we hold in our hand.

A lot of folks would buy  stuff because they TRUST Apple to provide a stable and reliable product.

It seems like with each release, quality and stability decrease, and customers' trust is further eroded.

I wonder if Apple management even considers issues from that perspective?

> A lot of folks would buy  stuff because they TRUST Apple to provide a stable and reliable product.

Just wanted to emphasise this.

I put my parents on iPhones because I wanted to minimise them calling me for technical support. I taught them to update the phone's OS for security reasons, but iOS 11 came out and was dogshit for six weeks until 11.1.2 came out and my mom (a layperson) exclaimed "A[?]'m never updating again!".

Tim & Craig need to stop making their customers beta testers. That's why we paid the premium.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is that Apple uses some of the smallest cells in the industry.

iPhone 8, 8+: 1821, 2675 mAh

Galaxy s8, s8+: 3000, 3500 mAh

That's a huge difference.

Apple gets away with this because the iPhone is more energy efficient than comparable Android phones, but that's only on average -- peak energy consumption is still comparable.

And when cells age, nominally larger cells retain the ability to drive peak workloads without browning out (even if they drain really fast), while Apple's tiny cells eventually just can't do it anymore.

So depending on the implementation of the feature iPhone users would be able to see how fast the battery degrades due to its low capacity. Apple could do what every other manufacturer did—provide phones with higher capacity batteries to start from for phones not to burn the battery with too many recharging cycles in the first year. The thing is Apple deliberately supplies small batteries for them to require many recharges and degrade fast. Androids now have on average 3000 mAh batteries. I got 5300 mAh. Small iPhones—1800 mAh.

Apple is in this situation because they've very invested in having the fastest mobile processor on paper. So you get a high performing part when your phone is new, and all the reviews and benchmarks are done with the high performing part, but after a while the battery can't handle it, so they're forced into these shenanigans.

It’s not like android phones are purposefully running with multi year old chips to avoid this issue. The high-end found they are all rush to have the newest chips as well.

I’ll ignore the “on paper“ comment. It was totally unnecessary.

Simple solution. Replace your battery once a year.

This smells like a direct response to latest lawsuit from France [0].

[0] - https://www.thelocal.fr/20171228/french-lawsuit-launched-aga...

I kind of doubt it. This is been going on for what, a week or two? I’m guessing they’ve been working on this response that entire time, not just in the last 24 to 48 hours.

This is a good smell though. It likely will adversely affect the efficacy of the lawsuit.

Company internal investigation followed by public facing change is pretty much the death knell in a civil/monetary lawsuit.

They've either been grossly overcharging consumers for these battery replacements for years, and are now just listing a "normal" price, or they're taking a loss on it for PR purposes and folding the price decrease into other products.

I don't see how either of those builds customer trust.

Apple's prime business trait is making big margins on everything relating to hardware. The fact that battery replacements were not historically being done "at cost" should surprise precisely no one.

Thank you! I've always thought phones should provide info about battery health.

Trying to raise awareness to the fact that Apple's battery letter is only available on the american store. We in Brazil already experience absurd prices (a battery replacements costs R$ 449,00, equivalent to US$ 136,41), but I doubt will see equivalent reductions...

The article does mention price reductions “starting in late January and available worldwide through December 2018.“

"making iPhones last as long as possible is an important part of that." ... Then I suggest that you do something unheard of and really stretch Johnny Ives to come up with the unthinkable, nearly impossible, design task....an easily replaceable battery.

Yeah. People talk about how nice the phones are, but honestly, I feel like Apple takes the easy way out in this regard. It's easier to make what they do when you don't have to worry about letting users services the device. The flip side is, when everything is so tightly tied together, the quality has to be that much greater. They should be held to a much higher standard because they have no one to blame but themselves.

In this case, this is completely on them.

> To address our customers’ concerns, to recognize their loyalty and to regain the trust of anyone who may have doubted Apple’s intentions, we’ve decided to take the following steps:

> Apple is reducing the price of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement by $50 — from $79 to $29 — for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later whose battery needs to be replaced, starting in late January and available worldwide through December 2018. Details will be provided soon on apple.com.

> As always, our team is working on ways to make the user experience even better, including improving how we manage performance and avoid unexpected shutdowns as batteries age.

I cannot think of a better move from Apple than these three options. Bring awareness to the user by displaying battery performance and if updating the battery would resolve their power issues, you have a (now even cheaper) method of fixing it. As I understand it, the only way to tell if one needs to update their battery is by downloading some third party app (that costs money) and then praying that it helps in some way.

Also wanted to point out that by going deeper into the issue with this article shows (at least to me) some sense of transparency and should be really encouraged. While I disagree that they needed a scandal to bring clarity and it should've been brought up a while back, it's still great they did it nonetheless. This has been a conspiracy for some time, glad to see Apple has shed some light on it.

I have an iPhone 6 Plus running iOS 10.3.x.

I wish they would put a new 10.3 version with the new battery code out. I have every intention of not using iOS 11 due to feature changes that don't work well for me (like the control center wifi/Bluetooth silliness).

Won't happen, though - this is Apple.

I am afraid of ever breaking this phone because it is my understanding a restore from backup forces an update to the latest code.

Are you sure that iOS 11 is as bad as you say? I use it on a 7 and have no problems. maybe you just like to hate Apple, Silicon Valley, or change?

I'm glad they did this, but it still doesn't handle the FUD about Apple generally slowing down old hardware in the name of planned obsolescence, which people have been tinfoil-hatting about since forever.

The fact is that new OS and software is designed to run on the latest hardware and checked on older hardware to see if it will work at all.

The conspiracy theorists think that Apple has been doing this with their phones since they started making them, and for their computers for decades.

It's horseshit, of course, and I wish the statement had been stronger.

The tinfoil garbage is about like if people complained that game companies were intentionally slowing things down for older graphics cards. No. That's just the natural progression as technology advances.

This is a case where Apple is slowing things down, but doing so to improve the user experience, not make it worse.

You have almost all of reddit and several other idiot websites that have been complaining for years about perceived slow-downs now feeling vindicated over this. And it's complete garbage.

I wish people could separate issues effectively, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards.

It's very interesting to see the cognitive dissonance of all these posts complaining about how Apple has lost their trust etc. yet still wanting to cling onto the brand. There wouldn't be this pseudo-Stockholm syndrome if people just became more rational and voted with their wallet. Go buy a phone that you mostly own instead of buying the right to use and iPhone from Apple.

This whole battery scandal is ridiculous. It's literally the opposite of planned obsolescence, they're prolonging the usable life of these phones by underclocking them enough to stay functional for a full day, when otherwise they'd be shutting off randomly. I wish I could underclock even with a fresh battery in order to have solid 2-day battery life.

No, the consumer doesn't have enough information in this case. They are more than likely going to buy a new phone rather than a new battery.

Apple knows what typical usage patterns will do to the battery. If most customers hit an issue that degrades their phone performance before 1 year, then Apple made that conscious decision when doing system design (multiple phones have this issue). It’s fully within their power to spec a battery that lasts a bit longer.

> It's literally the opposite of planned obsolescence

Having a too small battery is the exact definition of planned obsolescence!

If they hadn't tried to make the phones as small as possible and used a battery with 20% more capacity the problems would not be as severe.

Not. Even. I felt forced to upgrade my 6 because it was unbearably slow. The battery? Excellent. In fact, at the time of trade-in, it was lasting longer than my iPhone X does brand new. More proof - the 6 was actually almost brand new itself; 3 months prior I smashed the screen and Apple replaced the entire unit (yes, generous on their part) instead of a screen swap (the body was bent enough to not allow a screen replacement). New unit, new battery, and thus not just anecdotal evidence.

Perhaps there is _some_ good intention on Apple's part. But I think it hides a just-as-motivating factor as forcing upgrade purchases. My opinion is their position is disingenuous at best. I would rather see them move toward the customer having the control to choose the experience or not instead of - as they explained - only adding transparency into the decisions into which Apple is forcing you.

Plainly, my experience was: I had perfectly healthy hardware, yet my 2-gen old device was almost too slow to be useable. And now here I sit with a $1200 unnecessary replacement.

They always release a new OS when a new phone comes out, which puts more strain on the old phones, causing them to perform worse because they have old batteries. It's pretty similar to planned obsolescence that has a good technical explanation.

Do you own an affected phone? Ridiculous is my $800 year-old device stuttering like it was Android 1.5.

For years individuals and the tech press have reported about the forced obsolescence of Apple devices, with many detractors claiming otherwise. It would appear that instead of "eating crow" they've decided to double down and are now parroting how this is "manufactured" or "overhyped".

Let's be clear: Apple knew that they were pushing the hardware of older devices so hard as to lead to premature expiration. Instead of being forthcoming about this, or reducing the unreasonable load they were placing on older hardware, they used software to throttle the older devices causing many consumers to buy a new (often iPhone) device as a response.

This is especially greedy and deceptive and Apple has earned every last bit of negative coverage (and then some).

It wasn't until I upgraded to ios 11 that my iphone 6 began shutting down at 30% battery. This coincided with the phone being completely unusable. I could not launch apps, using the message application was nearly enough to make me quit apple.

I'm curious about how much slimness people would be willing to give up for easy, cheap battery replacements for phones.

One could design a phone the thickness of the original iPhone that would be able to take AAA batteries.

8 AAA Eneloops have about the same energy as the batteries in iPhone 6s or iPhone 8, and just shy of an iPhone 7.

If one would accept a phone about 40% thicker than the original iPhone, 3 or 4 AA Eneloops would do it.

I was comfortable with the thickness of my original iPhone, so I would be willing to consider an AAA powered phone. I'd probably even be OK with AA--it would still be thinner than my wallet, which I have no problem with.

Just want to note that Samsung has made their phones thicker for the last 2 generations. It has directly resulted in much better battery life compared to their older phones and I don't think it has hurt sales at all. So maybe people don't really want the thinnest as much as apple likes to believe.

Personally I ditched my iPhone because the updates were forced and diligently increased the workload put upon the device. To what end? I don't know, the change logs were cryptic, God forbid allowing the end user selection of what aspects they want updated. Ultimately every update left you with a less functional device. They can say they didn't plan this obsolescence intentionally until the cows come home, but it doesn't matter, what matters is Apple was fucking up old devices and in turn pushed consumers into buying new devices. Intentional or no - fuck it, fuck the tax dodging, fuck the app store, fuck the developer-hostile platform, fuck the double-blended mocafrappachino cult following, fuck Apple. It's over priced tech-fashion and the masses are catching on.

So how long will getting a replacement battery take? Is this something that can be done in an Apple Store in a few minutes, or is it a matter of leaving/sending the phone away for a few days?

>A chemically aged battery also becomes less capable of delivering peak energy loads, especially in a low state of charge, which may result in a device unexpectedly shutting itself down in some situations.

In my years of experience owning smartphones, since the original iPhone, and including a Samsung S4 (decommissioned last month - purchased in 2014). I have never experienced sudden shut off from an aging battery.

Have I been lucky or is this extremely rare?

You probably just don't run on an extremely low battery very often.

I have only experienced it when my device was displaying less than a 15% charge. It also helps if you practice good battery management, not leaving your phone plugged in all night/day.

I also have a theory that people are damaging their batteries more if they are a heavy user, while the phone is plugged in. If your phone is charging and you are playing a game my phone seems to get much hotter than at any other time.

You have been lucky.

"Of course, when a chemically aged battery is replaced with a new one, iPhone performance returns to normal when operated in standard conditions."

I find this disturbingly vague. If the slowdown was strictly due to physical battery degradation (and I haven't heard what specific metric(s) they use to objectively measure age/wear), then replacement should instantly reset performance rationing back to its starting point.

They only say it "returns to normal when operated in standard conditions" without defining "standard conditions" and without saying how long it takes before they deign to allow you the performance you paid for.

Their official Battery & Power page[1] acknowledges none of this beyond a separate issue affecting only a two-month manufacturing window of September-October 2015.

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

And weren't there earlier iPhone models that weren't designed with user-replaceable batteries?

I assume they’re referring to some of the other things they talked about, like how performance maybe temporarily degraded if it’s extremely cold outside; not unlike how the phone may have to shut itself down in extremely hot temperatures.

On a related note, they have used underclocking so "solve" hardware flaws on other devices too. If anyone remembers the nVidia unleaded solder microfracture-fest of 2008~. It affected more than just Apple, but the difference is that Apple didn't admit to any issue with their hardware, people who experienced the failure and attempted to go through the Apple care hoops ended up with a logic board with the same issue (another time bomb). Apple pushed a firmware update to underclock all affected GPUs and effectively push the issue outside of their measly 1 year warranty.

I learned my lesson: you should only buy Apple hardware if you are happy with it as is, if you can't be certain it will remain that way and something goes wrong you have to accept that you will be ignored and Apple will admit to nothing, at the most they will remotely modify your device at whatever cost to the user to prevent them owning up and making replacements.

Apple apologizes for iPhone slowdown drama, will offer $29 battery replacements for a year

https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/28/16827248/apple-iphone-ba...

This seems like a thorough and good response, but look at what it took in order for it to happen! Apple cultivates a perception that they stand by their products, but you really can't count on that.

I've recently had a month-long (and ongoing) to-and-fro of Apple Care repairs to my late 2016 Macbook Pro. I have Apple Care, but it's been more than a month and they're okay with it having taken that long (and being ongoing). The solution to a repair not having fixed a problem is another round of the same tests as last time, followed by a repair that replaces another component. The crash report is easily findable on Google and seems to be a long-standing hardware issue, but Apple Support behave as though it's the first time they've ever encountered it.

I want the option to turn this off.

What Apple is saying in this media release is "pay us and we'll fix it".

All of Apple's battery problems would disappear if I could replace the battery in my device instead of being forced to chuck the whole thing because the battery will no longer take/keep a charge. Surely someone at Apple can design a device with a replaceable battery?

Apple needs to continue signing iOS 10. It is unacceptable that they have increased the software drain on power for normal activities beyond what supported hardware can run, and then when the problem is recognized not allowed downgrading to revert the experience.

That's a great response PR-wise, but it doesn't answer the question of why these batteries are degrading to a point where unexpected shutdowns are a concern in a single year. The iPhone 7 is only one year old. That just isn't OK.

People who constantly re-charge their batteries (more charging cycles) are more likely to have the problem.

A uniform answer to that question isn't possible. There are many different environments that batteries operate in and those environments produce wildly different results.

Design flaw. They use small batteries so there is absolutely no slack.

My son's few-years old iPad (who knows what model since Apple stopped actually naming them) turned into a lagfest after the iOS 11 update. UI operations are choppy where they used to be smooth. Could it be the battery?

Samsung, under intense criticism from their Note 7 battery scandal, didn't increase battery capacity with their S8. Instead, they opted to take steps to greatly improve battery life (total capacity loss over time). Whilst I still think retaining 95% after a year is wildly optimistic, I'm happy with this change of focus (yes, I bought one).

PS. I noticed that Apple uses lifespan where I use life, and life where I use capacity. Verdict?

The whole thing just reveals Apple's bullshit. They oppose right to repair laws and block third party repair by denying them access to parts. The fact that despite all the obstruction and sabotage from apple, you can still get parts is a wonder in itself.

>Of course, when a chemically aged battery is replaced with a new one, iPhone performance returns to normal when operated in standard conditions.

"Ofcource". Wow! How the heck is a user supposed to know this?

>We’ve always wanted our customers to be able to use their iPhones as long as possible.

More BS. The iPhone is designed to be unrepairable.

How could iOS (definitely) detect if a battery is chemically degraded? If they slow down performance based on the "expectation" that device is old and it's battery _must have_ degraded, then it is obviously a slowdown for many unsuspecting users, whose batteries might be in fact absolutely fine. I have SE and never had any shutdowns; fortunately staying on 9.3.3, without any need nor desire to upgrade. I'd be utterly disappointed if next software update started to "manage" performance for me, suspecting old battery.

Charging and usage stats are logged so it should be pretty easy for Apple to spot the problem.

This is not limit to Apple iOS.

Android has this problem too. If you upgrade your 2 years old phone with the latest Android (if your phone manufacturer did happens to provide update), your phone is not responsive at all. I know, few years ago I updated my Note 1 to Lollipop and it was completely unusable. The good thing is the Note 1 has unlock bootloader and I was able to restore the older software.

Unfortunately, you cannot downgrade iOS. I wish I can as I am on 11.2 and the battery drain is crazy. 10% on idle. FU Apple.

My 6S was affected by the faulty batch of batteries, and it was a miserable experience to have my phone shut down unexpectedly at 40% if I was using it outside in ~60F or colder weather.

Apple replaced the battery once they admitted to the faulty batch, and my phone has been great since, but the way they handle battery issues is extremely frustrating. Going to an Apple Store and having them to their standard test, being told everything is fine and there's nothing they can do is not what I expect from them.

Finishing sentence says it all: "We are able to do the work we love only because of your faith and support — and we will never forget that or take it for granted."

That's exactly opposite of what they're doing, so it's a lie. They've just lost my trust, faith and support, and I've sold all of my Apple stock.

Coincidence that they waited till after Christmas to release this?

Everyone was having fun, eating and singing Mariah Carey. Christmas is over and moods are worse, so here's the good Santa Apple Claus is bringing you a gift. That's the logic behind this, I guess... ;)

Hopefully they chose to wait, so employees could spend time with family.

What would the non-coincidence reason be?

> Of course, when a chemically aged battery is replaced with a new one, iPhone performance returns to normal when operated in standard conditions.

Has Apple ever acknowledged battery replacement that explicitly? It's almost like the iPhone just grew a removable battery door with those words.

(Also, for those curious, I'm impressed to see that this has 466 comments only 3 hours after being posted.)

I'm happy with the outcome but I'm not buying their reasoning. It's forced obsolescence and they just got caught this time.

I really hope this price drop is also available in Europe. It's currently 99 EUR at Premium Resellers, but it should also be 29 EUR.

> First and foremost, we have never — and would never — do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades.

Yeah, intentionally or not, it does happen. In light of the latest Apple 'innovations' I would also look at Grey's law (just look at what a piece of shit ITunes is). There have been numerous class action lawsuits in the past years, which I agree, don't prove anything except for the fact that consumers do notice that their older devices often degrade to not being usable.

Anecdotally this is how I lost my 2012 MacBook Pro. The hardware was excellent but software upgrades made it almost unusable. Browsing was ok-ish but I ended up using it mainly in 'terminal mode'. I couldn't find a Linux distribution that ran properly on it so one day I decided to go with El Capitan because of it's focus on 'performance' and that it's hardware requirements were compatible - MacBook Pro Mid/Late 2007 or newer. It worked fine but two days later I fried my video card while reading a PDF in Preview. I'm not saying the upgrade fried my computer but I was really frustrated I only got 3 years of use out of a superb (and expensive) piece of hardware.

And yes, after using an Asus for a few (awful) years, I bought another Macbook on which I'm writing this now.

Eek, I wish I hadn't capitulated so quickly when iOS 11 came out and my wife complained and complained about performance issues on her 2-year-old iPhone 6 until we just decided to buy an 8 and be done with it. It's not like she would be willing to move off Apple, and we had the money. I doubt my situation is unique. Oh well.

In the support article [1], it says:

> Many key areas are not impacted by this power management feature. Some of these include:

> * Apple Pay

How could Apple Pay ever be affected by power management? Why are they even mentioning this service?

[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208387

I think a software approach that should be considered is to dim the screen during throttle events. This has multiple benefits:

- clear user feedback in the moment of stress on the phone

- it would feel more like a battery issue, rather than feeling like a bug

- saves some power that can be used to make the processor throttling less dramatic

After the galaxy note 7 disaster and the apple throttlegate I think it is time for us all to admit the fact that we have reached the limits of lithium batteries. We need to compromise the size of our smartphones if we want to continue seeing progress in their performance and features.

Or wait for a miracle from the electrochemists.

Not only is my 6 slow as molasses since upgrading to 11, i've seen it display a 30% charge and then shut itself off, claiming no charge in the same breath. Standing in line, infact, waiting to show a ticket barcode to get into a show, no less. Had to explain what happened and luckily they could verify my name.

It will be interesting to see how other companies which base their products on Lithium ion batteries deal with similar degradation. For example, How will Tesla handle this scenario? Will they slow down the car when the battery performance is not adequate? Interesting to see how companies make tradeoffs.

A car motor reacts gracefully to a battery that doesn't put out as much current as expected. That's unlike a cpu, which crashes.

After replacing the battery my iPhone 6s is running fast again... can I return this iPhoneX for a full refund?

It's funny, a service center replaced my whole iPhone for free (thought with terrible customer service included) when it started rebooting, being slow and -- get this -- the screen started popping out on one side cause the battery puffed up. This was before this problem was publicized.

> "We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down. We apologize."

Really disappointed, but not surprised, with the wording of this post. We're sorry YOU FEEL disappointed. It's like apologizing for making someone feel offended instead of apologizing for offending them outright.

They acknowledged they made a mistake and I buy their apology. I’ll be getting the battery in my 6 replaced and selling it got an iPhone X now. Kudos Apple but more so to those who sued and all the coverage the sleuthing the Geekbench guy did to get us here.

I like the idea of first-party battery replacements, but I have chipped the glass on the side of my iPhone 6S screen from a drop — I wonder if Apple would still charge me the $29 battery replacement fee, or ask me to pony up the full amount.

How long has this been happening?

I upgraded from iPhone 4 to the 6S due to the declining performance.

I have a 4S from 2010 running on the original battery and it is fine. Of course I have not upgraded the os past 7.

I love the size of the 4S. Please, please, please someone make a phone as small as the 4S. Phones and pants pockets love each other :)

It's only a temporary reduction in price for replacing a battery. Why is it not at least a little cheaper permanently? Especially when they've made them extremely difficult to replace yourself.

I do wonder if this will make Apple look at the good old days of phones where you could have a few spare batteries for your phone :)

I know it will never happen because it wouldn’t be aesthetically pleasing to Mr Ive, but ‍️

Iphone 5s restarting like crazy because of the battery gets nothing then...

At least now they are finally making it very clear what they were caught doing behind the curtains (from the new support page on battery performance, linked in the press release):

In cases that require more extreme forms of this power management, the user may notice effects such as:

Longer app launch times

Lower frame rates while scrolling

Backlight dimming (which can be overridden in Control Center)

Lower speaker volume by up to -3dB

Gradual frame rate reductions in some apps

During the most extreme cases, the camera flash will be disabled as visible in the camera UI

Apps refreshing in background may require reloading upon launch

Many key areas are not impacted by this power management feature. Some of these include:

Cellular call quality and networking throughput performance

Captured photo and video quality

GPS performance

Location accuracy

Sensors like gyroscope, accelerometer, barometer

Apple Pay

Not only did they have the right design decision to lower the chance of my phone shutting down when I may need it the most, they are lowering the battery replacement price!

Great now if you can address the hardware planned obsolescence that would be great. Namely the glass screens that constantly shatter (it's 2018...almost)

It’s not ideal manufacturers can state battery life figures as when the phone is new, rather than at the end of their expected life (2yrs).

It's back to android for me; it's great to have a choice here, those pixel 2 xl are looking a whole lot nicer all of a sudden.

Just a day ago I commented on a different thread about the Pixel 2 XL and its display flaws. It won't look a whole lot nicer once you get it (pun intended). [1] The Pixel 2 (non-XL) has a good display though. But you may just be trading for random shutdowns instead of CPU throttling after a while (as other Android users have commented here).

[1]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/10/pixel-2-and-2-xl-rev...

A message to Apple, you have made products which users cannot exchange the battery themselves in. Further you degrade the performance of iPhones by cpu throtteling as the device ages and charge a fee for exchanging the battery. Thus you hurt the environment and consumers.

One could swap batteries in cell phones previously also in Apple laptops but now batteries and screens are glued to the device.

Please engineer phones which are made to be recycled and are easy to self service.

Sure, they don’t intentionally sabotage lifetime of their devices but they don’t really invest in increasing them either.

It's not clear to me why this doesn't also apply to the 5S. The same software is in operation on these, no?

I would rather pay 30 dollars for ios 10

I need to see the word iPad here. Need to replace a battery in an iPad Air and would love the reduced cost.

Because iPads were not affected by this.

I sold my iPhone 6 because the performance became unacceptable after just 1 year. Do I still get $50?

Well hopefully that settles that. All this mass diaper-crapping needs now is a -gate suffix. And ctrl-F-ing on this page I see we already have one: Throttlegate! For when you want to indicate that this is the leader-of-the-free-world-using-illegal-tactics-to-hang-onto-power-and-then-covering-it-up, of iPhone performance!

Searches of both #batterygate and #throttlegate return a lot of results on twitter.

"We’ve been hearing feedback from our customers about the way we handle performance for iPhones"

That's a nice way to describe this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15988913

My iPhone 6 battery health is 91% and it still sucks since the update.

Discount battery replacement for my 6 will come in very handy

I hope they get sued into the ground :)

"we began to receive feedback from some users who were seeing slower performance"

In the case of Apple, "some users" = millions of users

iPhone's battery deteriorates to a point of not being able to sustain ideal usage after mere 1-1.5 years. That is a very bad case as per mobile phone standards. $1000 for 18 months averages to about $56 a month after which your phone will start deteriorating to a point of being not usable anymore.

Not acceptable no matter how valid their argument is.

Apple is doing what is best for the user and the battery. This was poorly reported on by those without technical backgrounds.

No. They did what was best for their bottom-line.

It was common knowledge that lithium batteries chemically degrade over time. It was not common knowledge, even to those with technical backgrounds, that the iPhone compensated by degrading performance. That was only made recently public by user research.

Many consumers have been buying new iPhones after at least 1 year because of this performance degradation. Had Apple been transparent about its performance degradation strategy from the beginning, people would have spent far less money.

This will have a substantial effect on Apple's revenue next year as people buy new batteries instead of new iPhones.

man... i literally just got my battery replaced. Wish I saw this an hour earlier

So are they wreaking the ux to increase the battery life. Why not just dim the screen?

"We're sorry we got caught, here is a piece of chewing gum".

Now for the MacBook

On the upside, there is now a very easy way to see which "tech journalists" understand the concept of engineering trade offs.

The tech reporters at NY Times, Linus Techtips, etc have never actually created products. They are not technical experts. They're personalities and communicators. And in this case, wacky conspiracy theorists.

Child, please. Apple has taught a generation about planned obsolescence. Observe:

2017 lawsuit claiming Apple broke FaceTime on iOS 6 to force users to upgrade to iOS 7. [1]

2015 lawsuit alleging iOS 9 degraded performance of iPhone 4s to force users to upgrade their device. [2]

2014 article from the New York Times showing how Google searches for "iPhone slow" coincide perfectly with the release of new devices. [3]

2013 Brazilian lawsuit claiming Apple could have implemented 4th gen iPad features on 3rd generation model. [4]

2013 article from the New York Times about performance degradation coinciding with Apple's release of iPhone 5. [5]

2011 article on Apple's "innovation" of a proprietary 5-point screw to thwart hardware upgrades on iPhone 4, Macbook Pro, and Macbook Air. [6]

2009 TC article on UI becoming sluggish, random restarts, device heating up (is this starting to sound familiar?). [7]

2008 Movie rentals not being available on 5th generation iPods which were released just months prior. [8]

I even found an article from 2005 complaining about the high cost of replacing the iPod battery ($250!). [9]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-lawsuit-facetime-id... [2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2015/12/31/apple-la... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/upshot/hold-the-phone-a-b... [4] http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/02/21/brazilian-lawsuit-... [5] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/magazine/why-apple-wants-t... [6] https://www.ifixit.com/blog/2011/01/20/apples-diabolical-pla... [7] https://techcrunch.com/2009/06/04/the-short-lifespan-of-the-... [8] https://www.wired.com/2008/01/ipod-rentals/ [9] https://www.technewsworld.com/story/42328.html

As usual, the only thing that corporations listen to... is the threat of the dollar.

They didn't give two craps about their policy until this week.

Dear downvoter: I dare you to provide logic or a source that rebukes my point.

even if they offered a free iPhoneX, the answer would still be "hell no"

I don't see the difference between the Volkswagen scandal and this.

Both companies used software to their own benefit to harm other parties.

Were you actually "harmed?" Let's not compare increasing pollution to you not being able to play Angry Birds with the same level of gusto.

This was a Half-Life 3 kind of issue. They kind of got backed into a corner where they could never really talk about what the truth was. Would it have been better to go out and announce: "we're not working on Half Life 3"? Tough to say.

Even if the offered a FREE new iPhoneX, the answer would still be a "hell no". Google hacks the Browser, Apple store the phones co-ords, and then they make you upgrade to make it easier to track you, and then their associated product "hi Sarah" crashing and locking out sounds like its trying to contact siri!!!

Free iPhone, Hell no

1. You're still trying to fix a design flaw with software.

2. Good move on lowering cost of a replacement, because it sure seemed like you were trying to extend the battery to a point where Apple care ran out. However,some people are reporting throttling at 89% battery capacity as reported by coconut battery. This is absurd! Why? Because you won't replace batteries until at least the 80% mark!

Thanks for the clarity, but you need to stop using tiny batteries.

Edit: Let's be clear. We are here because Apple chose to use small batteries. An 1810maH battery will degrade to a point where the iPhone shuts down faster than a 2200maH battery would have. They didn't design the iPhone for longer than 1 or 2 years with those tiny batteries. Period.

All Apple would have had to do is enable a "Battery Saver" mode in some deep nested menu and turned it on by default, and this would have never been an issue in the first place. The fact that they hid it and denied it is going to cost them. It signals a deliberate misleading of consumers, and is a legitimate scandal.

You can't hide the bad intentions in good ones and call it a wash. "Extending the battery life for consumers" isn't a good enough reason to do what they did. A menu option ticked by default would have given the 80% who didn't mind this the same exact experience and the 20% that did the freedom to run their battery to the ground. However, doing so would have forced them to admit that the battery life was going to degrade over time given normal usage.

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