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Comment by bobbles | Hacker News Reader

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."

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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.

Apple is rolling out machines to make this process faster: https://consumerist.com/2017/06/07/apple-putting-screen-repl...

To your second point, I'm curious to see if Apple only offers this to original owners, or if a subsequent purchaser can get it swapped at this price also.

Really? 45 minutes for an Apple tech to do a battery swap?

They wouldn't have to give anything for free if, like for many other phones, the owner could replace the battery in 1 minute flat with no special tools...

I would love HN to force people to explain why they are downvoting something.

Batteries fail after a while, it has been a constant for a very long time.

What has changed is that in many recent phones it is a pain to replace it yourself.

My guess is that the downvote was a sort of "offtopic" one: "yeah, we can't change the battery ourselves, c'est la vie, it's Apple, get over it, let's discuss the issue at hand".

Not even that much of a pain. Apple makes the batteries fairly easy to replace (with the right tools) to lower their own cost of warranty repairs, staffing, etc.

What "many other phones?" Samsung, Google, Motorola, LG, and others have all gone to sealed battery design. It led to thinner phones and, down the road, better water resistance. Samsung tried water resistance and removable batter with the S5 and it was inconsistent at best. I'm sure there are some phones out there that still have removable batteries (BLU comes to mind), but by and large all flagships have sealed designs now. Whether the trade-off is worth it is up to the person (I prefer a sleeker phone with water resistance myself, but I'm also capable enough to replace an iPhone battery on my own), but the idea that there are "many other phones" where one can replace the battery in 1 minute with no special tools is just not true.

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.

Yup, they took some bad press and made it good for themselves and their customers. This announcement should be used as an example for other big companies. Be sympathetic, truthful, and human. I don't own a single apple product but I respect how they handled this.

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