iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max have charging issues | Hacker News Reader

iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max have charging issues

medium.com

21 pointsecd139 comments

What a waste of a paid Medium article. I could've read more detail on a free blog post elsewhere.

I wonder if the folks at medium ever expected this reaction from their product.

My thoughts exactly!

Not a lot of details in this medium post; is this issue only present for some devices when using third-party chargers?

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Medium has become the YouTube of text

Oh no! Prepare for a thousand articles about ChargeGate!

Ugh, this thing with "gate" has to stop. How many people even know that "watergate" is referring to the name of an office building in DC.

I'm pretty sure it already started and was shutdown by iOS 12.1(beta) where it's fixed by Apple.

How was this not catched during QA?

What's /e/? Could you provide a link? Because that something non-googable, non-duckable, non-bingable.

/e/ is LineageOS + microG + a custom launcher (which is kind of rudimentary ATM) + a few apps from f-droid.org with minimal UI changes to give it a "personalized" look. They provide 50MB cloud storage a mail account (50MB) and that's all there is. Plus a lot of PR. They imply to be the only Google-free Android OS (considering the multitude of roms based on LineageOS this is BS). In all their published material that I've seen there is no mention of LineageOS which is like 95% of their product.

So relax, you didn't miss much.

They sure don't care about SEO.

Same question

/e/ is an open, privacy-conscious mobile OS currently under development - https://e.foundation/

a hundred 1000 Dollars crowdfunding sure will take them a long way /s/

https://e.foundation/crowdfunding/#single/0

.foundation?

What the hell is going on with the scrolling on that page? You're just skipping backward and forward instead of the usual consistent scroll..

And there is a custom scrollbar that you can't actually click or drag. And the website changes the cursor for no clear reason, too.

They sure don't care about UX.

Since I started working for a UI/UX design company, I notice so much of this. It gets annoying really fast if you developed an eye for it.

Why not use a Linux derivitive?

Looks to be this https://e.foundation/mobile-phone-os/

I’m not sure there is a real issue behind this this doesn’t happen with the original charger or any good charger it seems without tampering I’ve found 2 devices that don’t auto charge on my XS both have pass through or secondary functionality capabilities one is a cheap charger at work that comes with an SD card reader for some reason and another is when I use my USB OTG dongle with charge passthrough that I use to connect my hardware password wallet (mooltipass) to my phone.

All the demonstrations I’ve seen so far were with either non-Apple and no brand at all chargers, often coupled with a USB MITM power meter with data passthrough or some other dongle.

This might just be working as intended feature.

Here is a demonstration with an apple-brand charger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7tf4JASzlI

A USB Power meter does not inhibit the function of a charger, they only tap the power lines of the USB line with a low value resistor to measure the voltage drop. You can do it with a hall sensor too in which case you don't interrupt the voltage line at all.

I see no reason why a current sensor should in any way inhibit a charger's function unless it's deliberate.

It doesn’t matter if it inhibits or not but how it actually negotiated with the charger, charger only works anything that adds stuff like data or OTG requires an unlock to approve. To me this looks like working as intended.

The current sense should not add data or OTG, these devices are completely out-of-band for the USB bus. This definitely does not work as intended.

Again, all this does is insert a small resistor on one side of the voltage line. It does not tap the data lines, they go straight through to the charger as normal.

I understand how load measurements work but it doesn’t mean it works as intended on the measurement side either.

Many of those meters are not passive and provide the full USB connectivity offered by the micro controller on the output port also.

So so far I haven’t seen anything conclusive, every charger I tried works but one which definitely provides OTG capability.

N=1 but same goes for most of these stories so far.

Could there be a problem? Sure could be cross talk on some faulty phones which makes them think there is data but it could also be that people don’t understand what is it they are connecting.

With minimal effort I was able to find videos on youtube having this problem with apple-brand chargers too. No load meter at all or the load meter being on the live side of the charger instead of the USB isde. (Simply search "iphone xs charging problem")

It seems people can make it work with a macbook pro usb c charger and other fast chargers but not with the charger that comes with the box, which IMO points to some severe QA issues.

So it seems wrong to me to claim that this doesn't happen with apple-brand hardware, this should have been caught in QA, period.

If the charger in the box together with this phone exhibits such a failure mode, I'd return the phone.

You complain about hardware issues (that generally happen to a tiny percentage of users, and are inevitable with a consumer electronic that sells in mass quantities) and then talk about switching to a software platform. It does not follow.

I know right? This reminds me of work, when I sometimes send over builds for testing, and they have major edge case bugs. Although "plugged in and locked" isn't really an edge case. Maybe Apple should make its new slogan "it mostly works."

Because it doesn't happen on all devices - my XS is unaffected for instance.

Like that patent-pending MBP keyboard switch that only spared a few lucky lottery winners.

Hey I guess I won the lottery twice!

This looks like a basic software issue though, no big deal.

Lucky! My sister played once and lost, I wonder what percentage of people were affected.

QA would normally test hundreds of devices with different settings for each test depending on the test.

Testing a single or a low number of samples is a good way to get a bad or insignificant result.1

Apple at the very minimum tests many thousands of devices before shipping hardware.

Yes and it makes me curious how they missed such obvious bugs despite thousands of tests.

There are many tens of thousands of third-party and no-name chargers, and Apple only tested hundreds, or maybe thousands. The vast majority of chargers, including all chargers for which Apple is responsible, work fine.

Actually no, Louis Rossman has uploaded a video where an Apple-branded charger observes this behaviour. So no, this doesn't work with a vast majority of chargers, including the ones Apple is responsible for.

Many they forgot this particular test case while "many thousands of devices."

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