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Comment by threeseed | Hacker News Reader

> The root issue is not addressed

No manufacturer gives free battery replacements to 3 year old, out of warranty phones.

And even if they did the issue would still be wide spread because most people wouldn't necessarily come in to have it replaced.

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Anecdotal, but I am not a heavy phone user at all. Within a year of purchasing my brand new iPhone SE, the battery capacity dropped from 100% to 82%, causing it to begin to lag considerably doing even basic tasks and shut down randomly two or three times a week. This should not happen to a product that's only a year old.

That sounds like you have defective hardware. You're right in that you shouldn't experience significant battery degradation within a year. But beyond that, 82% battery capacity should not result in significant lag and really should not result in randomly shutting down two or three times a week.

If you had brought your phone in to an Apple Store during that first year I'm sure they would have replaced it for you under warranty.

Agreed, I have 2 year old SE that's at 88% with everyday use.

My SE is slightly over a year old and I'm already at 90%. Not happy. Though unless Apple comes out with something similar, I will replace the battery at full cost before I replace the device.

Other manufacturers don't go after repair shops aggressively, either.

They wouldn't exist if Apple was actually aggressive.

Repair shops have simply been victims of Apple's aggressive approach to security.

Interesting, I know someone in that line of work. They've never had a problem with apples aggressive security measures. Phone is repaired and shipped out.

There was an issue in the past with the Secure Enclave and the verification between it and the TouchID sensor. Third parties who replaced the sensor didn't have the ability to reset the pairing and even if you did there was the infamous Error 53 problem.

All solved now and third party repairers can do most things.

If you're repairing a Samsung phone, you can log in and order a part. The price list is at https://www.samsung.com/au/support/screen-replacements/, for example.

Meanwhile, Apple does something like https://boingboing.net/2018/10/20/louis-rossman.html

Did you even read the article you posted ?

Customs seized it. Not Apple.

Did you?

> Apple is working with the government

And from the source article

>[Apple] will not allow me to replace batteries, because when I import batteries that are original they’ll tell me the they’re counterfeit and have them stolen from by [CBP].

There is no evidence from the article that Apple is working with Customs to block the imports of batteries or any other parts.

Customs in general prevents the importation of counterfeit goods. Which they determine by whether that item has a logo and if it came from a legitimate source.

Samsung Australia does not sell batteries though, you have to replace it using their support center.

The 6/6S were plagued with defective batteries, so phones under their 1 year warranty were affected. Only some phones manufactured during specific dates were covered by a free replacement; my phone was one of those.

Furthermore, the root issue could have been addressed not just by offering free replacements (They weren't), instead of slowing down phones and having customers believe their devices were obsolete much earlier than anticipated, they could have been transparent about the issue like they are now.

Instead, I ended up with 1 free battery replacement, and 1 heavily subsidized replacement, which certainly factored into my delayed upgrade cycle. Apple experienced this enough to warn their investors about it in this letter.

You're conflating two seperate issues here.

The point I am making is that NO manufacturer replaces naturally degraded batteries for free. Defective sure. And not just phone manufacturers but I haven't heard of any manufacturer doing that. Batteries are a consumable item.

I do agree however that Apple should have been upfront about their measures they were taking to mitigate battery degradation.

Correct and perhaps I could have been more clear, but as far as a consumer is concerned Apple did conflate the two issues.

Apple initially refused to replace my battery because they're consumable, even though they later admitted that some batteries were defective. They replaced some batteries for free [1], everyone else got an iOS 10.2.1 update with silent throttling [2]. Note that Apple did not admit to defective batteries until late 2016, and then announced an update with silent throttling in early 2017.

I am not implying that Apple should replace everyone's batteries for free, I am however under the impression that they attempted to keep warranty costs low by denying for as long as they could, and quickly following up with an update that hides the symptoms.

[1] https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6s-unexpectedshutdown/ [2] https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/23/apple-says-ios-10-2-1-has-...

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