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Comment by basch | Hacker News Reader

Apple didnt "slow down phones with old batteries", they capped the power output to the cpu of batteries that couldnt deliver reliable peak power anymore, so the phone didnt panic and crash as the cpu usage redlined. Their actions are much preferred to the alternative.

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>Their actions are much preferred to the alternative.

Fitting a sufficiently large battery in the first place?

Apple have developed a chronic problem in recent years - stripping out engineering margins in the interests of aesthetics. Fraying MagSafe cables due to inadequate strain relief. "You're holding it wrong". Touch disease and bendgate. Stuck keys because of wafer-thin tolerances on the butterfly keyboard. Macbook CPU throttling due to a marginal thermal solution. Pitifully poor battery durability on EarPods. Display flex cable failures on the MBP.

The minimalist aesthetic has long been a key part of Apple's brand, but they are crossing the line from "minimalist" to "inadequate" with increasing frequency. It's working, for now, but it's eroding their reputation for quality. I've been recommending Macbooks to non-technical users since 2006; I can no longer do so in good conscience, because of the very high price of an entry-level machine and the high probability of a major failure.

The battery was sufficiently large to start with. Then normal wear and tear caused the battery to be weaker. That’s fine. Throttling on a weak battery is sensible imo. The inexcusable part was that the throttling was silent. If there had been any sort of notification then it had been good design.

>The battery was sufficiently large to start with. Then normal wear and tear caused the battery to be weaker.

Your second sentence contradicts your first.

Apple know that battery performance degrades over time. They knew that the batteries they were fitting to iPhones would be unable to supply sufficient current within the normal working life of the phone. They either didn't care about longevity, or chose to prioritise aesthetics. For a company that likes to brag about their environmental credentials and the quality of their devices, that's not a good look.

No, there is no contradiction. We just don’t agree on what level of battery wear and tear we find acceptable. I had a phone that was affected. Batteries are a wear item, and they are replaceable. It was after a long service life and I was fine with the whole thing, including the throttling, except the unforgivable part, which was that they didn’t tell me they were throttling.

Right, it's the lack of user messaging that was the problem.

The problem isn't capacity. It's voltage. Old batteries are sometimes no longer able to provide adequate voltage at peak loads, leading to phones turning off when running on low battery (but before it's actually empty enough for it to turn off in normal circumstances). Until now I've assumed that this generally affects all li-ion batteries over time, but I'm honestly not sure why this issue hasn't cropped up in the Android camp in the same way. Maybe the only reason it became such a big deal was how Apple decided to fix the problem (silently throttling performance).

>The problem isn't capacity. It's voltage.

It's not voltage, it's discharge rate, which is directly proportional to capacity. All else being equal, bigger batteries can supply more current. It hasn't cropped up in the Android camp because Android phones use bigger batteries.

https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/what_is_the_c_ra...

What about physics? A colder battery will have a slower chemical reaction and may not be able to supply enough current to avoid a crash without throttling.

A phone should be able to operate reliably within it's thermal specifications. It's perfectly reasonable for a phone to occasionally throttle because it's unusually hot or cold, but it's exceedingly shoddy for throttling to be routinely used to mitigate an under-specified battery.

> It hasn't cropped up in the Android camp

Samsung was fined for exactly the same thing Apple was doing.

https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-samsung-5-million-fine...

According to The Register, Samsung were fined because they pushed Android Marshmallow to the Note 4, not because of any sort of battery-related throttling.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/24/apple_samsung_fined...

What he means is that they did that silently, without informing that an possibly preferred alternative existed: replace the battery.

I agree, "your battery health is reducing performance, have it replaced", should have been part of the original feature.

The situation was awful. I had a battery that was chronically failing (shutting down with 40% battery day after day) and Apple wouldn't even let me pay for a new battery if I wanted to, because their old battery health tool couldn't identify any problem. They refused to take my money under any terms! I had no choice but to use a warranty-invalidating third-party repair service (which did indeed resolve the problem).

I had the exact same issue and I still get angry thinking about the phone call I had with a support manager at apple. He blamed me, or possibly my backups. His solution was to factory reset the phone and to never restore my phone or my backups. He seriously wanted me to troubleshoot the issue, app by app, on a clean phone. I can't even imagine how long this would take, weeks? He told me that even if I take it to a store, they probably won't replace the battery because the app says it's fine.

Thinking back, I remember how I basically had Stockholm syndrome with my phone. The performance was incredibly terrible. Swiping on the screen took two or three attempts, opening any app took 2 or 3 touches for it to register. Scrolling was stuttered in any app. I remember my partner deemed my phone unusable (it was 3+ years old, so I certainly expected some sluggishness). I had just built in muscle memory to use my phone, swipe swipe, press press press to open an app.

Sigh, and I'm still with Apple.

Or they could've been more transparent, everyone knows batteries dont last as long after 1-2 years, but they decided to gimp them down (and effectively slowing them down, even if you dont like that term, it is what it is). Their batteries are sub-par in capacity compared to most manufacturers (They hadnt even passed 2000 mAh until the 6 plus/6s plus, and their non-plus models have never passed 2000 mAh, only the X's have more than 2000)

Apple did a horrible job communicating that to people. It would have turned out much better for them had they not played their cards so close to their vest.

Maybe, but probably not.

They were pretty clear that the battery throttling on phones with old batteries was to prevent the phone from shutting down under high load.

I'd argue that 95% (maybe higher?) of the public and the press don't understand this and still believe Apple was throttling the phone speed to force them to buy a new device. You even see this on HN a lot where people should know better. Bringing attention to it may just have caused the bad media response earlier.

They were clear that battery throttling on phones was to prevent shut down.

They weren't clear that they were battery throttling on phones to prevent shut down.

They make the hardware, who else would be doing it?

They weren't clear that they were battery throttling on phones.

They could have averted the Brand damage if they had been transparent about the "throttling" from the beginning.

Their actions are much preferred to the alternative.

Only to the fully rational. Many people would rather have their phone crash faster.

I applaud what Apple is doing. I prefer airpods any day over their 3.5 mm jack counterpart and I appreciate a waterproof phone. Sure it is annoying that they can run out of battery and lightning is unnecessary now USB-C is here; but I guess it is a transition.

Samsung Galaxy S10 is still waterproof, still has headphone jack and can drive airpods.

Why do you behave like those things are exclusive?!

The idea that the elimination of the 3.5mm jack has anything to do with waterproofing is a complete misdirection, as evidenced by the list of waterproof Android phones with USB-C and 3.5mm jacks.

Also, any modern phone with bluetooth is just as capable off running airpods or any other wireless headphones whether or not it also has a 3.5mm jack.

Lastly, eliminating the 3.5mm jack has nothing to do with making the phone thinner either. My jackless iPhone 7 is actually a few mil thicker than my older yet nearly identical iPhone 6 which has a 3.5mm jack.

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