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Comment by thanatos_dem | Hacker News Reader

> Not even the battery thing.

That was an attempt at graceful degradation that wasn’t communicated well.

The general belief was that having a phone that runs a bit more slowly, but consistently used it’s battery as the battery life naturally degrades is better than a phone suddenly dying with 40% battery remaining if the peak power draw exceeds what a several year old lithium ion battery can produce.

I much prefer the former personally, but I get where the misunderstanding and public outcry came from.

Beyond that, what made your phone unusable? The last 4 or 5 iOS versions have improved performance across the board, even for phones several years old.

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In the class action lawsuit against Google, Nexus 6P customers said their devices were shutting off unexpectedly while reporting that the battery still had a 60% charge.

>In April of last year, a class action investigation began concerning Google, Huawei, and the Nexus 6P bootlooping issues. Many users were reporting issues with the Nexus 6P shutting down randomly, even when the battery was showing up to 60% charge.

https://www.xda-developers.com/google-huawei-nexus-6p-class-...

It's probably true that this was more an image problem than an actual misdeed, but the outcry was symptomatic of consumers' deep mistrust of tech companies' intentions. Some of that is because, to most people, a computing device is a black box, but some of it is because they've been burned before.

It would have been graceful if the phone gave a pop-up on every boot with 'Your iPhone has a worn-out battery. Have it serviced at your nearest Apple retailer'. Apple was fully aware that people with slowed down phones would buy a newer model iPhone. And besides the free battery replacement for the old model they gave zero recompense if you bought a new phone because your old phone was performing suboptimally.

I had a first or second gen iPod Touch and it became unusably slow right after updating it some time later.

Just make it so the batteries are easily replaceable. It's wasteful to buy a brand new phone when all you need is a new battery.

A battery replacement is $79. No one is forcing you to buy a new phone.

A lithium ion battery doesn't cost anywhere near that much, its either poor design and/or profiteering on the device manufacturers part to charge that much for a $15 battery to be replaced.

You could say that about all pricing everywhere. Seems like a waste of breath.

Also doesn't change the upstream clarification that you don't need to buy a new device to get a new battery.

The battery is a user changeable part on most mid-range and low end phones.

The point of this predatory pricing tactic is to force owners of phones with sub-$200 in value to upgrade, rather than potentially waste half (or more) of the phone's value on replacing the battery.

Which carrier sold Android phones - where most users by their phones - have user replaceable batteries?

The Moto G is usually cited as one of the best mid range phone and it doesn’t have user replaceable batteries. I don’t think most of the cheap Walmart phones have user replaceable batteries.

The Samsung Galaxy J7 and Moto E5 Play (both free under 24 month commitment on T-Mobile) have removable batteries.

I do about a dozen mobile repairs a year for family, and it really does seem like the new automobile.

Auto’s were not built for ease of repair, the repairs themselves can be quite easy if you know what to do, and often require components that are only 1 or 2 orders of magnitude in price. Paying someone who knows what to do with it, they also add an order (similar to screen repairs).

Ease of maintenance is rarely a marketable feature in mass-market consumer products, and most often is deprioritized.

Replaceable batteries apparently make water resistance a lot harder. I always preferred having an easily replaceable battery but I don't mind the tradeoff on my S10+.

> That was an attempt at graceful degradation that wasn’t communicated well.

That was nearly outright fraud which went swimmingly well. The big issue wasn't so much the unannouced throttling. It was that Apple knew that a lot of customers had battery issues but misled them (by denying the entire issue) so that they'll buy a new device. Instead, the debate turned on slightly more defencible for Apple.

Slightly more defencible, because while Apple _says_ that was done to counteract the battery issues, nobody knows whether iOS really checked battery state and didn't just throttle all older models indiscriminately. The latter would be rather convenient for the bottom line.

Apple has had a battery replacement option for quite a few years. Apple Store employees don't work on commission, so a customer coming in with a battery problem would most likely be offered the battery replacement option before being sold a new phone.

Employees can only give answers they know about, and a general battery issue was denied by Apple. That they didn't tell their own employees does not clear Apple from misleading their customers.

Aside, I'm pretty sure that Apple Stores do care about margin, and so do employees that identify with their business or are encouraged by their managers, but I am not accusing them (the employees) of anything.

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