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Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

>You pay $50 and wait a few minutes.

I would have no problem if this was true. But it is not. $49 only for non-Face ID Model. $69 for FaceID, or pretty much all current iPhone lineup except iPhone SE. You also have to wait 30 min to hours depending on store. Not few minutes unless you are the only one doing Battery Swap which is highly unlikely given how they are always fully booked.

Depending on which part of the world you are in, your prospective on the Battery swap pricing differ greatly on a $10 Battery part.

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iFixit is charging $39 for an iPhone mini battery, or $25 for an iPhone SE battery. Paying $25-30 for half an hour of labor—on a $400-1200 device—every two years sounds… totally fine to me?

>iFixit is charging $39 for an iPhone mini battery

It is absolutely fine in US. When iPhone Battery Replacement parts isn't even a listed item on Amazon but only Replacement Kits. ( Likely due to whatever agreement they had with Apple ) And Labour cost are high. One may even borderline call Apple's pricing cheap in the US. And why Apple could claim in court they made no profits in their after sales repairing services .

If you live within the Valeriepieris circle, have retail access to slightly higher than BOM of battery. Things might look a little different.

Hopefully we will have Battery improvements in the next 10 years so most of these discussions will become non-issues.

Not when that labour is only required because of Apple's (and other manufacturers', but Apple was the first and worst to do this) malicious design in the first place.

Apple used to have removable batteries. Even when Steve Jobs came back to Apple, batteries were removable. Once Lithium-Ion batteries that can hold 70% of a charge after 1000 cycles appeared, Apple got rid of the user-swappable batteries. It’s not malicious, it’s a disagreement on what is acceptable.

> It’s not malicious, it’s a disagreement on what is acceptable.

They figured they could get away with removing it, so they did. In exchange the user got… what exactly? Absolutely nothing.

> Once Lithium-Ion batteries that can hold 70% of a charge after 1000 cycles appeared, Apple got rid of the user-swappable batteries.

That's still an absolutely pathetic lifetime compared to the rest of the device.

And that also bears out in practice, anecdotally battery life is by far the #1 reason that people buy new phones, especially in the last few years.

Anecdotally speaking I've never known anyone to get rid of an iPhone because of battery life. Ever. I've known people to replace iPhones because of cracked screens, no longer getting iOS updates, running out of storage, or simply wanting some new feature but I've never known anyone to replace an iPhone because of the battery. They're simply too cheap and easy to replace. Honestly, call and make your appointment at iFixIt or the Apple Store, drop your phone off, come back an hour later and the battery is replaced - for under $50.

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