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Comment by DrThunder | Hacker News Reader

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The slowing down was necessary to not overload the batteries (very obviously necessary since phones were resetting otherwise), and apple offered replacement batteries almost at cost. What more do you want??

It was a perfect engineering solution, poorly communicated to users.

I'll take a slightly slower phone (in reality not noticeable on most tasks) over unplanned restarts. My partner only just stopped using the iPhone 6 I bought in 2014, original battery all the way, and she had the throttling turned on for years without knowing or caring.

Apple did not communicate to users they were slowing down the phone to prevent issues. They did it silently so users would upgrade rather than replace the battery.

> apple offered replacement batteries almost at cost.

Only after they were caught slowing down phones without informing users.

> They did it silently so users would upgrade rather than replace the battery.

That's a deliberately uncharitable interpretation. It could just as easily be explained by them wanting the customers to not have a crashing phone tarnishing their opinion of the brand. If it were about money, they should have popped up a message saying "The phone is going to be slower because the battery is dead, contact your Apple Store to buy a new battery."

It was not and still is not commonplace for any company to discuss the deep engineering details of a product's battery management logic with customers. The majority of products just stop working, some have an indicator of "bad battery".

Apple has a long record of making decisions for users without presenting options about them. Having these problems solved for us rather than being bothered with them is part of what we've paid for all these years. But their audience is broader now, they're much more successful, and when this practice rubs people the wrong way we all hear about it in the press as if it's some Antennagate-level flaw or scandal with which they were "caught." So they put in an option to make the phone worse but the user happier and move on. I would say "but the reputation damage is done" if it wasn't a foregone conclusion to so many that Apple must be up to no good.

Ok... and if I could replace the battery myself easily then that would not be a concern would it?

I told you, I want the ability to replace the battery myself. Do you like losing your phone for a few hours/days so you can get the battery replaced?

It’s not a useless straw man argument. iPhones typically have a longer life cycle than android phones. That is a fact. User replaceable batteries lower the quality and aesthetics of the phone. So there’s no benefit to having a better replaceable easily. Just take it to an Apple Store.

>User replaceable batteries lower the quality and aesthetics of the phone

That is an often repeated lie. Companies like Framework have proved it a lie and appear to be making good money by doing it.

The visual aesthetics of the framework don’t leave much to be desired. The build quality is a fraction of MacBook.

So I’m unsure how it’s a lie? Framework made an incredible device. But it pales to a MacBook.

I did not make a comparison to Samsung, the op did. I am not arguing which phone is better, that's you and OP.

I was discussing apple's flaws and OP/you decided to talk about another company that was worse in an attempt to convince everyone that it's ok for apple to act a certain way.

Re Samsung, they sold 258.3M phones last year; approximately 60 SKUs--with < 3% having user replaceable parts. They are equally responsible. Do you hold them to the same standard?

> have been caught multiple times slowing phones down

Both Apple and Google found themselves in a situation where phones would suddenly go dead when the device was under high load despite the battery reporting that it had a charge, although with the Nexus 6P it was happening to devices that were only a year old.

> your phone will randomly shut down and completely die, even though your battery indicator might have said you had plenty of juice left. It's not a simple system crash, because your phone will stay dead until you connect it to a charger. We've seen reports of the battery dying from a charge as high as 67% to as low as 15% on both Android Marshmallow and Android Nougat.

https://android.gadgethacks.com/news/nexus-6p-battery-random...

Google's solution to the problem was to tell users they were out of warranty and to buy a new phone.

A class action lawsuit eventually forced them to issue refunds.

> Google, Huawei Agree to Pay Nexus 6P Owners Up to $400 for Faulty Devices

https://www.droid-life.com/2019/04/11/google-huawei-nexus-6p...

> I never mentioned Samsung, so that's just a useless strawman argument you're making.

I was with you to some extent in your original post... sort of.. But this last response made me go from with you to thinking you have some sort of agenda, with a real bias and aren't actually interested in a real conversation, you just seem to want an argument that you feel you can win.

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