What makes you think it would be a new one as opposed to a refurbished used one.
Admittedly this was a few years ago. Has apple mended their ways or are they still on the "used car salesman" grindset?
Third parties and resellers though I’m convinced just call their returns/open box units that appear to be in decent condition “refurbished.”
You have a phone with a real, but subtle fault. Something not caught by the normal set of tests. You return it for repair, get sent a new one, they replace the battery in your old one and put into stock as 'reconditioned'.
My phone is perfect, save for a worn out battery. I send it in for battery replacement, they send me yours. Now I've swapped my perfect phone for your faulty phone - and paid $70 to do so.
Did I say it would be a "new one"?
> 'might replace my aging phone with a newer unit, '
unless you just want to argue about the semantics and differences between 'aging', 'newer' , and 'new'.
HN really has turned into reddit.
Semantics is literally the meaning of things. So, yes the difference between those phrases is semantics.
But your use of 'semantics' meant something subtly different. Ain't language weird?
Because Apple got sued for doing that once, and people including myself are in line to get checks from it.