Prepare your iPhone 18 Pro Max to ship | Hacker News Reader

Prepare your iPhone 18 Pro Max to ship

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41 pointsledoge10 comments

Interesting that it purposefully seems to burn compute cycles to discharge faster on purpose (it says that it’ll get warm while discharging).

I suspect that basically nobody will ever follow these instructions, though.

USPS has just introduced a $50 “misuse of hazmat labeling” fee with supporting context that could infer a much stronger parcel scanning process behind the scenes (since it’s presented as a ‘you wasted our time’ fee). I would hesitate to say that nobody will ever follow these instructions. More likely, someone scalper will take a sob story to the press after USPS makes an example out of them.

So they will scan the package, notice the phone, unpack and start it to check the battery percentage and if the shipping mode is enabled?

I hadn’t considered that possibility until you suggested it, but your question does make a good point. I’ll have to look up the mail inspection rules but I assume(?) they have every right until a court finds otherwise. It sounds like exactly the sort of overbearing, petty nonsense that one can reasonably predict from this decade’s administration of the U.S. federal postal service. Are they likely to do so every time? Absolutely not. Will they do so until they get to make an example of someone? Wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest, honestly.

I think they would be allowed to do it because it’s for safety (they could probably also open letters filled with powder to prevent anthrax etc.), but I don’t think they have the manpower and motivation to do it, especially because the risk is probably really low, even without shipping mode.

Anyone sending their 18 Pro Max to Apple’s central repair depot will, or they won’t get the label, it seems.

If the phone won’t boot, wonder if shipping is potentially illegal, and Apple would mandate driving it to a store?

How is this new? There are plenty of Chinese phones with high capacity batteries. My current Xiaomi 15t pro as a example has a 5500mah, 3.93vdc battery (that's 21.62wh). And they just all shipping fine...

All the Chinese phones that still have a high capacity battery in the EU use a dual-cell battery. If you look up the part number for yours (BP5H), you can see that it looks like two batteries glued together rather than a single solid chunk. That split slightly reduces the capacity compared to the models sold in China, but it allows them to exceed the 20 Wh limit.

I see. Thanks for breaking it down for me. So the Innovation is that apple is selling a single cell +20wh battery, that can be legally limited to below 20wh?

Speaking of using Chinese batteries in ROW phones: the cables are shorter on Chinese high capacity single cell batteries, so you can't exchange them in your European phone.

most things are "fine" if it's okay for you to break the law.

"tax fraud? a lot of people do it and it's just fine"

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