Apple CEO Tim Cook Says Power Management Feature in Older iPhones Will Be Able to Be Turned Off in Future Update

[jdsingle]

This company is so full of it ...

Then please stop being an Apple consumer. Go buy something else.

 

[eveluvsrainbows]

Wow, I sure do disagree. Considering I have to often hunt & guess for what's "pressable" vs. what's just info, that I can't make heads or tails of the iOS11 podcasts app, that I have to often press 3-4 times to get the a voicemail to do what I need since the "buttons" (i.e., tiny text) are so close together, that I have to really stare and concentrate at times to look for "buttons" and pressable actions within apps such as the clock/timer app (and that's for Apple-produced items...3rd party app providers are far worse at trying to make Apple's post-iOS6 made-up UI elements work as cleanly as things worked pre-iOS7)...I'm actually astounded that iOS6 & prior can be considered less intuitive than iOS7 & after.

If I can no longer have an intuitive "it just works" iOS experience, I'm glad at least that someone else can!

The iOS accessibility options have a toggle that adds outlines/underlines to buttons. Why not just use that?

 

[jdsingle]

Phone can crash. Or phone can keep running.

I'm still mystified that people got all bent out of shape that the phone does what it needs to do to keep running. My son's phone was experiencing this (the phone crashing when it had 20-25% battery), until he upgraded to iOS 11, then the crashes stopped.

Seems to me if your option is a crashing phone, or one that keeps running, most people would opt for the latter. People must really be looking for things to turn into causes.

What's the 21st century without a few witch hunts and money grabs?

 

[eyeseeyou]

Ever wonder why no other brand has this issue with their phones?

People really forgot about a lot worse battery related issues other brands have had in the past?

In my experience I really thought it was a trade off android users accepted to not be in the Apple walled garden. Slowdowns and general, gradual degraded performance was part of the android user experience.

I’m not even anti android this is just what I’ve heard from a lot of die hard android users up until the pixel.

 

[nofear1az]

We don’t know the number of iPhones with bad batteries. It’s not as widespread as this forum indicates though.

I don't know if this is just bad batteries. It could be more than that as replacing the battery is the 2nd best option if you can not do the 1st option which is a software fix. Only time with tell.

 

[bodonnell202]

Batteries are consumable. Life-long lasting batteries using Li-ion do NOT exist. It is unreasonable to expect Apple to keep footing the bill to replace a battery that ages like Li-ion batteries do. Apple can detect a failing battery and a consumed battery. If it's failed, it's covered under warranty. If it's consumed, you have to buy another battery. Batteries don't last forever and they never have. Every one is hell bent on blowing this whole fiasco out of proportion because it's Apple. Get over yourselves. /rant

Except we are not actually talking about old batteries (2-3+ year old) that are not up to the task of running an iPhone, the throttling actually starts much earlier and suggests that the batteries were actually underspecced to power Apples fairly powerful A series chips, even when the battery is relatively new. If throttling was only occurring on actually old batteries with 500+ cycles on them I would be in full agreement with you.

 

[eveluvsrainbows]

Ever wonder why no other brand has this issue with their phones? Because Apple is mitigating a hardware problem through a software fix. By slowing your phone down keeps it from crashing - problem solved, right? but not really. More like a giant band-aid to the problem. But as long as your happy though.

Dude, you are completely forgetting all of the other battery issues that other brands have experienced. Just look at the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 for example. That was a complete and utter dumpster-fire, with batteries exploding all over the place, and Samsung actually had to do a massive recall due to how widespread that issue became. They even had to stop selling the Note 7 entirely. And I imagine other brands have had issues with batteries too, not just Samsung and Apple.

 

[MH01]

Except Apple isn't the only company that does this. Laptop manufacturers having been doing this for decades. Where was everyone's outrage over that? Oh, I forgot. It's because it's Apple. xD

Do you understand the difference between a laptop and smartphone? My laptop spends most of its day plugged into the power, portable does not mean running off battery all day

 

[IbisDoc]

Tim Crook, instead of completely missing the point with the addition of your dumb “power management off” switch, why not publicly announce the addition of a notification on every single iPhone that “your battery has degraded to the point that power management is active and slowing your device. You can renew your phone to as-new condition with installation of a new battery”.

Of course, we all know the reason why Tim Crook is trying to deflect from his real failure here.

 

[nofear1az]

People really forgot about a lot worse battery related issues other brands have had in the past?

In my experience I really thought it was a trade off android users accepted to not be in the Apple walled garden. Slowdowns and general, gradual degraded performance was part of the android user experience.

I’m not even anti android this is just what I’ve heard from a lot of die hard android users up until the pixel.

Interesting hear-say, considering I have first hand experience with Android and do not experience any of that.

 

[jonblatho]

I do agree there. Seems they put a smaller capacity battery in the 6s than was in the 6 and touted how the new faster CPU was more efficient so it would get same life with smaller battery. So why not just use the SAME battery as the 6 and make it even more not the same. My same theory as the few millisecond speed loss, another few millimeters of thickness to accommodate a bigger battery would have been a better option and I suspect 99.9% of end users would have preferred that to thinness.

Because the Taptic Engine, new in the iPhone 6s, occupied space at the bottom of where the battery used to be. There are only so many changes in lithium-ion battery density that can be made (safely) to compensate for such a change.

 

[Jesse Waugh]

Amazing to see still so many people saying Apple did nothing wrong.

The level of their “loyalty” is beyond imagination.

Lots of them are users I have seen before. It actually made me wonder if some of them may be paid commenters. When they write things like “Get over yourselves”, it reminds me of the government / military Fusion Center trolls who frequent conspiracy forums and YouTube videos, who post hyper-aggressive comments designed to demoralize their opposition.

 

[nofear1az]

Dude, you are completely forgetting all of the other battery issues that other brands have experienced. Just look at the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 for example. That was a complete and utter dumpster-fire, with batteries exploding all over the place, and Samsung actually had to do a massive recall due to how widespread that issue became. They even had to stop selling the Note 7 entirely. And I imagine other brands have had issues with batteries too, not just Samsung and Apple.

Boy do I remember. my GF went through two of those Note 7's. But what does that have to do with this subject? How is it related?

Samsung had a problem with Note 7 - did a recall twice. Made the process super easy for returns. Even offered rebates to those on the next upgrade version.

Apple did a cover-up with a software fix that band-aided a problem and told nobody about slowing their flag-ship phones down to a mid-ranger or less. spoke nothing of it. Refused people that were begging to get their batteries replaced. Now it broke out and Apple is in PR mode to save-face. Oh, and they are happy to continue to charge you for those battery fixes at a reduced cost.

And you're comparing these two how?

 

[Madhava]

So is it safe to have the phone not slow down? Is it guaranteed the phone will switch off without exploding? As they recommend not to do that.

 

[Jesse Waugh]

The throttling starts well before the battery is considered unhealthy by Apple.

Exactly — my iPhone 6 Plus’ battery is at 85% capacity and healthy due to consistent charging, but is throttled because it’s less than 100%. This was diagnosed in front of me by an Apple Store Genius. This is either a major design flaw or corrupt business practice. Either way Apple is at fault.

 

[jonblatho]

The problem is their chip. It's too aggressive that it requires too much voltage.

That…that’s exactly what the throttling fixes…

 

[Jimmy James]

Great! So my iPhone 6s may be adequate for years to come. And I won't need to deal with premature throttling.

 

[eveluvsrainbows]

Boy do I remember. my GF went through two of those Note 7's. But what does that have to do with this subject? How is it related?

Samsung had a problem with Note 7 - did a recall twice. Made the process super easy for returns. Even offered rebates to those on the next upgrade version.

Apple did a cover-up with a software fix that band-aided a problem and told nobody about slowing their flag-ship phones down to a mid-ranger or less. spoke nothing of it. Refused people that were begging to get their batteries replaced. Now it broke out and Apple is in PR mode to save-face. Oh, and they are happy to continue to charge you for those battery fixes at a reduced cost.

And you're comparing these two how?

iPhone 6s isn't a flagship, and wasn't when they first introduced the change, as the iPhone 7 line was released long before the 10.2.1 update was released which introduced the changes to prevent the automatic shutdowns on the 6s in the first place. So I think you misused the term flagship there.

 

[jonblatho]

So is it safe to have the phone not slow down? Is it guaranteed the phone will switch off without exploding? As they recommend not to do that.

Back when I had an iPhone 6s, my phone shut down unexpectedly and I experienced some data corruption incident because of it. Upon attempting to reboot, it showed the “Connect to iTunes” screen. It just so happened that I hadn’t backed up in quite some time, so I lost a lot of data (though that’s my own fault).

It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s why Apple treated the unexpected shutdown issue as seriously as it did. Surely I wasn’t the only one.

 

[forerunnerg34]

This "power management" excuse is the tip of the iceberg for the planned obsolescence of Apple mobile devices. You can not blame the battery when upgrading iOS instantly kills the most basic functions of a device. The excuse of "new features" is irrelevant, we are talking about core functionality that is being slowed down: what possible new feature can slow down typing or pressing the home button to go back to home screen?, is it because of bugs? no, bugs are errors in code that are suppose to be fixed.

Do you think all these "quality issues" with Apple software are just casualty? Truth is you only get a decent or near good experience on the latest devices (iPhone, iPad, Mac). Apple just makes stuff that works for 365 days. iOS 12 is comming.... iPhone X users, you are next.

 

[nofear1az]

iPhone 6s isn't a flagship, and wasn't when they first introduced the change, as the iPhone 7 line was released long before the 10.2.1 update was released which introduced the changes to prevent the automatic shutdowns on the 6s in the first place. So I think you misused the term flagship there.

First off, I don't see where I said iPhone 6s anywhere but needless to say the iPhone has always been considered a flagship phone whether you want to believe that or not.

 

[eveluvsrainbows]

This "power management" excuse is the tip of the iceberg for the planned obsolescence of Apple mobile devices. You can not blame the battery when upgrading iOS instantly kills the most basic functions of a device. The excuse of "new features" is irrelevant, we are talking about core functionality that is being slowed down: what possible new feature can slow down typing or pressing the home button to go back to home screen?, is it because of bugs? no, bugs are errors in code that are suppose to be fixed.

Do you think all these "quality issues" with Apple software are just casualty? Truth is you only get a decent or near good experience on the latest devices (iPhone, iPad, Mac). Apple just makes stuff that works for 365 days. iOS 12 is comming.... iPhone X users, you are next.

Hmm, let's see. Last I checked, I've had my iPhone 7 Plus for a while now, and it still performs just as well as it did when I got it. And the battery is still doing just fine. I think what you're talking about are things that existed before the iPhone 5s which finally brought stuff up to speed and stopped devices from basically being killed (I'm looking at you, iPhone 4/4s).

 

[cindyhy]

Apple's hardware tests don't always pick up faulty hardware. I had a failing Fusion Drive that kept passing their HW test for many months before it totally died and refused to boot, even in recovery mode.

But, Apple replaced my iPhone 6s Plus without testing it. It was having the shutdown issue, but it had over 90% of the initial capacity.

Same. My iPhone 6 started shutting down at 40+% battery level ten months in. They said the battery is fine... Told me to do factory resets. Six months later the problem persisted and they kept telling me the battery passed their tests. Had to swap the battery myself. If they stick to the test as the criteria for in-warranty battery replacement, they should really develop better tests.

 

[eveluvsrainbows]

First off, I don't see where I said iPhone 6s anywhere but needless to say the iPhone has always been considered a flagship phone whether you want to believe that or not.

When a newer model is released, that should indicate that the previous phone is no longer the flagship. The latest phone(s) that take over is considered a flagship. The iPhone 6s was the flagship for 2015 up until the iPhone 7 line got released. Then the iPhone 7 line took over as the flagship line. Just repeat that cycle for the iPhone 8 and X and any later devices.

 

[deanthedev]

Exactly — my iPhone 6 Plus’ battery is at 85% capacity and healthy due to consistent charging, but is throttled because it’s less than 100%. This was diagnosed in front of me by an Apple Store Genius. This is either a major design flaw or corrupt business practice. Either way Apple is at fault.

You need to learn about batteries before spouting anymore BS. And stop with the “either or” logical fallacy.

A battery could be brand new, have 100% capacity, yet still get throttled because it’s defective. Capacity has nothing to do with throttling.