Apple Makes $29 Battery Replacements Available Immediately for iPhone 6 and Newer

[Rogifan]

It seems like nobody really knows how this “throttle” works. Unless it throttles you 24/7 no matter what on a relatively healthy battery, we are gettinf ahead of ourselves

Of course no one knows how this really works but will still bloviate as though they know exactly what’s going on and what Apple’s movtives were. And of course it’s always to screw people over and provide a horrible customer experience because apparently in the eyes of some, Apple customers like crappy experiences and that keeps them coming back to buy more Apple products. I have yet to see anyone explain though how a poor customer experience keeps customer retention high. Which leads me to believe these people think Apple customers are stupid or lemmings or iSheep. There’s no other way to explain it.

 

[Vytas Vytautas]

I have yet to see anyone explain though how a poor customer experience keeps customer retention high. Which leads me to believe these people think Apple customers are stupid or lemmings or iSheep. There’s no other way to explain it.

I'd like to know that as well.

 

[Piggie]

Anyone wonder what this is going to do to the 2nd hand market?

Will people want a phone with no battery issues?
Or a phone that's not been "opened up / repaired"
Or will people want one that's just had a new battery fitted?

I may be alone here, but I don't like the idea of buying something after it's been opened up.
But I guess if it's done by Apple and has a warranty than that's ok.

Can't have helped anyway.

 

[Kendo]

Why can't those who paid for AppleCare get this for free?

 

[neutralguy]

All phones get slower over time, particularly as internet and video standards, for example, advance. You’re not going to be able to watch 4K video on a 4S, for example. The screen size is a valid point, but then the SE is pretty close.

That I agree. But I see all the basic apps are slow too.. including imesaage, WhatsApp, mail.. all of them take couple of seconds to respond back to any action.

 

[mi7chy]

I got a 3rd party replacement rather than pay the full apple price. Wish I'd have waited another month now

If you were falsely denied a battery replacement from Apple and were forced to go 3rd party then you have legal recourse. You should pursue compensation from Apple if not join class action.

 

[DoYouLikePie?]

Samsung deliberately didn't carry out an official recall when the issue was first known.

That's all you have? Pretty poor defense Lmao.

 

[themastermind]

If you were falsely denied a battery replacement from Apple and were forced to go 3rd party then you have legal recourse. You should pursue compensation from Apple if not join class action.

Absolutely, if the facts given are correct and can be backed up (with a receipt for the replacement, properly dated, etc.), then he does in fact have a valid claim that could see compensation.
[doublepost=1514914419][/doublepost]My first gen Apple Watch has recently mysteriously slowed down and stopped checking my heart rate every 10 minutes (did this fine before). <scratches head> I wonder if these slow down tricks go beyond the iPhone?

 

[WLS]

I've been wondering that as well.

The SE is more recent than the 6, but it uses the same battery as the 5S and 5.

I did not know it used a smaller/weaker battery. That alone makes it more likely to need a replacement sooner than expected. I will use the Apple supplied battery test when it is available and see if I need to use the replacement offer.
Not sure if they actually do replace the battery or just send you another one. Having to send my phone in and be worked on for an unknown time while I have no phone is not acceptable.

 

[Keebler]

An update (or optional setting) that causes any significant percentage of user's devices to crash or suddenly power down would be much more of a marketing nightmare and potential legal issue. "Hi, this update may cause your working iPhone to suddenly shutdown and potentially corrupt important data!". No way.

Ok. I didn't realize it would cause sudden shutdowns. I thought the issues just slowed down battery performance, but didn't kill the battery outright.

 

[afd]

Others before me might have replied to your post so forgive me for not reading all the posts yet.

It does not make sense, if for instance you have a car battery and put a huge load on it the voltage drops as well, so the lights on that car won't be 100% but 50%.
Geekbench is not a good tool, it will max out the CPU so the battery can't keep up, result the CPU throttles.

I’ll try again to get them to replace battery then see how phone is. Simple tasks like choosing the sound output is extremely laggy.

 

[AppleCorei7]

What about iPads? Any support for them?

 

[justperry]

What about iPads? Any support for them?

Simple answer, No.
iPads batteries are much larger, they also might have multiple cells in parallel to deliver more current when the iPad needs it.
There are no issues with iPad batteries.

 

[WhiteSoxMan]

How do we request a refund? Go back to the Apple store?

 

[jpine]

You have an old phone. Get over it. You don’t even deserve a $29 battery replacement.

Not sure why I'm even responding to this, but think of it this way. I have a 21 year old pickup truck. I like my truck. So far, I see no compelling reason to replace my truck. If someone backs into my truck, I "deserve" to have his or her insurance pay for fixing my truck, regardless of how old it is, with no out-of-pocket expense on my end.

 

[bmark]

The only thing that flopped was you post.

Keep drinking the Apple Kool-aid, maybe it can help your grammar skills!

 

[Vytas Vytautas]

Keep drinking the Apple Kool-aid, maybe it can help your grammar skills!

Very good drink, cheers.

 

[rjp1]

I suspect it's more an issue of the battery degrading over time and not being able to supply the power that their processors require. If you want to be pedantic about it, it's not really the fault of the battery, but basically everything in the phone that requires that much power.

Think of it as a sprinter who starts out blazing fast but quickly tires and then has to slow down afterwards. The bursty nature of the A-series processors apparently comes at a price. Everything works when the battery is new and in tip-top condition, but it becomes unsustainable after a short while (~1 year, it seems).

To be more precise, it appears to be a power-draw issue which can be solved either by replacing the battery (which allows the phone to run as if it were brand new) or reducing how much power the processor needs to run to avoid shutdowns (and a reduction in power basically means an accompanying reduction in performance). That's the way electronics work. There's no conspiracy here to trick users to buying more iPhones (even if it did have that inadvertent impact).

That doesn’t explain why brand new phones were experiencing the shutdown issue at 50%. We had 2 that did it and they were both outside the serial numbers of the affected devices. I knew then there was a hardware flaw. They should have done a recall and fixed it long ago. This is just continuing the cover up.

 

[Abazigal]

That doesn’t explain why brand new phones were experiencing the shutdown issue at 50%. We had 2 that did it and they were both outside the serial numbers of the affected devices. I knew then there was a hardware flaw. They should have done a recall and fixed it long ago. This is just continuing the cover up.

I don’t think there is anything Apple can do to physically fix the phone at this juncture. My impression is that they are working towards this (such as designing their own power management chips), but this is a long-term solution which won’t be available anytime soon.

Call it buying time, working around the problem, shirking their responsibility if you must. In the meantime, the software patch will have to suffice.

 

[3lite]

You just discovered the powder, man!

Any laptop, from any maker as long as its a laptop, is a huge technical compromise and they are more prone to failures and manufacturing defects that any comparable desktop. It’s a given, anyone that buys a laptop instead of a desktop without requiring one (specially when choosing the extremes, the smallest form factor or the most powerful) is just throwing a lot of money down the drain.

But if people want to have Macbook Pros when they should be getting an iMac and Air/iPad Pro (or equivalent) just because they believe it’ll make then look cooler at the Coffee Shop to put on the table a top of the line MacBook Pro, so be it. Go ahead live with the unforgiving compromises but please, be consecuent, don’t start barking when those compromises start coming around to bite your arse.

What the hell are you talking about?

 

[ikramerica]

Although I like my iPhone 7+, I only bought it because my 6 was having various shutdown issues that apparently were known to Apple and could have been solved by a new battery. Heck, I even would have been okay with the throttling if it meant the phone was useable and reliable, but at the time, the OS hadn't been "optimized" to even do that.

So how does offering a $29 battery help me now?

 

[jdsingle]

This software fix is essentially in lieu of them replacing your battery if it was shutting down and still under warranty/apple care. The trade off being its now throttled back to half speed in some cases. You no longer shutdown which is good but given the performance tradeoff to me thats an unacceptable fix. Which is why in the release notes and on tech crunch for the 10.2.1 fix they were vague about what it was doing because people would be upset.

This problem was specifically reported for 6s models in the 2nd half of 2016... right around the 1 year mark for the 6s. A one year old phone should not shutdown and a software fix should not be a compromise. Apple is responsible to give you a 100working device for its warranty

A side effect is now that iphones (including the barely year old iphone 7) throttle and prevent the shutdown you are less apt to take it in under warranty/apple care to get it truly fixed for free. a repeatable shutdown is noticeable to users so warrants attention. degraded performance can he overlooked or blamed on something else.

im ok in theory with throttling, provided its transparent, but it shouldnt be implemented on phones until 2 years after they are last sold.

I agree on the notification/transparency. We really were under the impression that iOS 11 is just a POS OS, not that it was driven by our 2+ year old phones.

 

[cmaier]

I guess you missed the news that Apple cut iPhone X production from 50 million units to 30 million units. Below is the link stating the demand has dropped faster than ever for the notched device!!

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cn...s-drop-on-report-of-weak-iphone-x-demand.html

Apple NEVER said they were going to make 50 million of anything. The story is ********, and is repeated with every product cycle. It always turns out that apple outsells the dire stories.

 

[rjp1]

I don’t think there is anything Apple can do to physically fix the phone at this juncture. My impression is that they are working towards this (such as designing their own power management chips), but this is a long-term solution which won’t be available anytime soon.

Call it buying time, working around the problem, shirking their responsibility if you must. In the meantime, the software patch will have to suffice.

Yeah, I don't think it gets fixed. Honestly, I'm surprised they aren't doing free battery replacements to keep it from escalating.

 

[cmaier]

Spoken like a true apple fanboy with no insight at all. Wait until they fall short of their estimates in their 4th quarter earnings report then you might change your tune.

How many times in the last decade has that happened?

Versus how many quarters have analysts claimed Apple had fallen short of some imaginary goal, and then it turns out they didn’t?

I’m simply playing the OVERWHELMING odds.

And when you resort to personal attacks like you just did, it proves you don’t know what you are talking about.