Apple to Offer $29 iPhone Battery Replacements, More Battery Health Info in iOS

[6803390]

You're right, Apple should have just let that previous phone die and they would have bought a new phone anyway.

I agree. Instead of being thankful for all that Apple has done for the world in the past decade, they whine until they get a coupon for $50 off a fresh battery. Just awful.

I wish Apple would have just cut 'em loose. Stand up for themselves for once, not cave to bad press, quit this Antennagate playbook, and for once tell it like it is. Batteries are full of fail. People are full of fail. If you are the type to constantly top off your iPhone's battery and strain it to the max by treating it more like a television instead of the telephone it's supposed to be, that's on you, not us.

Thank God for the recent price increases driving the new iPhone's up to $849 and $1250. The iPhone userbase correction is right around the corner.

Apple faces avalanche of lawsuits over deliberate obsolescence of iPhones - https://www.rt.com/business/414464-apple-more-suits-slowing-iphones/

At least in Europe we have laws that are fair which ensure that consumers are protected from greedy companies!

So based on what you said, it is fair to spend £1k on a phone and then it’s obsolete in 3 years’ time?

This is madness.

 

[jamezr]

Why does it have to be one way or the other--you either love or hate Apple? This kind of thinking is ruining the world.

Is it not easier to think there are shades of gray? That are of people, who still like Apple products, who were disappointed regarding the battery? But no: you are either all-in or all out. Ugh.



Mike

Exactly......i am not going to stop buying Apple products. But that doesn't mean I have to agree with everything they do......we can (as Apple customers) demand better from them.

 

[aliensporebomb]

Update:

Yesterday I read a user who had a iPhone 7Plus had experienced reduced battery life and found that he was able to get some of it back by charging using the smaller adapter (not the bigger iPad style chargers but the smaller original ones).

Apparently charging with the bigger charger is faster, yes, but harder on the battery. Anecdotally, I tried it out last night instead of charging with the iPad 13W charger and this morning my battery max capacity had improved somewhat. Not as good as new but a higher number in Coconut Battery (I suggest every Mac user download this to look at their devices and determine their battery life).

 

[Mrjynx]

I cant believe people are actually justifying how bad the 6 / 6s have become.

I've owned Apple products since the late 90's, i'm typing this on an almost 7yr old macbook pro. I've owned the 3g, 4, 4s, 5s, 6s and now the 8 and anyone saying the 6s is not a total mess because of this clearly has NOT owned a 6 or 6s for 2yrs. I also had the random shutdown issue for months until they did that change with ios 10.x.x but the overall experience with ios 11 has been horrendous at best.

The batteries are screwed, they know it, people who own the 6/6s know it. don't kid yourselves into thinking they're doing this in good faith, they are on the edge of a massive class action suit and they're only doing this to get people to back off.

 

[MH01]

As you say worst case, the feature is designed to throttle back at peaks not squish your performance totally. That was either a totally dead battery (which would need to be replaced anyway to be usable) or a bug in the imlementation. The problem is because Apple were not upfront about it people lost trust.

Fair enough . If you accept that , it's a good solution for you.

 

[Joesmith13245]

This definitely helps, but this has not addressed the primary focus of the lawsuit which is the purchase of any new iphone since 10.2.1 was released back in January. Any consumer who purchased a new iPhone during this time period may have done so because of battery performance throttling without their knowledge. Not sure the exact numbers but your looking at a few hundred million iPhones. Thats Huge.

What Apple has done by addressing this publicly and offering reduced battery replacement cost is stop the bleeding.

 

[wacky4alanis]

I think they really need to display your current CPU speed (including a "percentage of max") in the battery settings menu, and also issue a pop-up warning dialog whenever the CPU starts being throttled (or the level of throttling is changed). They also need a switch to turn off this feature altogether. Personally, I would rather just have my phone shut off so I know that I need to go get a new battery. The next time I turn it on, it can ASK ME if I'd like to turn the feature on in order to get through the rest of the day (similar to how it asks me at 20 and 10% if I'd like to enable low power mode).

 

[MH01]

That's correct. My expensive TV is only good for one year without expensive refurb and service. My expensive car only has a 3 year warranty and then if a power window motors break, I have to lay out the money to fix it.

Samsung phones are water resistant, yet Samsung won't fix water damaged phones.

What's your point? Apple should have a magical warranty period in place? Well they do, it's called applecare.

Your TV lasts one year? I've got a 2011 top end plasma that does not miss a beat.....

Apple also does not cover water damage.

 

[rlhamil]

One thing I noticed (before getting a new iPhone X for other reasons, like that my old phone was too old to pair with an Apple Watch 3+cellular, and that the old phone was simply falling behind in capabilities like cellular data speed): my iPhone 5s definitely had issues following the update; mainly, that its estimate of current full capacity (e.g. as a percentage of new full capacity) fluctuates considerably, from the roughly 80% that it should be, to quite a bit lower, and with reboots and running it down a bit and then charging again, back up to where it should be or close. In other words, phones older than the iPhone 6 may also be affected. I've noticed this a bit on my 2015 iPad Pro too, although it's not as significant since it's still at 96.1% of new capacity.

In either case, underestimating the current full capacity means that it doesn't fully charge. With the phone, that was enough that in the worst case, it might drop from seemingly 90% or so to under 20% from 10 minutes of light web surfing (no videos).

IMO, whatever the issues with how they handled informing people or providing choice in behavior were, the behavior can also be buggy, which is what annoyed me (if only for the few weeks between when I updated my 5s from 9.x to iOS 11, and when my iPhone X arrived). That, I have not even seen discussed, let alone acknowledged.

 

[adamski23]

Let’s play connect the dots.

MacOS alerts the user when battery needs servicing but does not throttle the cpu.

iOS does not alert the user when battery needs servicing but throttles the cpu.

Now I seem to have forgotten which device runs the OS that make up about 70 percent of their net sales....

 

[Xavier]

Nice move Apple!

 

[Sevanw]

Reactions to this despicable and unjustifiable act by Apple will separate the sheep from the informed customer. It's really that easy.

 

[MacBH928]

are they doing the same with other products like macbooks!?

 

[No5tromo]

I cant believe people are actually justifying how bad the 6 / 6s have become.

I've owned Apple products since the late 90's, i'm typing this on an almost 7yr old macbook pro. I've owned the 3g, 4, 4s, 5s, 6s and now the 8 and anyone saying the 6s is not a total mess because of this clearly has NOT owned a 6 or 6s for 2yrs. I also had the random shutdown issue for months until they did that change with ios 10.x.x but the overall experience with ios 11 has been horrendous at best.

The batteries are screwed, they know it, people who own the 6/6s know it. don't kid yourselves into thinking they're doing this in good faith, they are on the edge of a massive class action suit and they're only doing this to get people to back off.

Battery performance has been the number 1 complaint for iPhone users for a very long time. Apple will not address it as long as it doesn’t affect their sales or until bad press gets out of control and they are threatened with a class action lawsuit.

 

[acidblood]

I think they really need to display your current CPU speed (including a "percentage of max") in the battery settings menu, and also issue a pop-up warning dialog whenever the CPU starts being throttled (or the level of throttling is changed). They also need a switch to turn off this feature altogether. Personally, I would rather just have my phone shut off so I know that I need to go get a new battery. The next time I turn it on, it can ASK ME if I'd like to turn the feature on in order to get through the rest of the day (similar to how it asks me at 20 and 10% if I'd like to enable low power mode).

Sorry to be blunt, but that's stupid. Who the heck would rather have the phone shut down rather than stay on but perform worse? If the performance hit bothers you so much then don't use it until you get a chance to charge it -- just as you would be forced to if the phone shut down unexpectedly, which it will if throttling is not applied. At least with throttling you have the choice to, say, make an emergency call even if it takes 10 seconds to open the phone app or whatever.

A better suggestion would be for iOS to force throttling on (perhaps in the name of UX merge it with the name "low-power mode") and clearly state this was done to prevent your phone from shutting down, that performance may suffer, and that you are advised to replace your battery.

 

[Akagi]

They are not, hence their phones may shut down randomly as well

A friend had a Nexus phone that a shutdown issue. Google ended up replacing the device.

 

[oliversl]

This is worse than map-gate, and no Apple employee signed the letter. I want to know who signed the letter, Tim Cook has to do the same he did when the map-gate happen, roll a head, name the executive who approve this slow cpu policy on older iPhones. Its despicable what Apple has done.

 

[neliason]

What an astoundingly ignorant comment. Most people don’t even know how a thermostat works. It’s arguable only a handful of people on the planet actually can understand the amount things involved in a working smartphone on as low a level as memory and power management.

Astoundingly ignorant? No, what is astoundingly ignorant is thinking that because the specific details of something are complex that the owner of a device has no right to know what is going on. I don’t know how my Honda Pilot determines when to shut down cylinders, but Honda didn’t hide that it does from me. In fact they have a ECO light that comes on when it does.

 

[I7guy]

Lol.

Since this issue erupted, you have constantly posted that apple do not slow down iphones, regardless of any point or counter point. Now that Apple have admited it, you are now posting that not only is it good practice by apple, but that users should be grateful for the privilege of service costs on iphones barely 1 yr old.

You have no interest in point or counterpoint.

Lol. Neither you have any interest in point or counterpoint.

The horse is still dead and is still being beaten.

 

[acidblood]

Let’s play connect the dots.

MacOS alerts the user when battery needs servicing but does not throttle the cpu.

iOS does not alert the user when battery needs servicing but throttles the cpu.

Now I seem to have forgotten which device runs the OS that make up about 70 percent of their net sales....

Laptops are not throttled because they have a much more oversized battery relative to power draw, compared to the iPhone, so there's no need to do that. It's not a simple software choice as you seem to imply, it's physics.

 

[MH01]

are they doing the same with other products like macbooks!?

Nope . They don't care about MacBooks , iPhones bring in over 70% revenue .

No point targeting MacBooks that user might update every 3-5 years .

 

[Kmart9419]

Great customer focused response. Having more info about battery health is a great idea.

They took it away recently then gives it back to us and it’s a massive favor. Only Apple.

 

[DNichter]

Wow, just wow.

I have read through your posts and clearly you’re a fanboy - how can we take your words seriously when you’re biased.

It does not matter what you say, they purposely did that for one reason for us the customer to purchase their new device. I have read the reasons why they do that but it does not justify by not telling us until they got caught red handed. My Mac computer tells me about my batteries health but not on my iOS device - why not on their most popular device? You don’t have to be a genius.

As for the updates, why not provide only security updates like MacOS instead of major iOS update? They have so many excuses but luckily I been around BS’ers that I can smell it a mile away like a shark.

I am an Apple fan, but I am just looking at this logically. Batteries degrade over time. Apple can't magically fix this. They noticed that this was shutting down phones. So they implemented software that levels out power so that they don't shut down, thus prolonging the life of your phone. Should they have been more transparent about the issue? Yes, but it would have gotten them the same negative response. Looking back, they should have just let the phones die, as electronics do. Then the customer can either replace the battery or get a new phone. Instead, they have the slop we have here in the forums.

 

[I7guy]

Your TV lasts one year? I've got a 2011 top end plasma that does not miss a beat.....

Apple also does not cover water damage.

That's not the point about specifically "my tv". The repair of consumer products in general (including cars) will cost a consumer after the warranty period has expired or there is some mitigating factor, such as a recall.

 

[827538]

I know in Europe it’s two years and it should be that in the US too. As for the battery replacement, that should be included with every purchase. One battery upgrade which people could do a year or two after purchase. They only cost about $10 and labor definitely didn’t cost an additional $70. Apple isn’t being generous by reducing the cost by $50, they’re just showing how overpriced everything associated with them is. Maybe Apple and others should consider a return to user-removable batteries until they can give us a 1,000 cycle battery.

I’m from the U.K. and it’s only 1 year. We are covered from manafacturing defects for 6-7 years though, but it’s a lot harder to prove.

But things cost far less in the US so it balances out. I find most electronics are atleast 20-25% cheaper.