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

[actcyclist]

...Even Hitler took Germany from begging for a potato to the world's biggest financial juggernaut at the time.
Try again, and starting your statement with that pathetic "Lol" gives you away immediately.

Sorry, but that's a double LOL. Tim Cook is a fine CEO btw.

 

[firewood]

CPUdasherX reports the CPU clock just fine.

Unless you've seen the app's source code, you have no idea how the app is making up that frequency number. And there currently is no public API that works to read this value in iOS.

 

[Act3]

Unless you've seen the app's source code, you have no idea how the app is making up that frequency number. And there currently is no public API that works to read this value in iOS.

Since you conveniently left off part of my post in your quote, why does Apple continue to allow it to be sold on their App Store ??? If the numbers are not correct then it makes no sense for them to continue to allow a developer to profit while giving bad PR to Apple.

 

[Burger Thing]

Slightly larger batteries would not help, the new high-end 64-bit processor cores are designed for batteries the size of an iPad Pro. No one buys mobile phones that large.

Please, Pretty Pretty Please with a big cherry on top: educate yourself. Computer Hardware and electronic basics. And stop spreading absolute nonsense.

Again for the umpteenth time: if a processor on a phone is set to run with -let's say- 1.8 GHz and has a 2700 mAh battery, it will still run at 1.8 GHz on a 3000 mAh on the same phone (same in the sense of all hardware and software settings the "same" - just resulting in a device 1 mm thicker) - but with longer run times and hence degradation would kick in later.

I don't even know, why I bother. So many have tried to tell you this countless of times in various threads but you keep coming back with the same lack of understanding.
[doublepost=1514684282][/doublepost]

this or chatbots

Some posters here post repeatability over and over the same wrong rubbish, totally resistant to any corrective inputs that I start to belive you are on to something! Chatbots! Just not very cleverly set up!

 

[firewood]

Since you conveniently left off part of my post in your quote, why does Apple continue to allow it to be sold on their App Store ??? If the numbers are not correct then it makes no sense for them to continue to allow a developer to profit while giving bad PR to Apple.

Why ask me? Ask Apple.

There are tons of other apps in the app store that don't work at all, don't work according to their description, frequently crash, or have 1 star and a ton of bad reviews. Apple occasionally pulls a few apps months or years later after finally noticing something suspicious or against their App store rules.

And sometimes apps that don't work are highly profitable. Extremely profitable if some trashing on MacRumors drives an app to the very top of the charts.
[doublepost=1514689855][/doublepost]

Again for the umpteenth time: if a processor on a phone is set to run with -let's say- 1.8 GHz and has a 2700 mAh battery

Why did you choose 1.8 GHz when the power management could likely be configured to clock it higher or much lower? If you want a faster device you could also manage and clock it too hard for a battery double that size (half the impedance, etc.). Or be smart and lower the voltage and frequency so the existing battery lasts all day? Power management has far more dimensions and options then people here seem to realize. Most of these big chips are mostly dark most of the time on battery operated devices.

 

[CC77]

Intelligent CPU management of a device powered by lithium-ion battery is expected and appropriate, and really no one's business besides the engineers.

Uh, what? I'm pretty sure that a phone that *I own* definitely gets to be my business.

 

[redfirebird08]

And that is exactly why the battery replacement cost $79 and why apple often refuses a battery replacement and why apple decided to silently throttle their battery worn iPhones.
Because they hate users like you who rather replaces the battery and have acceptable performance instead of buying a new iPhone.
The lack of transparency wasn't a mistake, it was by design of money making.

I would not mind the $80 price. Main thing for me is I got the iPhone 6 in November 2014. Didn’t like the size of it. But I also did not upgrade to the SE in spring 2016.

So now I’m kinda in limbo. Probably will get the SE if they upgrade the components inside of it.

 

[firewood]

Uh, what? I'm pretty sure that a phone that *I own* definitely gets to be my business.

Only by choosing to buy or not to buy. The software rights belong to somebody else, and the actual power management control registers in the SOC are a trade-secret that you can't get.

 

[Michael Goff]

Uh, what? I'm pretty sure that a phone that *I own* definitely gets to be my business.

In a legal sense, you own the hardware and they have the right to change the software however they want. You don’t own the software.

 

[H2SO4]

In a legal sense, you own the hardware and they have the right to change the software however they want. You don’t own the software.

Yes, you license the software. However there are intricacies therein and across different countries.
[doublepost=1514697106][/doublepost]

Why ask me? Ask Apple.

There are tons of other apps in the app store that don't work at all, don't work according to their description, frequently crash, or have 1 star and a ton of bad reviews. Apple occasionally pulls a few apps months or years later after finally noticing something suspicious or against their App store rules.

And sometimes apps that don't work are highly profitable. Extremely profitable if some trashing on MacRumors drives an app to the very top of the charts.
[doublepost=1514689855][/doublepost]

Why did you choose 1.8 GHz when the power management could likely be configured to clock it higher or much lower? If you want a faster device you could also manage and clock it too hard for a battery double that size (half the impedance, etc.). Or be smart and lower the voltage and frequency so the existing battery lasts all day? Power management has far more dimensions and options then people here seem to realize. Most of these big chips are mostly dark most of the time on battery operated devices.

I seriously that many people here have as many years of computer and IC design experience and issued patents as I do. But a few do. Does Burger Thing claim to be one of them?

Stunned that you just managed to fixate on 1.8GHz. Stunned.
The phone could run at 29 THz which could be at 8% of its nominal speed, it makes no difference. At a given frequency the phone will want to consume consume X watts regardless of battery size.
So, can anybody using the phone case with the integrated battery made by Apple confirm that the processor speed increases as there is more 'battery available'? No, thought not.
Seriously if you can't understand that basic concept I'm questioning whether your years of experience were self taught from a dubious source.

With regards to the Apps registering clock speed. Seriously after this has all blown up in Tims face do you really, (and I mean REALLY), think that they are going to sit there and continue to let batterygate spiral out of control if they can prove that the app is giving incorrect readings?
Seriously, before you post back. Just think for a few seconds and consider these points;
This issue has reached board level.
This issue has been reported on globally
Every major division of Apple has had input, (engineering, marketing, Sales, App Store etc).
There are a number of apps that benchmark and/or purport to measure processor speed - If Apple could turn round and say, "We've looked at the apps involved and can say that they are reporting CPU speeds that are not accurate.", do you not think that they would have?
Maybe the actual speeds are less than being reported?

 

[Michael Goff]

Yes, you license the software. However there are intricacies therein and across different countries.
[doublepost=1514697106][/doublepost]
Stunned that you just managed to fixate on 1.8GHz. Stunned.
The phone could run at 29 THz which could be at 8% of its nominal speed, it makes no difference. At a given frequency the phone will want to consume consume X watts regardless of battery size.
So, can anybody using the phone case with the integrated battery made by Apple confirm that the processor speed increases as there is more 'battery available'? No, thought not.
Seriously if you can't understand that basic concept I'm questioning whether your years of experience were self taught from a dubious source.

With regards to the Apps registering clock speed. Seriously after this has all blown up in Tims face do you really, (and I mean REALLY), think that they are going to sit there and continue to let batterygate spiral out of control if they can prove that the app is giving incorrect readings?

I don’t think there’s a single country where the iOS license means they own the OS.

 

[H2SO4]

I don’t think there’s a single country where the iOS license means they own the OS.

Not suggesting there is. What I mean is that some of the things written in a EULA or any contract for that matter aren't worth the paper upon which they are written

 

[Michael Goff]

Not suggesting there is. What I mean is that some of the things written in a EULA or any contract for that matter aren't worth the paper upon which they are written

Oh, agreed on that. I just thought you were on board with the idea of “they can’t do that to my phone lol” idea.

 

[H2SO4]

Oh, agreed on that. I just thought you were on board with the idea of “they can’t do that to my phone lol” idea.

Oh god no. I used to be an avid Apple fan a while back, and I mean avid. Everything I bought was Apple even when its performance was sub standard. I used to be one of those guys that said, "it's in the EULA and you accepted that so deal with it".
Then after being left out in the cold with lack of hardware updates and proprietary software and hardware I came to realise that me sitting there on a pile of money not getting work done or getting it done at half the performance because I couldn't run it on OSX or I needed to hack the EFI for a simple GPU upgrade, or having to change all my M4v files to mp4 the list goes on and on, waiting for Apple to not do it, half a** it or overcharge me for it was just stupid.
That 32bit efi on the original Mac Pro was where thing started to really annoy me, I quote Phil Schiller - "...so that's the new Mac Pro. It's a quad Xeon 64Bit workstation".
Those times now when I catch a bit of a Keynote as I don't watch religiously anymore, I look at the audience and come away thinking to myself, You will be assimilated. (There's a bit here, @36:30-36:45, where the audience reaction just seems contrived later keynotes are similar).

 

[maverick2007]

With this $29 Will get more people to aging apple store and more inflow of people means more revenue! Well done apple first screwing people and asking them to pay to fix issue.

 

[Axam]

Here's the timeline of what happened:

• AppleCare's escalation team approaches Engineering and says, "We're seeing a ton of in and out of warranty returns and repairs due to degraded batteries. This is costing us millions of dollars. Can you figure out why the iPhone 6/s failure rate is so much higher than normal?
• Engineering gets ahold of some Failure Analysis captures from the field to reproduce the issue. They find that when the battery voltage drops due to age or cold weather, the sudden shutdowns occur.
• They look at the peak voltage demands from the iPhone 6/s relative to the battery output curve.
• They realize the fundamental design defect in the iPhone 6/s: the device's peak voltage demand was way, way too high relative to the battery's capabilities. This defect was not present in previous devices, and was fixed in the iPhone 7.
• Engineering, AppleCare, Marketing and sundry Management discuss next steps. They're not going to do a recall, admitting the design defect, because the PR and financial hit would be in the tens of billions. They don't want to keep replacing phones or batteries, because that's costing millions. They're not going to put in UI letting users know their battery needs serviced, because Marketing forbids any public discussion of anything being wrong with Apple products.
• Engineering says, "This is just a voltage problem. If we drop the clocks, we can ensure the devices never go over the peak battery voltage." Thanks to the power management hw & sw, they have good data on the battery voltage potential. The CPU already runs at lots of different clock speeds, depending on load. So it was a very simple change to detect the battery voltage max, and set the max clock speed below that threshold. Problem solved.
• Engineering Management tells senior Execs "Okay, we have a fix for the sudden shutdown failures, but devices are going to be slower as a result. We really need to surface this to users, to mitigate the bad experience." Marketing says absolutely not we never say anything is wrong with Apple products. AppleCare says please just ship it, we have a huge pile of defective phones building up.
• Apple rolls the dice and ships the silent software change, hoping the expensive returns will go down, customers will at least be able to use their devices, if in a degraded state, and prays no one will ever figure out the hack.
• People slowly start figuring out their devices are slower. Finally the GeekBench guys query their database, and the CPU clock/voltage throttling sticks out like a sore thumb.
• All hell breaks loose, and here we are.

It's critical to keep in mind this is not just about "worn out" batteries. Battery voltage drops with cold weather. My iPhone 6 was exhibiting this design defect when it was only a year old, as soon as I exposed it for the first time to cold weather. It would shut off instantly when I stepped outside. After a few months, the shutdowns became frequent as the battery did begin to "wear out" but in my case, this battery was marginal from the factory. Apple Engineering completly screwed up by allowing so little margin between max voltage requirement and worst case battery performance. No other models have had this problem before or since.

This is a coverup for what should be the biggest product recall in history. As long as Apple has people yelling at each other over battery chemistry, they win.

Would like correct you about iPhone 7. It was confirmed that iOS 11.2 will throttle iPhone 7 as well. Looks like Apple didn't fix an issue in 7 and we don't know is it fixed in 8/X or not.

 

[ignatius345]

To but it more succinctly, Apple profited by throttling phones which were shipped with inferior batteries.....

Inferior how?
[doublepost=1514706288][/doublepost]

Yeah, it's fantastic! I come back from time to time to help out my fellow brothers and sisters who haven't seen the light yet. Glad to be of service. It's a lot easier to switch than most people think, and that was holding me back. But it's really so easy and fun!

You just power up the Pixel 2, plug your iPhone into your Pixel 2 with the included adapter, answer 'trust' on the iPhone, and the Pixel 2 copies over all your photos, contacts, even apps - it finds the apps on the Play store and loads them up for you! Even your wallpaper is transferred over! I'll tell you, there's a hell of a lot more innovation happening at Google than at Apple where they seem to be stagnant and afraid to do anything. So boring, same old same old.

And the camera on the Pixel 2 is magical! Way better quality than what I had on the iPhone.

I can go on forever but your best bet would be to watch some youtube videos and head over to a Verizon store and try one out for yourself.

Thanks! Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to spend hours trolling Android web forums about how much more I prefer my iPhone.

 

[MH01]

In a legal sense, you own the hardware and they have the right to change the software however they want. You don’t own the software.

Agreed . Now for the grey part, do they get to alter how your hardware works, via software updates ?

Also , don't forget that while the consumer owns the hardware , Apple still has responsibility that the hardware works as advertised at point of sale.

Let's not forget a replacement battery , restores the hardware performance here .
[doublepost=1514718676][/doublepost]

Oh god no. I used to be an avid Apple fan a while back, and I mean avid. Everything I bought was Apple even when its performance was sub standard. I used to be one of those guys that said, "it's in the EULA and you accepted that so deal with it".
Then after being left out in the cold with lack of hardware updates and proprietary software and hardware I came to realise that me sitting there on a pile of money not getting work done or getting it done at half the performance because I couldn't run it on OSX or I needed to hack the EFI for a simple GPU upgrade, or having to change all my M4v files to mp4 the list goes on and on, waiting for Apple to not do it, half a** it or overcharge me for it was just stupid.
That 32bit efi on the original Mac Pro was where thing started to really annoy me, I quote Phil Schiller - "...so that's the new Mac Pro. It's a quad Xeon 64Bit workstation".
Those times now when I catch a bit of a Keynote as I don't watch religiously anymore, I look at the audience and come away thinking to myself, You will be assimilated. (There's a bit here, @36:30-36:45, where the audience reaction just seems contrived later keynotes are similar).

Ha ha when I started reading this .... I though an old Mac Pro owner

Mine had been relegated to looking good duties , for the reasons you describe

 

[H2SO4]

Agreed . Now for the grey part, do they get to alter how your hardware works, via software updates ?

Also , don't forget that while the consumer owns the hardware , Apple still has responsibility that the hardware works as advertised at point of sale.

Let's not forget a replacement battery , restores the hardware performance here .
[doublepost=1514718676][/doublepost]

Ha ha when I started reading this .... I though an old Mac Pro owner

Mine had been relegated to looking good duties , for the reasons you describe

Your twist on the software affecting how the hardware works is a very interesting one. But yes, big Mac desktop fan. PowerMac G4 1.25MDD, PowerMac G5 1.8DP, PowerMac G5 2.3DP, Mac Pro 1,1 - Mac Pro 5,1 since 2001. I'm now very wary of buying another.

 

[Easttime]

With this $29 Will get more people to aging apple store and more inflow of people means more revenue! Well done apple first screwing people and asking them to pay to fix issue.

It’s not clear to me why we would buy a battery-operated device and expect it to last forever.

But the current debate raises an interesting option. What if a phone-maker priced in “free” battery replacements at initial purchase for the life of the phone? Then end of life for a phone would be (1) the OS outgrows the phone’s hardware (also controversial), or (2) some hardware element fails beyond an advertised warranty period (usual practice for all manufactured goods).

 

[bmot]

I would not mind the $80 price. Main thing for me is I got the iPhone 6 in November 2014. Didn’t like the size of it. But I also did not upgrade to the SE in spring 2016.

So now I’m kinda in limbo. Probably will get the SE if they upgrade the components inside of it.

Many people did mind the $79 though.
Spending $29 on a battery upgrade is a no brainer for most people, at $79 however many would consider a phone upgrade instead.
Apple is very aware of that fact. They lowered it now to $29 simple because they realised they would probably loose more money not acting on this "situation" than on the amount of sales they loose where people go for the battery replacement now instead of a new purchase of an iPhone.
Its another image move, gladly to the advantage of the public this time.

 

[H2SO4]

It’s not clear to me why we would buy a battery-operated device and expect it to last forever.

But the current debate raises an interesting option. What if a phone-maker priced in “free” battery replacements at initial purchase for the life of the phone? Then end of life for a phone would be (1) the OS outgrows the phone’s hardware (also controversial), or (2) some hardware element fails beyond an advertised warranty period (usual practice for all manufactured goods).

But it's clear to me why you have posted what you did. You've not paid enough attention to previous posts? I don't think a single poster here even the ones that want to see Apple find hundreds of millions expect their device to last forever.

 

[Piggie]

So I quote:

"Apple says its team is also always working on ways to make the user experience better, including how performance is managed to avoid unexpected shutdowns as batteries age"

So they will be fitting larger capacity batteries, that will not be so strained and die prematurely in future iPhones then?

 

[maflynn]

So they will be fitting larger capacity batteries, that will not be so strained and die prematurely in future iPhones then?

No, I'd not make that conclusion.

Its funny, apple has been touting how great its Ax processors are and how much faster they are, yet the faster a processor is, the more power it typically draws. At this point in Ax development and performance do we really need that much raw processing power in a phone? Its only my opinion but apple in trying to sell phones was touting a feature, yet that very feature was (and will continue) to impede the overall user experience.

 

[jujufreeze]

In other words offer the $29 replacement fee until this blows over then charge $80 again. By no means a long-term solution. Thanks Apple.