Apple Will Replace the Battery in Your iPhone 6 or Later Even if It Passes a Genius Bar Diagnostic Test

[cmwade77]

Restore iOS If it's super hot, I had that one time, if it gets hot you know there's some rogue process using excessive resources and drains your battery.



Apple won't touch it as soon as they see a third party battery or just anything else in the phone.

That's why you take it to an authorized repair center if that happens, they usually won't care.
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I would suspect that this would be caught in Australia under misleading and deceptive advertising.

Argument would be that a customer was sold something which was advertised as having such and such processor operating x times faster than previous generation hardware and being more power efficient. Whilst it was true at the time of purchase, this isn't the case after a software update that has slowed down the product as the battery is unable to sustain the advertised performance due to design of the product despite CPU being advertised being "more power efficient".
This is further exuberated by the company staff refusing to replace the battery and or advising customers to upgrade to a new product.
My 2c (but could be wrong, I am not a lawyer)

Most countries seem to have a similar law to this and I think that you are quite right as to how it would be handled.

 

[RecentlyConverted]

May all these lawsuits make a permanent change in how things are handled at the HQ.

I replaced my 6s because the slow downs, shut downs and lag when my 11th month old 6s was fine otherwise. I would have liked that $1k I spent on the 7+ to remain in my pocket, but I know better now.

Glad that folks won’t get the run around now if they want the battery changed.

But why would you buy another Apple product after such a bad experience with the 6S? I had ( and am still having a bad experience with mine), I walked into a retailer a few months ago and they had an amazing deal on iPhone 7. Years ago I would have bought a new iPhone at that price without hesitation. This time I thought differently. When I see lovely Samsung phones I think, great phone shame it runs Android. With the iPhone I thought, nice phone - but it runs iOS!

 

[agsystems]

Ugh went to the Apple store on Saturday and because the battery was at 84% capacity they said didn’t need to be replace. Now this. Will have to go back sometime

Uh - just wondering - what does geekbench says about your iphone? at 84% they are not supposed to doing any slowdown/battery management

 

[RecentlyConverted]

because they know they royally ****ed it up and just are too proud to admit it's a probably with the entire line of batteries used

Exactly, I will be getting a new batteries fitted to my devices, but I will hold tight for a while to see if they source better quality units.

 

[cmwade77]

I just came home from an appt in which I thought I would get a new battery. After diagnostics, I was told my phone didn’t qualify! When I left my house my battery was 98% and when I got there it was 55%. They saw that I had no apps running in background...etc.... was told to try a reset to factory settings...that might help. So much for Apple offering battery....even if you pay for it.

Did you show them this article and point out that Apple has said to replace it anyway? Honestly, it is a new policy and it is possible that not everyone had been told about this yet, give it a few days and try again.

 

[Rogifan]

I would suspect that this would be caught in Australia under misleading and deceptive advertising.

Argument would be that a customer was sold something which was advertised as having such and such processor operating x times faster than previous generation hardware and being more power efficient. Whilst it was true at the time of purchase, this isn't the case after a software update that has slowed down the product as the battery is unable to sustain the advertised performance due to design of the product despite CPU being advertised being "more power efficient".
This is further exuberated by the company staff refusing to replace the battery and or advising customers to upgrade to a new product.
My 2c (but could be wrong, I am not a lawyer)

Is that in the fine print when you buy an iPhone or any computer for that matter? Apple isn’t advertising a gerkbench score or that it will take only x number of seconds to launch an app or whatever. And again unless you can find a smoking gun, like a memo from Cupertino telling retail staff not to replace batteries but encourage people to buy a new phone instead then I don’t see how Apple can be found guilty of anything.

 

[cmaier]

But why would you buy another Apple product after such a bad experience with the 6S? I had ( and am still having a bad experience with mine), I walked into a retailer a few months ago and they had an amazing deal on iPhone 7. Years ago I would have bought a new iPhone at that price without hesitation. This time I thought differently. When I see lovely Samsung phones I think, great phone shame it runs Android. With the iPhone I thought, nice phone - but it runs iOS!

Of course Samsung owners have bad experiences too. Exploding phones. Lacking software updates. Terrible service when something goes wrong. etc.

 

[cmwade77]

Are people still complaining about Apple making their old phones last longer instead of randomly shutting down, like in emergency situations? Wow...

Umm, the issue is that other phones don't have to do this, this is something that Apple and Apple alone is doing.

Consider electric vehicles for a moment:
Let's say you buy an electric vehicle and then after the battery is say 3 years old or 80% of the capacity, the car reduces the top speed to 45 MPH no matter how charged the battery is. You would say that is wrong and you would be correct in saying this. The manufacturer then comes back and says if they don't do this, the car might randomly turn off. Again, you would say this is wrong and you would be correct.

Now it does make sense to slow the car down when it gets below say 5% battery to ensure you can make it to a charger before running out of battery completely. But to throttle it when fully charged at 80% would not make sense nor would anyone put up with it, it would be considered a faulty design, the same goes with the phone.

 

[kazmac]

But why would you buy another Apple product after such a bad experience with the 6S? I had ( and am still having a bad experience with mine), I walked into a retailer a few months ago and they had an amazing deal on iPhone 7. Years ago I would have bought a new iPhone at that price without hesitation. This time I thought differently. When I see lovely Samsung phones I think, great phone shame it runs Android. With the iPhone I thought, nice phone - but it runs iOS!

Why? I tried Android and did not mesh with it well. Apple gave me a discount and other freebies to come back (which was due to 3 failed iPhone activations in my attempt to replace the 6s before I jumped to Android.) I bought a 7+ and was pretty happy for awhile until iOS 11.

I have also purchased a PC laptop and have as many frustrations with that as I do my iMac. Unlike many cross platform wizards here, I have no idea how to troubleshoot Windows. Now Macs and iDevices, yes, I can usually figure out what is wrong.

So beyond troubleshooting - Why stick around? The ecosystem, yes, but when Apple stuff works it works great and I am always taken care of. I just hope this is the very last serious faux pas Apple make.

This lack of transparency and accumulating software screwups is a huge bummer though.

 

[RecentlyConverted]

Of course Samsung owners have bad experiences too. Exploding phones. Lacking software updates. Terrible service when something goes wrong. etc.

I think you are a little too eager to defend Apple and I don’t think you read my post. I was stating I have seen many Samsung phones that I liked the look of. Especially the screens, years ahead of Apple at the time, but I could not bring myself to buy one as they ran Android. Yes Samsung had serious problems with the exploding batteries, but they sorted that very quickly and from recent reports the new batteries are very good.

My comment about the iPhone 7 running iOS was because I thought Apple had not optimized iOS 10 & 11 for 6S or was deliberately taxing the CPU to make it slow. That was before the information was made public that they were slowing down phones with batteries that were poor. Year old or less batteries that are poor. So now it’s, nice phone, shame about the battery.

 

[deanthedev]

Totally different types of updates. In Android, what are considered core apps in iOS, are updated independently.

As for iOS, many of us often wish that our iOS devices had NOT been upgraded to the newest version. That's when they get slowed down the most.

Not to mention that iOS version numbers are almost meaningless, since new features are often NOT implemented by Apple for the older devices. It feels like updates are pushed onto us just so Apple can make claims about how many people get them.

I’ll clarify.

Most Android devices don’t get SECURITY updates.

 

[RecentlyConverted]

Kazmac I see your point. Me I decided to stick with my devices as I didn’t fancy Android or Windows. I thought I would keep my devices going with battery cases ( cheap Chinese as the mophie case was too large and Apple don’t make a plus case).

I thought I would stick it out to see if Apple fixed the problems and if so I would get my monies worth then upgrade if they brought out a killer feature.

It looks like Apple will fix things ( battery swap and iOS upgrades), but this was forced on them not their choice, but doesn’t matter how we get there as long as we end up with a good product!

 

[Mad Mac Maniac]

Back when news of possible throttling first hit in October, you yourself noted that your phone had been slowed down... way down:

It’s amazing how good you seem to be at finding my post from months ago and yet missed mine from this very thread earlier today....

<snip>

As an aside, I also have an iPhone 6, so I also have an vested interest in this being handled well. I had a lot of issues/sluggishness with my 6 after iOS 11, but lately has seemed to be doing much better.

When I downloaded the app to determine my CPU speed, I noticed that my iPhone was NOT being throttled. It was apparently some iOS 11 thing that has resolved itself.

So think about this.

My CPU was working at full speed; horrible lag.
My CPU is halved due to low power mode; no significant/noticeable difference.

What that says to me is that this whole CPU throttling thing is a bit of a red herring. iPhones processor is powerful enough that even when throttled it should function sufficiently barring any other issues.

iOS 11 was a catasrophe for me at times initially. Most of my complaints have gone away. Still slower than 3 years ago and a struggle at times, but way better. I would wager if I had done a restore (which I didn’t do) things would have improved immediately. All of this is on Apple. They should be doing a better job at getting new OS’s to run on old hardware, but none of this screems intentional to me and none of it has to do with this particular battery issue.

I should also reiterate that since my iPhone doesn’t appear to be throttled, I can’t speak to people experiencing this, but my mimicking of throttling (with low power mode) doesn’t result in a big difference. This is why I would love to see a lag video of an iPhone with battery throttling on a clean restore compared to that same iphone with a new battery

 

[kdarling]

... at 84% they are not supposed to doing any slowdown/battery management

No one knows yet what parameter iOS is using to enable throttling.

It could be based on a calculated battery capacity, but Apple hasn’t said so, nor have they said that the 80% used for battery replacements is also the enable limit. Doesn’t seem to be, since people who Apple tested as above that number still report a slowdown.

AnandTech thinks it could simply be based on the battery cycle count, a hard number that’s much easier to obtain.

The odd thing is that other major phone makers have stated that they don’t use the battery age at all.

 

[joeblough]

Are people still complaining about Apple making their old phones last longer instead of randomly shutting down, like in emergency situations? Wow...

no, we are complaining that they took it way too far in iOS11. i never had a random shutdown on my ios10 iphone6, even right before i needed to have the battery replaced in early 2017. both my kids iphone6 are still running ios10, they have original batteries, have never randomly shut down, and still have good performance. (i.e. usable, unlike my iphone6 which is unusable.)

 

[kdarling]

It’s amazing how good you seem to be at finding my post from months ago and yet missed mine from this very thread earlier today....

That’s because I was only looking years back to see what your previous iPhone model was, to save time asking.

Since you don’t seem to see much difference using low power mode, it made me wonder if you had noticed any performance increase when you went from the 5 to the 6+, since that’s about the same as cutting the cpu speed in half like low power mode.

I should also reiterate that since my iPhone doesn’t appear to be throttled, I can’t speak to people experiencing this, but my mimicking of throttling (with low power mode) doesn’t result in a big difference. This is why I would love to see a lag video of an iPhone with battery throttling on a clean restore compared to that same iphone with a new battery

Agreed, videos would be helpful. So would more data like battery cycle count, state of charge, etc.

 

[joeblough]

I just don't understand what some folks ideal final outcome from this situation would be. Timmy's head on a stake rotating on the top of his campus?

wait... that would be really cool. it does not have to be his actual head. in fact, it would be better if it were a giant papier-mâché Tim Cook head on a stick.
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I had my iPhone 6 battery replaced in June for full $79 price, they won't refund me the $50 now that the price is lower (tried customer support twice about this already), and my phone is already being throttled AGAIN on a 6-month old battery with >90% capacity/life remaining... this sucks

same here - 2014 iphone6 / 9 month old battery with 85-88% health according to coconut battery and the phone seems to be throttled to 840Mhz or 600MHz anytime the battery is below 80%. at the very least, this is a really bad bug.

 

[Mac 128]

Does this mean the "throttling" patch does not affect the iPhone 5s?

 

[cmaier]

I think you are a little too eager to defend Apple

I didn’t say a single word about Apple. Shows where your bias is.
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No one knows yet what parameter iOS is using to enable throttling.

It could be based on a calculated battery capacity, but Apple hasn’t said so, nor have they said that the 80% used for battery replacements is also the enable limit. Doesn’t seem to be, since people above that number still report a slowdown.

AnandTech thinks it could simply be based on the battery cycle count, a number that’s much easier to find.

The odd thing is that other major phone makers have stated that they don’t use the battery age at all.

They may simply measure delta-I.

 

[reggavegga]

Wife just got off the phone with Apple. What a load of BS. They said would have had to buy the battery after December 14th in order to get a refund. She had hers changed on Oct 14th. No where in any article have I read anything about Dec 14th.

 

[cmaier]

Wife just got off the phone with Apple. What a load of BS. They said would have had to buy the battery after December 14th in order to get a refund. She had hers changed on Oct 14th. No where in any article have I read anything about Dec 14th.

Nor did you read anything about oct 14th. It’s not surprising when a company doesn’t offer price-matching refunds for purchases/services that are months old. It’s surprising when they do.

And it’s a good thing -if you had to refund the price difference for previous customers every time you reduced the price, you’d be disincentives to ever lower the price.

 

[mariachi4]

Anyone knows the $29 battery replacement is also for Iphone 6 and later that are still under warranty? Or its free?

 

[cmaier]

Anyone knows the $29 battery replacement is also for Iphone 6 and later that are still under warranty? Or its free?

Under warranty is free (so long as there isn’t water damage or anything voids the warranty)

 

[deferredAnon]

It’s amazing how good you seem to be at finding my post from months ago and yet missed mine from this very thread earlier today....



When I downloaded the app to determine my CPU speed, I noticed that my iPhone was NOT being throttled. It was apparently some iOS 11 thing that has resolved itself.

So think about this.

My CPU was working at full speed; horrible lag.
My CPU is halved due to low power mode; no significant/noticeable difference.

What that says to me is that this whole CPU throttling thing is a bit of a red herring. iPhones processor is powerful enough that even when throttled it should function sufficiently barring any other issues.

iOS 11 was a catasrophe for me at times initially. Most of my complaints have gone away. Still slower than 3 years ago and a struggle at times, but way better. I would wager if I had done a restore (which I didn’t do) things would have improved immediately. All of this is on Apple. They should be doing a better job at getting new OS’s to run on old hardware, but none of this screems intentional to me and none of it has to do with this particular battery issue.

I should also reiterate that since my iPhone doesn’t appear to be throttled, I can’t speak to people experiencing this, but my mimicking of throttling (with low power mode) doesn’t result in a big difference. This is why I would love to see a lag video of an iPhone with battery throttling on a clean restore compared to that same iphone with a new battery

Every iPhone 6 is throttled. You have to wait till the battery wears down below 50% or 25% for it to show throttling! If you check it at 99% battery charge, there is no throttling! At least, that has been my experience.

 

[5105973]

Why? I tried Android and did not mesh with it well. Apple gave me a discount and other freebies to come back (which was due to 3 failed iPhone activations in my attempt to replace the 6s before I jumped to Android.) I bought a 7+ and was pretty happy for awhile until iOS 11.

I have also purchased a PC laptop and have as many frustrations with that as I do my iMac. Unlike many cross platform wizards here, I have no idea how to troubleshoot Windows. Now Macs and iDevices, yes, I can usually figure out what is wrong.

So beyond troubleshooting - Why stick around? The ecosystem, yes, but when Apple stuff works it works great and I am always taken care of. I just hope this is the very last serious faux pas Apple make.

This lack of transparency and accumulating software screwups is a huge bummer though.

I have a 7 Plus, too. What did iOS 11 do to yours? My battery started draining almost twice as fast until one of the incremental updates. Then it stopped draining as fast. Then something set it off again for awhile. Now it drains faster than it did when new but not ridiculously so. The phone is exactly one year old.

I also had random app crashes and some overheating from time to time but that just could have been bad apps like Pokémon Go. And no it wasn’t Pokémon Go running my battery down. I wasn’t using that app much when I was having rapid battery drain.

My teenager’s 7 Plus didn’t get updated until fairly recently so it missed out on the drama.

By the way—I’m asking this of anyone, where is Coconut Battery? I searched for it in the App Store but it doesn’t come up.