Apple's $29 Battery Replacement Program Could Lead to 16M Fewer iPhones Sold in 2018

[MrGuder]

Same here!

and how do you feel about that?
[doublepost=1515100566][/doublepost]

All of them.......have said they don't do what Apple has done

So why aren't iPhone 4S, 5, and 5S affected?

Why is Apple designing their phones so that even the slightest degradation in battery health requires throttling?
Why are phones throttles that have plenty of battery life in them at the time?

But you are missing the point......no one is disputing how throttling works.
What is at question is WHY did they NEED to throttle the iPhone in the first place? Because there was a defect in the way the battery and CPU voltage is managed at the hardware level. So to prevent phones from shutting down....they throttled them. This was done to prevent the defect from becoming public and forcing a recall to replace the batteries.
So instead they are offering to have the defective battery replaced at $29 for the consumer.

Batteries normally degrade...that is not the issue. But they should not force a phone to shutdown through normal use when there is plenty of battery life left. That is what was happening on the iPhone 6 and 6s and Plus models. So to get around the recall or mass replacement of the batteries......they throttled them.

Very good post!!
I agree whole heartily.

 

[gnipgnop]

So why aren't iPhone 4S, 5, and 5S affected?

5s and earlier all have lithium ion batteries, so age, charge level, and cold will still negatively impact voltage. Apple chose not to support them with the new feature or the $29 battery replacement because they're a tiny % of the active user base. There's no point in doing so.

Batteries normally degrade...that is not the issue. But they should not force a phone to shutdown through normal use when there is plenty of battery life left. That is what was happening on the iPhone 6 and 6s and Plus models. So to get around the recall or mass replacement of the batteries......they throttled them.

1. EOL battery
2. Healthy battery with low charge
3. Cold battery

Those are the three scenarios where voltage can drop below nominal and throttling might occur. Apple has always been perfectly willing to replace the battery in scenario 1, and scenarios 2 and 3 do not require battery replacement. A brand new battery has the same max voltage, nominal voltage, and decrease in voltage through discharge as a battery at 85% capacity. In other words, you're not going to gain anything in terms of performance unless the battery is EOL.

 

[pdoherty]

B.S! People will continue to buy new phones. Realistically, how many people actually buy new phones because of their slower performance?

Uhm, most of them? (feels like a trick question)

How many would be springing $500-$1000 just for a slightly faster phone with

If they hadn't have slowed the phones down, the phones would be turning off instead. Surly Apple could have done nothing, and the result would be even more people wanting to upgrade / buy new batteries?

They MASKED that there was a battery issue and surreptitiously slowed the device without informing the user to the nature of the issue. They were dishonestly covering up their crap batteries, refusing to allow customers to replace the battery (those who figured it may be related), and as a bonus they got people upgrading much sooner than they otherwise would. Stop defending this behavior.

 

[jamezr]

5s and earlier all have lithium ion batteries, so age, charge level, and cold will still negatively impact voltage. Apple chose not to support them with the new feature or the $29 battery replacement because they're a tiny % of the active user base. There's no point in doing so.



1. EOL battery
2. Healthy battery with low charge
3. Cold battery

Those are the three scenarios where voltage can drop below nominal and throttling might occur. Apple has always been perfectly willing to replace the battery in scenario 1, and scenarios 2 and 3 do not require battery replacement. A brand new battery has the same max voltage, nominal voltage, and decrease in voltage through discharge as a battery at 85% capacity. In other words, you're not going to gain anything in terms of performance unless the battery is EOL.

I am not sure you are reading this thread....you seem to pick and choose what to respond to and seem to avoid all the evidence that numerous people have provided for you.
People in the past have been getting denied battery replacement that would have restored their phones to full power.

But you are missing the point......no one is disputing how throttling works or EOL of batteries.

What is at question is WHY did they NEED to throttle the iPhone in the first place? Because there was a defect in the way the battery and CPU voltage is managed at the hardware level. So to prevent phones from shutting down....they throttled them. This was done to prevent the defect from becoming public and forcing a recall to replace the batteries.
So instead they are offering to have the defective battery replaced at $29 for the consumer.

Batteries normally degrade...that is not the issue. But they should not force a phone to shutdown through normal use when there is plenty of battery life left. That is what was happening on the iPhone 6 and 6s and Plus models. So to get around the recall or mass replacement of the batteries......they throttled them.

 

[Abazigal]

My iPhone 4s and iPad 4 are both still on iOS 6 and run like new as well.

That's why I always laugh when people here talk about how great it is that Apple "supports" their old hardware unlike Android which is "obsolete" as soon as you buy the device.

But at what price?

You are missing out on any app which doesn’t support iOS 6, as well as the newer features that come with iOS 7 onwards.

I guess you probably don’t care for them but that’s not why I joined the Apple ecosystem in the first place.

 

[NomadicTy]

Count me on that list. I've bought the latest iphones since the first. This batterygate thing just left a bad taste in my mouth. I may even hold off on doing iOS updates just to keep from being slowed down intentionally.

 

[Christoffee]

Seems reasonable. But I don't think they will say anything to indicate they made a change.

Just like the iPhone 6+ bending. Nearly everyone claimed that the accusation of them bending easily was false and yet Apple tweaked the design of the 6S+ to strengthen the area highlighted as the weak point in the 6. Apple didn't officially acknowledge the change.

Oh agreed! They’ll tell us nothing!

 

[MrX8503]

There are many users on this very forum saying watchOS 4 ruined their Series 0 Apple Watch.

Better than ending support after the 1st version for Android Wear.

The iPad 2 got a longer life because Apple sold it forever. Doesn't mean iOS didn't eventually do it in.

My iPad 1st-gen never made it past iOS 5, which is just as well since it can't handle much else.

Ok so you admit iPads are supported for a long time. Gotcha.

I don't use them for anything that really needs the extra security, and I think the risks are vastly overstated.

It's too bad that we have to choose between security updates and performance loss. I guess we wouldn't want Apple to have to do any extra work.

Why do you care if you don't care about security? Also, Apple supports their devices with security updates longer than Google. If you don't own a Pixel device, good luck.

 

[thekeyring]

Stop defending this behavior.

...no.

 

[Altis]

Better than ending support after the 1st version for Android Wear.

Does "ending support" mean it still does everything it did originally?

"Supporting" devices with permanent updates that ruin it is an anti-consumer practice. Apple does it because it compels people to upgrade and makes less work for their devs, though.

Ok so you admit iPads are supported for a long time. Gotcha.

That's not at all what I said, but thanks for trying to put words in my mouth.

I said the 2nd gen was "supported" longer than the others than other iPads and simply because they continued to sell it longer than they normally do. Even then, later iOS ran horribly on the iPad 2 -- not sure I'd call that much "support".

They're absolutely not supported "a long time". My 2007 PC has Windows 7 and will get updates until at least 2020 and still runs like the day I got it (well, better with the SSD). All the software is still runs and it can run Windows 10 too, supported until who knows when.

As computers, iPads have a very short life... and depends on how much degradation in performance you're willing to put up with.

That's not to mention that apps stop working unless explicitly updated to support new iOS. I have apps that I bought only a few years ago that I can't run on the latest iOS. Such a waste of money as I have absolutely no way to access them on any device that's been updated.

Why do you care if you don't care about security? Also, Apple supports their devices with security updates longer than Google. If you don't own a Pixel device, good luck.

I don't care about Google, why do you keep bringing them up?

I do care about security... but if Apple won't give me security updates without mysteriously bogging my device down to a crawl, then it's not so simple.

 

[Johns12]

But at what price?

You are missing out on any app which doesn’t support iOS 6, as well as the newer features that come with iOS 7 onwards.

I guess you probably don’t care for them but that’s not why I joined the Apple ecosystem in the first place.

I think you'd be quite surprised at how many people with IPhones don't use many apps outside of the Apple ones included, upgrade to the newest IOS without knowing the consequences, and don't use more than 10 or 20% of what the phone is capable of. My wife used to get my old IPhones, I would upgrade every two years. She had absolutely no problems when her phone hit 4 years. The only reason she updated is because I did.

 

[sfkeepay]

“Phones that are running slower can be restored to their original condition with a fresh battery, which is why Apple has decided to offer $29 replacements from now until the end of 2018.”

No, Apple “...decided to offer $29 replacements...” becuase of the potential financial consequences arrising from the unplanned, unwanted disclosure of its actions.

Or better yet, journalistic standards would strongly advise omitting any statements as regards motivation. Your otherwise informative article should not present material as fact when it is a cut-and-paste claim from an Apple press release, what you imagine the motivation to be, or, at worst, what someone at Apple Corporate told you to print. The last of these I am not suggesting is true, but you can see how this stuff can easily get out of hand.

 

[Burger Thing]

The attitude embodied in the post you quoted is why I have little faith that Apple will do anything different in the future. IMO, the best Apple fans are not those who blindly defend Apple, but those who hold Apple to a high standard.

Reasonable people can view the issue in different ways, and that is helpful, but dismissing the issue as a non-issue is not helpful to anybody, and certainly won't encourage Apple to do things better.

Thank you for this post, sracer.

 

[Baymowe335]

All of them.......have said they don't do what Apple has done

So why aren't iPhone 4S, 5, and 5S affected?

Why is Apple designing their phones so that even the slightest degradation in battery health requires throttling?
Why are phones throttles that have plenty of battery life in them at the time?

But you are missing the point......no one is disputing how throttling works.
What is at question is WHY did they NEED to throttle the iPhone in the first place? Because there was a defect in the way the battery and CPU voltage is managed at the hardware level. So to prevent phones from shutting down....they throttled them. This was done to prevent the defect from becoming public and forcing a recall to replace the batteries.
So instead they are offering to have the defective battery replaced at $29 for the consumer.

Batteries normally degrade...that is not the issue. But they should not force a phone to shutdown through normal use when there is plenty of battery life left. That is what was happening on the iPhone 6 and 6s and Plus models. So to get around the recall or mass replacement of the batteries......they throttled them.

You’re riffing and speculating. There is no proof or confirmation of a hardware issue. There are probably 800M 6, 6s, 7, and 8 devices. If 1% have issues, that’s still 8 million people...this does NOT prove a design flaw or hardware issue. The fact it hasn’t been more of an issue proves to me that it’s still isolated.

Further, phones are a lot more powerful now, much more than iPhone 5 and iPhone 4. Apps are more demanding. Again, this happened constantly with my Note, so I know Apple isn’t lying when they say this affects all lithium batteries.

The answer for why throttling is needed could easily be battery health related and the desire to avoid shutdowns like my Note experienced. Google “android boot loop” and you’ll know we suffered through that too.

A healthy battery fixes the issue, so hardware failure is even less likely. It’s just bad batteries, perhaps even 1% that were bad from the factory.

I have several iPhone 6 and 6s in the family and friends circle and none of them have mentioned slow downs and didn’t even know about this issue. I benchmarked 2 iPhone 6 yesterday and both are within 99% of normal Geekbench scores.

Apple is being cool and transparent now and fixing any affected devices, even when 3.5 years old.

 

[Mal Blackadder]

Unfortunately, 16M fewer Iphones sold in 2018 should be because of IOS archaic, artificial limitations then because of battery replacements. I literally just gave up on trying to transfer an audiobook from my android phone to my SE because I couldn’t remember the elaborate process I exercised last time I did it.

Also, in my opinion, Macrumors should show some “courage” and stop handling this subject with their apologist point of view.

stop calling it a “power management feature” and call it what it is: slowing down your device.

This vernacular juggling is boring. If i decide to take an action in which one effect is slowly down your device, and I give the go on that action .... I AM INTENTIONALLY SLOWING DOWN YOUR DEVICE .... because I have INTENTIONALLY taken an action that causes that to happen WITH FULL KNOWLEDGE.

Notice how Macrumors claim that the slowing down was an “inevitable side effect”

There is no such thing as a SIDE EFFECT. There are only EFFECTS. When you take a pill to stop your cough, the effect is that it stops your cough. If there is an additional effect that it makes you extremely tired, this is just ANOTHER EFFECT. ...... not a side effect. Both are the effects of this pill period. Also, the effect of extreme tiredness might be unwanted ... and even “inevitable” ... but a company can’t claim that they are not “intentionally” producing a medicine that also makes you tired because it’s a “side effect” .. when the very chemical they are using intrinsically DOES BOTH and to manufacture this chemical in pill form PRODUCES BOTH.

Apple is using semantics to squirt around this issue and Macrumors is carrying their water with their “watered down” articles.

Be aware of the talking points that is being pushed here. Macrumors is quick to point out that “some people have claimed that Apple is intentionally slowing down devices to push its customers to upgrade”

What this does is DIVERT the focus off of what we know for certain which is that Apple INTENTIONALLY SLOWS DOWN YOUR IPHONE .... and instead includes an unproven motive that they are doing it to push upgrades. Now, people are arguing over intent ... and NOT the action itself, and the narrative is manipulated into WHY Apple did what they did ... instead of WHAT they actually did.

This website and any Apple orientated website are in a difficult position, Apple have a history of making things difficult for a website or publication that criticises Apple, such as Apple not offering that website access to its product launches, refusing to reply to questions that that website or publication may ask Apple about an issue, Apple gives critics the cold shoulder, and that can make things difficult for this website to report on Apple, a website that has experienced this is http://www.theregister.co.uk/ . Curiously enough Apple have only recently started to reply to questions from The Register when the issue of this throttling due to battery problem came to light, that might be a indication of how Apple are panicking about this and are doing their utmost to get their PR spin on this issue out to as many media outlets as possible.
[doublepost=1515127280][/doublepost]This!!!

Now you are being disingenuous to the discussion...... i think this is done on purpose on your part.
Apple phones were shutting down because the battery could not provide the voltage the chipset needed.
That is a defect.......That does not happen to other phones makers on the scale it is happening to iphones.
Other phone makers do not purposely mislead their customers like Apple did in throttling iphones.
Other phone makers batteries degraded over time which resulted in them having to be charged more often. They weren't throttled as Apple did.

All batteries degrade over time......well known fact. But this does not make phones shutdown. This only happens to iphones and Apple has admitted as much. That is the defect on how the chipset handles voltage coming from the battery.

If there was no defect the phone would not shutdown at peak CPU voltage consumption. It would just consume more battery and need to be charged sooner.

But why does the phone have to die? Why doesn't the battery life just diminish over time as all batteries do?
What is wrong with Apple's battery and chipset technology that it shuts down the phone? Why doesn't it just continue to work as normal with just a degradation in battery life? That is how most electronics work......

 

[obezcinnet]

I upgraded from 5S to X last month, and it wasn't because 5S was too slow or died half way through the day.
I upgraded because 5S was over 4 years old and it was time. I don't get the people complaining about their 3 year old phones not performing like it did in the past. new OS and 3rd party apps can use more cpu or battery, get over it. your new $29 battery won't fix whatever you think you are experiencing.

 

[gwaizai]

You couldn’t sound any more foolish if you tried. If you expect three year old phones to run as fast as they did when you first bought them, you are sadly mistaken

No you are sadly mistaken. I do and I have.

My 5S runs just as good as it did when I bought it in April 2014.
Last year my battery swelled up suddenly, so I
got a Third Party replacement. I've never noticed any slowdown ever--so replacing batteries seems to work.

But I also never upgraded beyond 9.1.

I stopped updated at 9.1 because of experience with a Mac Book Pro which I kept current, and
with every subsequent update it got slower, and slower, and slower...

 

[chatin]

I went looking for an app that would help me get a handle on the longevity of my battery and was immediately confronted by some of the lamest assortment of bad product you might see in a typical PC app store. No Coconut, which is MIA for iOS.

 

[Abazigal]

The attitude embodied in the post you quoted is why I have little faith that Apple will do anything different in the future. IMO, the best Apple fans are not those who blindly defend Apple, but those who hold Apple to a high standard.

One can hold Apple to a high standard and still acknowledge their accomplishments and milestones, rather than continually dismiss and disparage everything they do, regardless of merit.

They are not mutually exclusive.

 

[keatth]

The stupid thing about this whole thing is people would upgrade anyway if their iPhones were shutting off randomly before the battery ran out, the real problem is the fact that the iOS hasn’t been fixed and only covered up, so was it by design all along? And if so wouldn’t they also get sued for that eventually?

Apple will now simply stop supporting so many older devices with each new iOS release to make up for this.

 

[jamezr]

You’re riffing and speculating. There is no proof or confirmation of a hardware issue. There are probably 800M 6, 6s, 7, and 8 devices. If 1% have issues, that’s still 8 million people...this does NOT prove a design flaw or hardware issue. The fact it hasn’t been more of an issue proves to me that it’s still isolated.

Further, phones are a lot more powerful now, much more than iPhone 5 and iPhone 4. Apps are more demanding. Again, this happened constantly with my Note, so I know Apple isn’t lying when they say this affects all lithium batteries.

The answer for why throttling is needed could easily be battery health related and the desire to avoid shutdowns like my Note experienced. Google “android boot loop” and you’ll know we suffered through that too.

A healthy battery fixes the issue, so hardware failure is even less likely. It’s just bad batteries, perhaps even 1% that were bad from the factory.

I have several iPhone 6 and 6s in the family and friends circle and none of them have mentioned slow downs and didn’t even know about this issue. I benchmarked 2 iPhone 6 yesterday and both are within 99% of normal Geekbench scores.

Apple is being cool and transparent now and fixing any affected devices, even when 3.5 years old.

All batteries degrade over time......well known fact. But this does not make phones shutdown. This only happens to iphones and Apple has admitted as much. That is the defect on how the chipset handles voltage coming from the battery.

If there was no defect the phone would not shutdown at peak CPU voltage consumption. It would just consume more battery and need to be charged sooner.

But why does the phone have to die? Why doesn't the battery life just diminish over time as all batteries do?
What is wrong with Apple's battery and chipset technology that it shuts down the phone? Why doesn't it just continue to work as normal with just a degradation in battery life? That is how most electronics work......

 

[magicschoolbus]

Well, Good! The company lied about its "software updates" for years when they were actually "slowdown updates".

10.3 on the 6S is the last good iPhone.

 

[kdarling]

Hmm.

Wonder how much of this whole thing is related to the rumor that Apple will develop its own power management chips, and why it’ll soon be dropping Dialog as a supplier.

 

[gnipgnop]

What is at question is WHY did they NEED to throttle the iPhone in the first place? Because there was a defect in the way the battery and CPU voltage is managed at the hardware level. So to prevent phones from shutting down....they throttled them. This was done to prevent the defect from becoming public and forcing a recall to replace the batteries.

There is zero evidence of a hardware defect. Zero. None. Nada. There is plenty of evidence regarding the known limitations for lithium ion batteries to deliver voltage to the CPU. They can have voltage issues when they're EOL. They can have voltage issues when they're healthy and on a low charge. And they can have voltage issues in cold conditions. I'm going with things that have been proven. You're relying on pure conjecture.

 

[smock]

There is zero evidence of a hardware defect. Zero. None. Nada. There is plenty of evidence regarding the known limitations for lithium ion batteries to deliver voltage to the CPU. They can have voltage issues when they're EOL. They can have voltage issues when they're healthy and on a low charge. And they can have voltage issues in cold conditions. I'm going with things that have been proven. You're relying on pure conjecture.

They really need to stop using those cheap Chinese batteries that cost about $2 apiece.
[doublepost=1515162196][/doublepost]

They really need to stop using those cheap Chinese batteries that cost about $2 apiece.

Apple just didn't want to recall all those Millions of defective phones with defective batteries. So they put out the software update instead, That slowed phones. So they wouldn't shut off. It saved Billions of dollars For their company. They were hoping nobody would find out. Also they wanted their loyal customers, just to go out and buy a new phone from them. Instead of telling them the truth about the batteries, Being junk.