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

[ronno]

"MacRumors said: ↑
Affected iPhones see throttling during times of peak power usage, such as when running a benchmark."

I'm curious what the motivation is for this site to continue to try to mislead people.

Indeed. I had a 6 with the throttling, and the thing is SLOW ALL THE TIME. Even Apple states that they will be slower to launch apps, lower frame rates, etc. etc. etc. It says so right in the press release.
This article should be corrected.

 

[femike]

Well that's obvious.
Have no doubt that Apple had spent effort on calculating the economic benefits of the secret software fix in great detail.
Apple would of had a quite good estimate of its impact. It would be no surprise to them.

 

[says_stuff]

So pissed at current apple, right now.

I still haven’t gotten over the fact that my original ipad pro 12.9 didn’t get fully updated when it could (3 apps simultaneously), so i should have considered buying a new ipad probably, to get with the times, right?

Now they mess with my iphone’s performance (but they wouldn’t say that i could buy a new battery to avoid feeling frustrated with the sudden lagginess, no, that would be too cheap). And it’s not just the device they are holding hostage, this thing has like a 1000€ worth of apps installed. Are they trying to force people to pay up? What did they expect to happen?

 

[s2smooth4u]

If sales go down that much maybe just maybe they will decrease the prices of these new iPhones $1200.00 is just getting ridiculous.

I'm definitely getting my battery changed in my 6s in 2018 for $29.00 and won't be paying $1200.00 for a new iPhone. It's not hard to figure out which is the better deal.

I have a 6 as well and I plan on replacing my battery.

 

[Alphazoid]

A friend and i were talking and he plans to take advantage of the program and keep his phone another 2yrs.

 

[Mr. Donahue]

What do you do if the Lightning connector got loose? Is there a repair program for it? It's a serious problem, because it randomly disconnects while charging, or while flying my drone.

That’s a manufacturing defect. It happened to my launch day 6 and I sent it in to Apple to repair it for freee. Don’t let them BS you. Complain and make a scene like I did then they’ll give in and replace it for free as they should. I suspect it happened on a lot of iPhones but they just let it ride and try to tell u to pay for it. But argue wit them. Make them do it.

 

[john123]

This is a non story...This won't effect future sales for Apple...

Your personal, data-less opinion on an Internet forum versus scenario analysis done by people paid 6 figure (and up) salaries at a professional firm that does this sort of thing for a living.

Gee, I wonder which has more credibility.

 

[NT1440]

Your personal, data-less opinion on an Internet forum versus scenario analysis done by people paid 6 figure (and up) salaries at a professional firm that does this sort of thing for a living.

Gee, I wonder which has more credibility.

Lol the same firms that report on supply chain issues months ahead of time that are miraculously not present when launch day arrives? I’m asking because that’s a running trope going back at least 7 years...

 

[Baymowe335]

Nonsense article based on pure speculation.

In other news, I predict they sell 18M MORE iPhones because of increased foot traffic in Apple retail stores.

People love new things. TONS of people will use this as an excuse to treat themselves to a new iPhone. Most people don’t like to fix what’s broken or breaking....they like to replace.

You see how many people trade perfectly good cars for peanuts to buy or lease a new one?

Terrible analysis but it’s typical at Barclay.

 

[Altis]

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

I'd wager these days, slow devices is the single biggest reason that compels people to upgrade.

It's not like the form factor or features are changing that much. Battery life isn't getting longer. The camera is a tad crisper and the hardware is a bit faster (well, at least at first ).

 

[kstotlani]

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

I did. 3 of my friends did. My wife almost did. You see I didn’t have to go searching for this data. The percentage is way higher than you might think.

 

[actcyclist]

Though Apple may not have been aiming to get customers to upgrade their devices by implementing power management features, it's an inevitable side effect, hence why the battery program could cut into sales somewhat.

Why should I as a customer accept Apple's claim that they didn't do this intentionally? From my perspective Apple is one of the most cleverly managed companies in the world so I find it beyond belief that they would not have been aware that early upgrades/sales would result from slowing older devices.
It's blindingly obvious to consumers that upgrading is a natural response to a phone getting slow, but Apple has the temerity to say this didn't occur to them. I don't believe them, they're not to be trusted anymore.

 

[Abs_p]

So what is your point GizmoDVD; you say that all should spend 300 to 1K every three years on a new phone? This is new in Apple history and not just iPhones...You could always count on any hardware you bought from Apple would last and perform for years and several years. Now Apple has been caught in a Corrupt obsolesces and it will be proved it is not just on iPhone!. So stop your snarky comments

FWIW, if you sell every iPhone every year and buy a new one, the most you would have to add would be around 150-160. You buy a iPhone 7 for 650+tax, sell it for around 520 just before the new one comes out, add $150-160 and buy another one,rinse repeat, been doing that since 2010. This year is the first time I had to add over $160 to buy a new phone and that is because of iPhone X.

And using a single phone for 3-4 years is done by a very small number of people. Most people upgrade their phones every 2 odd years.
[doublepost=1515030673][/doublepost]

My iPhone 6 has 99% battery health (1810mAh design, 1800mAh actual) and is not throttling according to Lirum. Runs like absolute ass on the latest iOS.
The actual problem is the OS has become bloated (natural as hardware gets more powerful). Perhaps apple should tune the OS to adapt to the CPU. But you know...sales.

Not sure how the hell my battery is so good after all this time - but I've never run the phone down to a critical point, I'm sure that helps.

It was more to do with 1GB ram than the CPU. iPhone 6 has aged horribly and tbh Apple doesn't even make iPhone 6 anymore, that product wont even be supported after iOS 12. 2018, iPhone 6+1GB ram, they dont go together.

 

[kstotlani]

Apple is digging a nice hole here because the batteries were never meant to be replaced. They are glued in tight and are usually destroyed when being removed. A special robot does the swap at the Apple store. There is usually only one per store per model. If a line forms then rationed battery service ensues.

You are joking right? Have you see the tear down videos?

 

[HallStevenson]

I intend to have the battery in my 6+ replaced and will buy some time before upgrading now

 

[Glideslope]

This will be Timmy's excuse for the bad iPhone X sales numbers.

No it won't. Face ID uncertainty, too much $ for too little innovation, and the 8+ will be the reason.

 

[mikethemartian]

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

It was the main motivation for me. It is nice to have new features but the biggest benefit is not having a significant lag between my typing a search word into Safari and seeing the letters appear in the box considering it is something I am constantly doing.

 

[gyang333]

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

My iPhone 5 battery was becoming very volatile. The status would show 20% left, and then just die. I was going to just go in and upgrade to a 6 (or maybe it was the 6s at the time). Instead figured I would pay to get a new battery. Ended up satisfied until the 7 came out. Yes, anecdotal but there are certainly cases where someone who might be inclined to upgrade ends up paying $29 for a new battery just to see if it does anything and then ends up not updating just because they "upgraded" the internals of their current iPhone.

 

[lazard]

My mom was considering upgrading her 6S after complaining for months about sluggish performance. I took her to the Apple store to get the battery changed today and now it's working fine for her to use for a while longer.

Edit: They didn't need to use a special robot to change the battery like chatin claimed.

 

[RickInHouston]

No s+&* Sherlock!

 

[whiteonline]

I read somewhere that, since the release of iOS 10, Apple has cut off access to battery details for third-party apps in the App Store, rendering these apps completely useless as a result. That may be why you're getting a 99% health reading. Try coconutBattery if you have a Mac. My battery's at the 87% mark after 3yr worth of charge cycles (surprising in itself, but not as unrealistic as 99%) and it's actually running relatively well on iOS 11.2.

Thanks for the info. Still showing 98.8% of design capacity which is still shocking to me!
[doublepost=1515031906][/doublepost]

FWIW, if you sell every iPhone every year and buy a new one, the most you would have to add would be around 150-160. You buy a iPhone 7 for 650+tax, sell it for around 520 just before the new one comes out, add $150-160 and buy another one,rinse repeat, been doing that since 2010. This year is the first time I had to add over $160 to buy a new phone and that is because of iPhone X.

And using a single phone for 3-4 years is done by a very small number of people. Most people upgrade their phones every 2 odd years.
[doublepost=1515030673][/doublepost]

It was more to do with 1GB ram than the CPU. iPhone 6 has aged horribly and tbh Apple doesn't even make iPhone 6 anymore, that product wont even be supported after iOS 12. 2018, iPhone 6+1GB ram, they dont go together.

Understood about the RAM.
However it's still disingenuous on Apple's part to document the 6 as supported for the current OS.

 

[Macaholic868]

It’s nice to see Apple doing the right thing. If it’s true that these software changes were put in place to mitigate issues with random restarts due to battery issues then Apple could and should have instituted warning messages to let users know what the underlying problem actually was and that they should replace the battery to fix it.

If they’d have done that out of the gate they wouldn’t need to charge less for their battery replacement program to make amends for their very public mistake but they screwed up and will bear the costs of that mistake as a result. As well they should. There will be increased public scrutiny of iOS performance on “older” devices in the future. As well they should.

 

[Amplelink]

The reality is many people can't justify spending hundreds (or, ~$1000) to buy a new phone every two years. And many people simply don't care about the latest and the greatest.

My dad's iPhone 6 Plus was so slow that he (a very much non-tech person) felt very frustrated (even wiped his phone clean because he thought it has got some kind of virus). I bought him an iPhone 8 plus as a present for his birthday, he couldn't really tell the differences (other than the obvious ones like the camera looks different) but he's just happy that using the new phone just feels like using his 6p when he first bought it.

That pretty much sums up my experience too. Haha
[doublepost=1515033147][/doublepost]

It’s nice to see Apple doing the right thing. If it’s true that these software changes were put in place to mitigate issues with random restarts due to battery issues then Apple could and should have instituted warning messages to let users know what the underlying problem actually was and that they should replace the battery to fix it.

If they’d have done that out of the gate they wouldn’t need to charge less for their battery replacement program to make amends for their very public mistake but they screwed up and will bear the costs of that mistake as a result. As well they should. There will be increased public scrutiny of iOS performance on “older” devices in the future. As well they should.

The shutdown absolutely was a very real issue. People were talking about it on here occasionally. I experienced it with my own eyes. Apple just screwed up how they communicated the fix. Complete PR debacle.

 

[Bawstun]

The headline of this article is one of the many costly reasons the board of Apple Inc. will be voting to remove Tim Cook as CEO, yesterday. LOL

 

[mi7chy]

Don't worry. Apple has other schemes planned to force user upgrades than what they've used so far.

- Minimal screen size
- Performance degrade via iOS
- Borderline DRAM
- Bendable aluminum
- Bare minimal flash storage
- Random iCloud lock out
- Don't backport new iOS features to previous models
- Obsolete 32-bit devices
- Degrade battery
- Worsen reception and throughput with inferior radio
- Delay/disable gigabit LTE
- Battery replacement shortage
- Accelerate OLED degradation/burn-in
- Migrate to 128-bit ARM architecture and obsolete 64-bit