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I mean, why not?
For technical reasons, as someone has mentioned, phones do a lot of maintenance tasks at night such as updates, backups, machine learning tasks (recalculating test prediction, photo recognition), and probably a lot of other things we don't know about.

But for social reasons, for me at least, what if a family member or friend needs help, or tornado warning, or missile alert (false alarm, but it happened).
 
Really hoping they add some flexibility for phones without always on display. There should at least be an option to extend the screen timeout to 15-30 minutes or more. It's on a charger, aside from burn-in there's no reason not to leave it on for a long time, and that still applies to always on displays so they've already taken that into consideration. Not really any reason for this not to work the same on all phones.
I doubt that'll happen tbh, they'll probably want to use this feature as a carrot for people to upgrade to a newer Pro-level phone with an always-on display.
 
For technical reasons, as someone has mentioned, phones do a lot of maintenance tasks at night such as updates, backups, machine learning tasks (recalculating test prediction, photo recognition), and probably a lot of other things we don't know about.

But for social reasons, for me at least, what if a family member or friend needs help, or tornado warning, or missile alert (false alarm, but it happened).
Technical reason can be throw out of window. It’s not my problem those maintenance tasks can’t be done. Figure out alternative window to do them or don’t do at all.
As for social reason, I can see certain occupations force you to be 24/7 available (no, I don’t mean soldiers, paramedics and police). In that case, turning off the phone is not an option.
 
I doubt that'll happen tbh, they'll probably want to use this feature as a carrot for people to upgrade to a newer Pro-level phone with an always-on display.

Oh yes I'm far too cynical about the decisions made in major corporations anymore of all types including Apple. I have no doubt engineering suggested this and marketing axed it. I would love to be proven wrong but I don't expect to be.
 
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They can do the same maintenance stuff when user is not using it, well, at least some of it. Might eat away too much battery life but if it’s charging, then it shouldn’t matter.
Some *nix jobs only run during certain times. Not to mention all the cloud syncing that gets jacked up. It’s just a bad user experience to turn them off. They aren’t made to be used that way and it shows.
 
Some *nix jobs only run during certain times. Not to mention all the cloud syncing that gets jacked up. It’s just a bad user experience to turn them off. They aren’t made to be used that way and it shows.
Again, users can always find weird ways to use their device in all sorts of unintended manners devs never thought of. This is how it works. Not to mention most people don’t even know or care the under the hood thing. And frankly, since those are background tasks with no user input required, they would not even notice a problem until something bad happen, which can be much later.
Moral of the story is, most people don’t care. That user demonstrates this mindset very well.
 
Again, users can always find weird ways to use their device in all sorts of unintended manners devs never thought of. This is how it works. Not to mention most people don’t even know or care the under the hood thing. And frankly, since those are background tasks with no user input required, they would not even notice a problem until something bad happen, which can be much later.
Moral of the story is, most people don’t care. That user demonstrates this mindset very well.

Seems the entire history of computing (and maybe the whole world) is the balance between letting people be free to choose what to do even if it’s not the best idea, and enforcing what some people believe are good decisions on everyone like it or not.

In this case like in many others there is no ideal answer. Most people fit the usage pattern of charging overnight, and on mobile there’s not a guaranteed good time to do anything.

Apple clearly falls into the “do as we say” camp, but could do with a lot more manual options. Apple does not seem to like manual activation nor visual feedback for things that they believe should be invisible. Which we don’t always agree with, like firmware updates for AirPods.
 
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Well you’ve convinced me! You make some very good points here and have built a solid argument. If you’re not a lawyer, you should really consider it. Going forward I will be leaving my phone on, full brightness, and constantly running forever. Kudos to you!
Well, for starters, one of the most essential things happens at night to your phone it does its backups. If you are not using iCloud backup, well, good luck. If your phone is off all night, it will have to catch up on every message, alert, email, etc, that was sent to it while it was off and this can use a lot of battery. Then unless you have a landline, what if there is an emergency? Do you want to wait for your phone to boot before calling 911?
 
Technical reason can be throw out of window. It’s not my problem those maintenance tasks can’t be done. Figure out alternative window to do them or don’t do at all.
As for social reason, I can see certain occupations force you to be 24/7 available (no, I don’t mean soldiers, paramedics and police). In that case, turning off the phone is not an option.
If those maintenance tasks make the phone better for you to use, then it does become your problem. Those tasks need the phone to be plugged in while it runs, so as long as you leave the phone plugged in log enough everyday at the same time, the phone will learn that perform those tasks during those at times, but if you turn it off and only charge while its off it won't be able to.
 
For technical reasons, as someone has mentioned, phones do a lot of maintenance tasks at night such as updates, backups, machine learning tasks (recalculating test prediction, photo recognition), and probably a lot of other things we don't know about.

But for social reasons, for me at least, what if a family member or friend needs help, or tornado warning, or missile alert (false alarm, but it happened).
Do updates manually, do backups manually to the computer every now and again, don’t need machine learning stuff and don’t want to let Apple use my device as their external cpu. The iPhone does everything it actually needs to do while it is charged, no need to keep it on all night long.

We have sirens for those missiles, very hard to miss.

Edit: yes, if you ONLY charge when it’s off, it might develop some minor issues over a long time but it’s not like it needs to do maintenance every day.
 
standyby mode really is awesome. so ideal for the bedside and great for live activities when needed too.
 
Again, users can always find weird ways to use their device in all sorts of unintended manners devs never thought of. This is how it works. Not to mention most people don’t even know or care the under the hood thing. And frankly, since those are background tasks with no user input required, they would not even notice a problem until something bad happen, which can be much later.
Moral of the story is, most people don’t care. That user demonstrates this mindset very well.
I’m not saying the user is wrong. I’m saying that so far that’s not how it operates.
 
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