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Why does my iPhone have to be at at least 50% to install a software update?

mrsir2009

mrsir2009

macrumors 604
Original poster
Sep 17, 2009
7,505
156
Melbourne, Australia
In my opinion it's ridiculous how you have to have at least 50% battery on your iPhone to install a software update. Downloading iOS 5.1 on my iPhone over wifi took about 6 minutes, however when the update was almost done the phone dropped beneath 50% the update got cancelled. So why do you need more than 50% battery life to install an update that takes 6 minutes and drains your battery no more than 5%?! It seems to be another pointless rule, like the 50mb limit when downloading apps off wifi...
 
mrsir2009 said:
In my opinion it's ridiculous how you have to have at least 50% battery on your iPhone to install a software update. Downloading iOS 5.1 on my iPhone over wifi took about 6 minutes, however when the update was almost done the phone dropped beneath 50% the update got cancelled. So why do you need more than 50% battery life to install an update that takes 6 minutes and drains your battery no more than 5%?! It seems to be another pointless rule, like the 50mb limit when downloading apps off wifi...
Click to expand...

Battery dying mid install could brick the device. Apple doesn't know how fast your wifi is. More of a better safe then sorry thing I think.
 
The point it to make sure it doesn't die mid-upddate. Granted mine downloaded in about 4 minutes, but not everyone has fast internet.
 
mrsir2009 said:
It should still be a suggestion, not mandatory. I know when MY iPhone is about to run out of battery.
Click to expand...

Who is responsible if it bricks the phone?

My buddies sister had an issue while updating her 3GS to iOS 5. It froze during the installation at a loading bar screen. That's all the screen would show even after letting the battery die and fully charging it. Apple replaced it with a refurb out of warranty no charge.

So I would think they would try to do everything in their power to make the update go as smoothly as possible. Not only for their sake but the users too.

While I don't like how controlling apple can be, this definitely isn't one of those times.
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4s: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B179 Safari/7534.48.3)

cynics said:
mrsir2009 said:
It should still be a suggestion, not mandatory. I know when MY iPhone is about to run out of battery.
Click to expand...

Who is responsible if it bricks the phone?

My buddies sister had an issue while updating her 3GS to iOS 5. It froze during the installation at a loading bar screen. That's all the screen would show even after letting the battery die and fully charging it. Apple replaced it with a refurb out of warranty no charge.

So I would think they would try to do everything in their power to make the update go as smoothly as possible. Not only for their sake but the users too.

While I don't like how controlling apple can be, this definitely isn't one of those times.
Click to expand...

It dosnt brick the phone. You end up having to do a restore using a pc/mac that's all
 
mrsir2009 said:
It should still be a suggestion, not mandatory. I know when MY iPhone is about to run out of battery.
Click to expand...

I may get bashed for this, but Apple has always been about making everything extremely user friendly. What you know doesn't matter to them. The granny using the phone to skype with her grandkids and check her horoscope certainly does not know about this. As far as a userbase, she is the weakest link and they make restrictions based on said weakest link otherwise they would have to deal with people returning their phones because they were bricked after an update. In short, from a business standpoint, it's easier to slightly inconvenience the educated user than have to deal with thousands of potential returns by the uneducated user.

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Gav2k said:
It dosnt brick the phone. You end up having to do a restore using a pc/mac that's all
Click to expand...

How do you know? If it can't be done under 50%, you obviously cannot test what happens when you apply and update to a phone and the battery dies at just the right point, right?
 
Gav2k said:
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4s: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B179 Safari/7534.48.3)



It dosnt brick the phone. You end up having to do a restore using a pc/mac that's all
Click to expand...

Well hers was bricked using iTunes cause it was the initial update to 5. It didn't respond to iTunes, apple store couldn't fix it and gave her a refurb.

Without being able to try to let the battery die during and update its hard to whether it will or not.
 
mrsir2009 said:
It should still be a suggestion, not mandatory. I know when MY iPhone is about to run out of battery.
Click to expand...

But if something happened during an OTA update and your battery died, bricking the phone, you'd expect Apple to fix it for you for free, right?
 
mrsir2009 said:
It should still be a suggestion, not mandatory. I know when MY iPhone is about to run out of battery.
Click to expand...
Really? When the update shuts down your phone and you're staring at the Apple logo with that progress bar, do you really have any idea of how long that update is going to take to apply, or how much battery it's actually going to be using?

IMO, if there was a way to bypass that battery warning, there would a bunch of people that have no idea when THEIR iPhone is about to run out of battery but proceed with the update anyway. Even if the answer is "plug it into your computer and use iTunes to restore it", I'd guess that 90% of those folks are going to either walk into an Apple Store or call AppleCare looking for that answer. I'm not sure if you've used either of those services lately, but they're already crazy busy and IMO don't need any extra load generated just so that some impatient iPhone users can apply the iOS update immediately vs. having to wait until their device is charged to at least 50%.
 
Gav2k said:
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4s: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B179 Safari/7534.48.3)
It doesn't brick the phone. You end up having to do a restore using a pc/mac that's all
Click to expand...

Wrong. A major system update can and will brick your phone if stopped in the middle of installing the bootloader. An example of this is an update from iOS 5 and under to 6 and up. In that update, a stop could potentially brick the phone. So, you would be wrong, as this would make the boot sequence empty, meaning no way to boot to recovery mode, meaning there would be no possible way to restore, because there would be no possible transfer tool on the iOS device. You should know this, because you yourself have iOS 5.1.
 
TheQWERTYCoder said:
Wrong. A major system update can and will brick your phone if stopped in the middle of installing the bootloader. An example of this is an update from iOS 5 and under to 6 and up. In that update, a stop could potentially brick the phone. So, you would be wrong, as this would make the boot sequence empty, meaning no way to boot to recovery mode, meaning there would be no possible way to restore, because there would be no possible transfer tool on the iOS device. You should know this, because you yourself have iOS 5.1.
Click to expand...
Good job!

You have successfully resurrected an old thread and chastised someone for something they posted six and a half years ago.

Welcome to the forums! You'll do well here.
 
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TheQWERTYCoder said:
Wrong. A major system update can and will brick your phone if stopped in the middle of installing the bootloader. An example of this is an update from iOS 5 and under to 6 and up. In that update, a stop could potentially brick the phone. So, you would be wrong, as this would make the boot sequence empty, meaning no way to boot to recovery mode, meaning there would be no possible way to restore, because there would be no possible transfer tool on the iOS device. You should know this, because you yourself have iOS 5.1.
Click to expand...


I love it when people react without looking at what’s happening!
 
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