Apple will replace old iPhone batteries for $29 through 2018

[HEXUS]

Meanwhile Samsung seems to be having battery problems with its Galaxy Note 8 handset.

Read more.

[3dcandy]

It's quite common that a quick recharge function can fail if the cell is totally exhausted. Rare it happens in practice but it can

[Saracen]

I'm not an iPhone user (or any smartohone user, for that matter) but if the news story I saw about Apple deliberately slowing down perfornance on older phones is true, the mere fact that they CAN do that is bad enough, let alone that they did.

It is typical of the mindset of these tech giants that they think they're entitled, just because they made it. No Apple, you arrogant <expletives>, after you've sold it the phone belongs to the customer, not you.

This is exactly the mindset so prevalent in Win10 that lsd MS to think it's okay to auto-upgrade regardless of the consequences to users. No, MS, it's my flaming computer. Flaming well ASK FIRST.

It's also exactly the mindset which results in me so carefully guarding every zspect of my privacy that I conceivably can, because that mindset tells these <expletives> that once they've acquired data about us all, they're entitled (and I use that word carefully) to do pretty much what they want with it because it belongs to them.,

At heart, these companies are all the same. They give (or rather, sell) us fancy gadgets and think that makes them gods that own the rext of us. We have now been seeing example after example of this mindset for some years. It needs to stop, and my suspicion is that if legislation doesn't do it, sooner or later violence will.

[3dcandy]

Awaits front page of "The Stun" which has Saracen on it for fruity violence against tech giant

[Saracen]

Awaits front page of "The Stun" which has Saracen on it for fruity violence against tech giant

LOL.

But nah, I'm not likely to be violent, or even advocating it. I'm just predicting it. I expect, sooner or more likely later, the kind of reaction from the people to the Czarist excesses in Russia the aristocrats in France, the Iranians to the Shah, and so on. These arrogant tech-Gods are, IMHO, showing exactly the same sort of selfish contempt for the masses that led previous generations of self-selected overlords to end up getting "shortened".

And while I don't advocate extra-judicial violence, I sure as hell wouldn't lift a finger to stop it, even if I could.

[Millennium]

Lol I agree with your first post Saracen if not your second. The level of tech that we see in day to day life is nothing compared to that of the US black projects etc. It's like a joke. Sure these tech companies are arrogant misguided and plainly stupid but things like big aweful pharma and the prison industrial complex are much bigger problems.

As for apple's response, I wasn't going to post this but I begrudgingly congratulate apple on this. I think this is the first thing I've been positive about with apple, ever, with the possible exception of pushing good display tech to market early. They do that too.

I'm still not buying anything from them though.

[Saracen]

Well, I'd put pharma, tech, etc all as part of the same issue. It's not just tech .... though they're more visible than most.

As for Apple, I'd agreeexcept that I just see this as a clever PR response to a " shot self in foot" with the slow-down thing. So it really suggests someone in their PR team has a decent IQ. Had they offered this in response to the initial ptoblem, I'd credit them for it. But it's to deflect from the screw-up. IMHO, of course.

[utopic]

I'm not an iPhone user (or any smartohone user, for that matter)

What basic phone are you using, if you don't mind my asking?

[Saracen]

What basic phone are you using, if you don't mind my asking?

Some very basic thing that cost me about £5, 10-ish years ago. And even that isn't used much. It's not unknown for it to not get turned on from one end of a month to the other. It's very small, very light and does calls. A battery charge lasts ages though, even when turned on. Oh, and it has a dozen or two memories. It even does texts .... I think. I don't do texts, though.

Really, it's for little more than emergencies these days.

[Unique]

I'm not an iPhone user (or any smartohone user, for that matter) but if the news story I saw about Apple deliberately slowing down perfornance on older phones is true, the mere fact that they CAN do that is bad enough, let alone that they did.

It is typical of the mindset of these tech giants that they think they're entitled, just because they made it. No Apple, you arrogant <expletives>, after you've sold it the phone belongs to the customer, not you.

This is exactly the mindset so prevalent in Win10 that lsd MS to think it's okay to auto-upgrade regardless of the consequences to users. No, MS, it's my flaming computer. Flaming well ASK FIRST.

It's also exactly the mindset which results in me so carefully guarding every zspect of my privacy that I conceivably can, because that mindset tells these <expletives> that once they've acquired data about us all, they're entitled (and I use that word carefully) to do pretty much what they want with it because it belongs to them.,

At heart, these companies are all the same. They give (or rather, sell) us fancy gadgets and think that makes them gods that own the rext of us. We have now been seeing example after example of this mindset for some years. It needs to stop, and my suspicion is that if legislation doesn't do it, sooner or later violence will.

my view is it's apple's or MS's software, and they can do what they want with it as long as it's legal, and you as the customer buy the software under the T&C's that allow them to do that. if you get sky or VM telly for example, you pay for a service that they can change within the T&C's. technology is very different to what it was a couple of decades ago, with features changing via updates today that you wouldn't have got in the 80s when something would be the same from day one to the end, unless it broke. in regards to the asking first part, isn't it already in the T&C's that you agree to when you buy the software, even though hardly anyone actually bothers to read them?

in regards to the slowdown that's supposed to help the battery, has anyone actually read how much it actually slows down in percentages or have most people just read the headline and jumped to the conclusion it's bad, even though the slowdown may only be a tiny bit and may result in the phone lasting longer for the owner?

personally i've used the iphone from the first model as it was streets ahead of anything else available at the time. i was one of those people who would regularly advise against buying apple products as you could get cheaper or better bang for the buck elsewhere, but i actually found i could get the phone contract free for pretty cheap by hacktivating it. a few years later i found i could sell the old model for nearly as much as i paid for it and upgrade to the new one by paying not much more. i looked at the alternatives, just as i do each time i want to upgrade, and moving to android or the alternatives has never offered any real reason to change and have to restart getting new apps, as comparing like for like, the similar specced android phones are in the same ballpark as iphones, yet iphones have better resale value, so once factoring that in the cost is pretty similar. in saying that, i use a £110 amazon 10.1" fire tablet as a replacement for my old ipad, as i played around with a cheap 7" model earlier in the year and found for reading pdf's and a bit of browsing and spotify, it was fine, and having the sd card was pretty handy. so who knows if i'll stick with apple in the future, but my current phone is more than fine right now, especially as they gave me a brand new one last year as part of the battery replacement scheme as they couldn't fix the phone i handed in. so i'll likely take up the offer of a new battery near the end of the offer before i go to sell it, advertised with new battery

[Corky34]

It is typical of the mindset of these tech giants that they think they're entitled, just because they made it. No Apple, you arrogant <expletives>, after you've sold it the phone belongs to the customer, not you.

Unfortunately i suspect that mindset is a minority, a minority i belong to BTW, but still a minority.

When personal computers went from something mainly used by geeks to being widely adoption by "normal" people the personal aspect, the idea that the end user should be the final arbiter, that idea became a minority opinion as the majority of their customers aren't interested, or simply don't have the time, to learn how it works so tech companies have increasingly had to make things simpler, take control, and protect users from themselves.

And i can't see that changing anytime soon, in fact i suspect it's only going to get worse, or better depending on your view point, over time. It's similar to how the humble automobile went from something anyone handy with a spanner could fix and maintain to machines that require a degree, specialist tools, and thousands of pounds of diagnostics equipment.

in regards to the slowdown that's supposed to help the battery, has anyone actually read how much it actually slows down in percentages or have most people just read the headline and jumped to the conclusion it's bad, even though the slowdown may only be a tiny bit and may result in the phone lasting longer for the owner?

The amount of slowdown is irrelevant, the fact they're slowing it down at all is what's bad, whether it's five of fifty percent the fact is people bought a device that had a certain level of performance and were never informed that level of performance would degrade over time.

No one is saying, at least I'm not going to try saying, that we expect a battery not to degrade over its lifetime, however what to do about that degradation should ultimately be something decided by the end user, if as in this case the battery can no longer supply the currency demanded of it from the device then the end user should be notified so they can choose whether to replace the battery or keep using a devices with degraded performance.

[ed^chigliak]

This gesture does nothing to remove battery replacement anxiety for new apple devices. NOTHING.

[peterb]

The amount of slowdown is irrelevant, the fact they're slowing it down at all is what's bad, whether it's five of fifty percent the fact is people bought a device that had a certain level of performance and were never informed that level of performance would degrade over time.

No one is saying, at least I'm not going to try saying, that we expect a battery not to degrade over its lifetime, however what to do about that degradation should ultimately be something decided by the end user, if as in this case the battery can no longer supply the currency demanded of it from the device then the end user should be notified so they can choose whether to replace the battery or keep using a devices with degraded performance.

You have slightly contradicted yourself in saying that you exect performance to be constant, yet acknowledging that battery performance degrades and therefore will not be constant. Personally, Id rather have marginally slower speed to improve battery life and reduce the possibility of a call (which is a relatively high current operation as the power output may be higher) failure mid all.

Where Apple was wrong was in not publishing it, or giving users the option of tailoring the software to optimise battery life or optimise processor speed. It looks as if this feature (or at least more information about battery performance) will be introduced in a software release n early 2018.

But I suspect this may be a problem with any phone as processor speeds increase while the physical space for batteries decreases.

This gesture does nothing to remove battery replacement anxiety for new apple devices. NOTHING.

I disagree. Im not sure if "battery replacement anxiety" is really an issue, but as it applies to all iphones from the 6 onwards (which are affected) and offers the option for a warranted Apple battery replacement at a reasonable price, rather than choosing some back street replacement service using a battery of unknown provenance that may either have a poor performance, or worse, be a hazard to the user. If anything that is the real issue about "battery replacement anxiety" and Apple's offer certainly reduces that. As for what happens after 2018 - without a reputable crystal ball, it is difficult to predict.

[Corky34]

You have slightly contradicted yourself in saying that you exect performance to be constant, yet acknowledging that battery performance degrades and therefore will not be constant. Personally, Id rather have marginally slower speed to improve battery life and reduce the possibility of a call (which is a relatively high current operation as the power output may be higher) failure mid all.

Degradation in battery performance doesn't mean lower device performance though, unless I'm mistaken normally it results in less runtime per full charge.

Where Apple was wrong was in not publishing it, or giving users the option of tailoring the software to optimise battery life or optimise processor speed. It looks as if this feature (or at least more information about battery performance) will be introduced in a software release n early 2018.

But I suspect this may be a problem with any phone as processor speeds increase while the physical space for batteries decreases.

I would say where Apple went most wrong was that they pushed the performance of the devices beyond what they knew the battery could provide and when the battery degraded, like all Li-ion batteries do when cycled, and could no longer provide the current (ampage) needed to run the device it caused the devices to shutdown. It became a problem for Apple because they exceeded the ability of the battery to supply the required milliamps per hour (or rather per millisecond).

[peterb]

Degradation in battery performance doesn't mean lower device performance though, unless I'm mistaken normally it results in less runtime per full charge.

Reduction in battery life is a reduction in performance - the runtime per charge reduces.

I would say where Apple went most wrong was that they pushed the performance of the devices beyond what they knew the battery could provide and when the battery degraded, like all Li-ion batteries do when cycled, and could no longer provide the current (ampage) needed to run the device it caused the devices to shutdown. It became a problem for Apple because they exceeded the ability of the battery to supply the required milliamps per hour (or rather per millisecond).

Its true that the internal impedance of most battery chemistries increases as they age, in addition to a reduction in overall capacity. It appears from the limited information was that it was the peak current caused a fall in the terminal voltage which under some circumstances caused the phone to re-boot.

It is a moot point whether this is a design fault in the battery, or a batch of batteries, or a system design error.

I guess it was a fault that only showed up as the batteries aged in normal use, and the software was a quick fix. It was actually documented (although not in great detail) in the changelog.

iOS 10.2.1
iOS 10.2.1 includes bug fixes and improves the security of your iPhone or iPad.
It also improves power management during peak workloads to avoid unexpected shutdowns on iPhone.
For information on the security content of Apple software updates, please visit this website: https://support.apple.com/HT201222

(https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1893?locale=en_GB)

[Corky34]

I wouldn't say a reduction in battery "life" results in a reduction in "performance" mainly because i suspect how you and i are defining "life" and "performance" differs, to me when you use the term "life" you're meaning the time from new when a battery can no longer power the device, something that (IMO) should never happen as the device manufacturer shouldn't exceed the batteries ability to supply the required voltage, but as you've said you see "life" to mean a reduction in runtime however that's only really correct because normally manufactures don't exceed a batteries capability like Apple have done hear.

In other words Apple could have done what most manufactures do and limited the devices peak current draw by undervolting and/or underclocking the device so it remained within the capability of the battery to deliver, personally I'd say calling it a system design error is being generous as I'd be shocked if Apple didn't do extensive testing before releasing a new product.