
A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance - jayachdee
https://www.apple.com/iphone-battery-and-performance/
======
tschwimmer
I think this is a good response, and I think a lot of the outrage over this
issue is overblown. At the end of the day there's a fundamental tradeoff that
Apple needs to make on behalf of their customers: performance or stability.
They chose stability, and I think they have a convincing argument as to why:
"It should go without saying that we think sudden, unexpected shutdowns are
unacceptable. We don’t want any of our users to lose a call, miss taking a
picture or have any other part of their iPhone experience interrupted if we
can avoid it."

I have two concerns:

1) They still haven't fully eliminated the sudden shutdown behavior. My old 5S
would shut down randomly under 20% without warning. Sometimes it would make it
all the way to 1-2%, but most of the time it was between 5-15%. You'd think
they'd scale performance throttling untilt this wasn't an issue.

2) I think their messaging with respect to battery health and the battery
being a consumable is pretty poor. As far as I can tell there's no built-in
battery health indicator in iOS. Sure there are those dodgy "Super Battery
Health Plus Pro" apps, but it seems like a diagnostic menu in settings would
go a long way. Even more puzzling is that techs at the Apple Store have access
to some sort of diagnostic that does this already. Last time I went to get
another issue fixed the guy said that my battery was at 70% capacity and the
voltage was pretty low. Why wait until '2018' to ship a self-serve version of
this?

~~~
RayVR
The outrage doesn't seem overblown to me. For years I knew that my iphones
were becoming obsolete not entirely from the passage of time but instead from
upgrading the OS. Apple insisted they were not slowing down devices. Now they
claim that they started this in iOS 10.2, without notification.

My experience has been that upgrading the OS results in degraded performance
100% of the time. Whether intentional or not Apple would not acknowledge the
issue. The phone shutting down at X% charge has always started after an OS
upgrade.

~~~
polack
What people are missing here is that while Apple now confess that they did
slowdown the iPhone 6 and 6s when they released the 7, they are not saying
anything about earlier models.

They are however lowering the price to exchange batteries even for older
models. Why would they do that if they where not affected? Why don't they say
this practice started with the IOS 10 update? They just say they did it in the
10 update. For me it's obvious this is just a PR "puff piece" and looks like a
majority here is buying it... So well played Apple.

~~~
mthoms
This was a perfect opportunity for Apple to come out and explicitly state they
have never slowed phones down _other than in this instance_. That would
certainly go a long way to restoring confidence.

Instead they came out with a weasely-worded statement that is designed to
_give the impression_ that they only recently starting doing this. But... they
don't actually make that claim.

Apple lawyers are very good at what they do. Well played Apple indeed.

~~~
hateduser2
Give me a break please. From the post:

>First and foremost, we have never — and would never — do anything to
intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user
experience to drive customer upgrades. Our goal has always been to create
products that our customers love, and making iPhones last as long as possible
is an important part of that.

I see 0 weasel words or dodging here. Give me a break hacker news. Thanks.

~~~
mthoms
Notice all the qualifiers? Notice that the above statement, while technically
truthful does not tell the whole story?

This is not a time for vague promises IMHO, it's time for specific and clear
statements. Why not just say you don't slow phones full stop?

~~~
hateduser2
What qualifiers? They said they haven’t and never would do anything to shorten
or harm device life. That’s as direct as it gets. This isn’t a weasel word
message, sorry.

~~~
misio
they would never do it "to drive customer upgrades".

That isn't never do it. That's never do it for a single specific reason. Why
add that clause?

I guarantee no word in that statement is wasted on meaningless fluff.

------
marklyon
My wife’s 6+ was incredibly slow after the iOS upgrade.

My 6+ drained the battery incredibly quickly. I was told that upgrading the
iOS would fix that problem [0]; it didn’t. Instead it slowed my phone to the
point of being unusable.

If I’d have known replacing the battery would have fixed both of them, I’d
have done that. Instead, I stupidly bought two new, very expensive phones.
Since we were already locked into the Apple ecosystem (with paid apps and
media), we bought iPhones.

This does nothing to compensate or win back the trust of customers like me.

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/OYZr7zd.png](https://i.imgur.com/OYZr7zd.png)

~~~
reaperducer
> This does nothing to compensate or win back the trust of customers like me.

What is it that you want Apple to do to make you personally feel better?

~~~
unethical_ban
It's a legitimate question. Frankly, the idea of a phone's performance
drastically changing over the course of one(1) version upgrade should
aggrivate someone more than this. How can it be acceptable for a single
release to "slow a phone to a crawl"?

This response makes sense. They screwed up communicating the issue of battery
life to the masses that apparently don't know batteries wear out. They're
fixing it, they're biting into their revenue with a mea culpa price cut, and
they're making the OS more communicative of this nuance of phone performance.

~~~
asendra
People know batteries wear out, but the expected behaviour is the phone
lasting less hours between charges, or even unexpected shutdowns, but
definitely not degraded CPU performance.

That has never happened before, there was no precedent for that, and no way of
knowing it was a battery issue. The only solution for most people was buying a
new phone.

------
jmull
> Apple is reducing the price of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement
> by $50 — from $79 to $29...

> Early in 2018, we will issue an iOS software update with new features that
> give users more visibility into the health of their iPhone’s battery, so
> they can see for themselves if its condition is affecting performance.

There we go.

It took too much trouble and too long for it to happen, but Apple is stepping
up and doing the right thing.

Actually, the cost of battery replacement is now excellent. If they hadn't
screwed this up by not communicating what was going on, I think they could
have easily justified $49 - $59.

So I take the drop to $29 as a tangible apology, which I appreciate. (Well,
personally, I've already replaced my battery using a $25 kit from Amazon, but
obviously that's not viable for the great majority of iPhone owners.)

~~~
djsumdog
This isn't the first time this has happened to Apple. They use to not sell
replacement batteries for the original iPods, and when people called in to
complain, they were often told to buy an entire new iPod. This was settled in
a lawsuit:

[http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/apples-
ip...](http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/apples-ipod-battery-
settlement-explained)

Another important note is this battery replacement cost only cover the iPhone6
and up. That's only the 2015 release. That's still lubricious. If we had
devices as powerful as today's cellphones that cost $500+ in the early-90s,
losing support after 2~3 years would be lubricious.

In 2012 I remember seeing someone with the first generation iPhone EDGE
(pre-3G). That's right; the thing was like 6? 7 years old? He really only used
it on Wi-Fi. EDGE data was painful, but it was still his primary/only phone
for another year.

The throwaway economy saddens me, and this move doesn't really do enough to
prevent the continuing pileup of e-waste being shipped on boats to China and
Africa.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
Agreed. It’s also a waste of human labor to throw away devices when they could
still be made useful with some simple repairs. To go further, it is wasteful
to design hardware to be disposable rather than repairable and reusable.

People with jobs I wouldn’t want to do work very hard to bring us these
devices, and the earth gives up resources to mine, transport, and shape the
materials. Throwing things away when they could last 5-10x as long consumes
our precious resources and wastes our collective capital.

Finally I’ll say that a lack of open software support contributes to this. If
I could flash alpine linux on an old iPhone, Nexus, or Samsung, I could find
great uses for the old hardware. Such a project is now underway (Alpine linux
for Mobile), but mobile devices are still a morass of unpatchable secret
binaries with glaring security holes.

I know we can better use our resources than to throw a two or three year old
flagship phone in the trash or let it waste away in an old drawer, but it will
take us demanding more of manufacturers and calling them out for their waste
before they take action on it.

~~~
goialoq
> It’s also a waste of human labor to throw away devices when they could still
> be made useful with some simple repairs.

Are you sure? Assembly line production is highly efficient, that's why
warranty service usually means "throw way the old one into the refurbish or
recycle pile and give you a new one", not "fix your old one"

~~~
mschuster91
> Assembly line production is highly efficient

The highlevel production may be, but rare-earth mining is incredibly dirty
(and some of them, if not sourced from fair trade, directly fund warring
groups), and IC manufacturing isn't exactly environment friendly too, lots of
nasty chemicals used there.

~~~
LaGrange
There's quite a bit of work into recycling those, and Apple has already has
the means of recovering much of it - pity people don't generally return their
used phones to them, though. Your replacement battery is unlikely to be
recycled better than when it's done in an automated manner on a fairly large
scale.

Of course Apple can get away cheap because of that "people don't even try to
recycle" thing. Forcing the industry to do the same thing that happened with
bottles (everyone has to accept bottles over certain capacity they sell, and
_pay for them_ — though right-wing governments are shuttering those programs)
would work wonders, and likely be far better than the romanticised
"repairability."

~~~
visarga
> far better than the romanticised "repairability"

I decide on my own what I want, which is to fix the damn thing if it's fixable
and not spend 1000$ on a new one. And to fix it is "far better" than to
recycle it, or to have it artificially slowed without explanation and deceived
into buying a new one.

Apple is not the company I once admired. Time passes, MS is slightly more ok
and Apple is bad. Weird. I wouldn't have guessed in the early 2000's.

~~~
LaGrange
"And to fix it is "far better" than to recycle it"

Because what, because you say so? I mean, I can say it's far better to dress
my phone up in a green skirt and hang it outside my window as a Christmas
decoration then. About just as relevant.

"Time passes, MS is slightly more ok and Apple is bad."

You seem to have missed the lesson from the Apple thing: companies ain't your
friends.

------
baby
> A chemically aged battery also becomes less capable of delivering peak
> energy loads, especially in a low state of charge, which may result in a
> device unexpectedly shutting itself down in some situations.

I think the people in the Silicon Valley need to take a step back and
understand that people in the rest of the world don't change phone every year.
If a phone become unusable because of its battery (according to them) during
the expected lifetime of the device then batteries need to be easily
replacable.

~~~
newscracker
Easy replacement of batteries is a problem only if you don't have an Apple
store or Apple authorized service center nearby (which could be the case for
many people across many countries). The batteries have been replaceable for a
fee by Apple or an Apple authorized service provider.

~~~
benp84
We have very different ideas of "easy". My phone died last night after a day
of heavy use, so I pulled the battery out and swapped it with the spare one in
its wall charger ($14 for both, shipped) and I was back at 100%.

------
notfried
I'm really infuriated about this. Since mid-2016, my iPhone 6 Plus started to
act "weird". It'd shut down sporadically, would reach 40% and then suddenly
deplete, and started to get slow. But the problems were not consistent. I went
to the Apple Store, and the phone passed all their diagnosis checks, even the
battery.

A few months later, after my AppleCare+ expired, the problems intensified. And
I spent most of 2017 with a very slow and unreliable phone. I honestly thought
it was iOS 10. Had I known it was the battery, I'd have paid to replace it. Or
I'd have forced them to upgrade it for me for free when I had AppleCare+.

I upgraded to an iPhone X, thinking the 6 Plus had reached its EOL, but now I
think I've been lied to!

~~~
akvadrako
Your issue isn't this "scandal" though. This is about preventing sporadic
shutdowns by throttling, so if your phone was shutting down it was an
undiagnosed bad battery, which is a legit complaint.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Yes it is. The “fix” was introduced to avoid these crashes by throttling
instead of browning out. It’s in the article.

~~~
akvadrako
The fix, the throttling, is the controversial part, NOT the sporadic
shutdowns. It's absurd, because throttling is much better than brownouts, but
that's what the lawsuits are about.

~~~
ComputerGuru
I don’t get it. You are acting as if the brownouts are typical behavior of a
year-old battery in a phone?

The real scandal is the shoddy design and engineering that led to brownouts
that necessitated either a massive recall or this throttling.

~~~
akvadrako
That might be the "real scandal" but it isn't "this scandal". It doesn't
matter what I think about brownouts because that isn't the topic.

------
aetherspawn
Just going to throw this one out there.

I swapped from an Nexus 5 to an iPhone 6+. I bought the iPhone 1.5yrs second
hand to get a significant amount off its price. It is dented significantly on
the back, but still serves me like a new phone apart from a noticed slow-down.

On the other hand, the Nexus randomly started shutting off and the battery
only lasted half a day after charging every day for the following 2 years.

The phones are now effectively the same age and Apples fix has prolonged the
apparent age of my phone, I guess (thanks).

But I think people are being harsher because Apple products have longer
expected life but use the same battery technology. This isn’t really fair, is
it?

Ftn. I have designed and manufactured 3 battery assemblies for electric
vehicles in a racing context.

~~~
computerex
Your sample size is too small. You may have gotten a lemon phone. I don't know
what point you are trying to make based on your personal experience with 1
nexus phone. I have personally never experienced what you are talking about.

~~~
aetherspawn
My point was both phones experience similar degradation after similar periods
of time, but the iPhone 6 is more usable as a result of the performance
scaling, so (IMO) I don’t think their original motif was malicious [ftn 1].
I’m actually very happy they’re bothering to do it even though they surely
realised the potential to become a PR nightmare.

[1] I could probably at this point even sell my phone again for like 200 bucks
and someone would buy it, which could even be hurting them.

------
leadingthenet
Reducing the battery replacement by $50 is a great move. While I think this is
a completely manufactured scandal, this will definitely take away the last
argument people have against them.

I'm sure some people will still hate them for something, though.

~~~
dilap
I don't think it's a _completely_ manufactured scandal, although most of the
reporting was deceptive (as is, I'm starting to suspect, most reporting, full
stop).

I think the non-manufactured part of the scandal is having your phone throttle
itself w/o _telling_ you it's doing that is pretty annoying.

You're left wondering, is my phone running slower or is my mind playing tricks
on me?

I think Apple's response here is great.

~~~
matt4077
> (as is, I'm starting to suspect, most reporting, full stop).

Don't hate on all journalism (or anything, really) just because of some bad
apples. Even if it were true (which it isn't), it takes away all motivation
for people in that industry to do the right thing. Why bother spending time on
well-researched reporting, if all you get back is "fake news" or "all
journalists are corrupt and produce clickbait"-hate on Twitter?

More specifically, here's a Q&A, and a previous article, discounting Apple
conspiracy theories by The New York Times:

"Is Apple Slowing Down Old iPhones? Questions and Answers":
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/21/technology/iphone-
battery...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/21/technology/iphone-battery-
problem-slow.html?mtrref=www.google.com)

"A New Phone Comes Out. Yours Slows Down. A Conspiracy? No.":
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/technology/personaltech/n...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/technology/personaltech/new-
iphones-slow-tech-myth.html)

~~~
reaperducer
> Don't hate on all journalism (or anything, really) just because of some bad
> apples

Unfortunately, since these days anyone with a smartphone can call themselves a
"journalist," it's become like the lawyer situation — the 90% bad ones give
the 10% good ones a bad name.

------
satysin
To be fair that is a pretty decent response. The reality is batteries _do_
degrade over time and they have to manage that. They should have been
transparent about what they were doing and I'm not sure giving the user
control over it is all that sensible.

Are there any battery experts who can chime in with their opinion on this?

~~~
ClassyJacket
I'm not a battery expert, but it needs to be pointed out that other smartphone
manufacturers do not have this problem. It was Apple specific - it's not as if
every device with a lithium battery shuts off at 40%. So it still feels like
they're doing it to mitigate a fault with the device, and should've been more
transparent about that in the first place.

~~~
banachtarski
> op: [request for a battery expert to chime in with professional opinion]

> response: [non-battery expert with subjective opinion]

sums up why I hate HN comments sometimes.

~~~
emn13
To be fair: the OP didn't merely ask, he also gave a subjective opinion on the
matter; and it looks like the response was to that, and not related to the
battery expertise bit.

But hey; in an online forum things get off topic... kind of like this ;-)!

------
jlian
One thing that Apple hasn't addressed is if the Geekbench results [1] over-
represents or exaggerates the the throttling effect. Since Geekbench pushes
the iPhone to its limits for the duration of the benchmark, iOS needs to
throttle performance to prevent shutdown while being tested. This results in
lower-than-expected test scores every time. But how much does this map to
real-life, visible performance drop?

Edit: Another question I have is how do other devices handle battery
degradation? Do Android phones just let devices shutdown unexpectedly or is
there also performance throttling? Or is the problem non-existent on non-Apple
devices somehow?

[1] [https://www.geekbench.com/blog/2017/12/iphone-performance-
an...](https://www.geekbench.com/blog/2017/12/iphone-performance-and-battery-
age/)

~~~
dannyw
The problem isn't very prevalent in Android devices, because they have more
"voltage headroom". The chipsets are not pushed to the limits / the red line,
so battery degradation won't result in performance drops or sudden shutdowns.

Sudden shutdowns do still occur for some devices, but it is nowhere as iPhone
devices pre-throttling. It's also something that didn't affect previous
iPhones before the 6, because those devices did not have a very thin redline.

------
IBM
I still think Apple should sue some publications for defamation for the
manifestly bad reporting about this story [1]. Here's John Siracusa about it
[2].

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15995018](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15995018)

[2] [https://overcast.fm/+CdQP59ws/56:00](https://overcast.fm/+CdQP59ws/56:00)

~~~
JeremyBanks
I had to turn off that episode after Casey opened the segment by
condescendingly dismissing any concerns about the behaviour. Quite rude and
annoying.

Marco doesn't see the value in tracking podcast listeners, but I'd think he'd
benefit to know what causes people to stop when listening to their show.

~~~
MBCook
> opened the segment by condescendingly dismissing any concerns about the
> behaviour.

Really? I thought that was perfectly fair. Apple made it so people’s phones
don’t randomly shut off all the time if the battery is old and people are
complaining about it because it fits into a different false narrative.

I honestly do think this whole thing is very overblown. I’m glad they’re
fixing iOS to inform users it’s going on (that was certainly an issue) and
dropping the price of battery replacements is a great move.

But I don’t think this is the giant scandal that the tech press is trying to
make it. I thought Casey’s assessment was quite fair.

~~~
asendra
Apple hid the cause (an ageing battery), and purposely slowed down peoples
phones without warning.

If your phone randomly shuts downs, or it last less time between charges, you
know it must be a battery issue. You go to Apple or whatever, and fix it
paying no more than 79$ (maybe even free if it still has warranty!)

If you hide it and degrade performance, people don't know its a battery issue,
leaving them to suffer a slow phone, or spending 700+$ on a new phone.

No matter the good intentions, and the "good solution" they implemented, they
fucked up.

------
SimonPStevens
From the statement...

    
    
        "All rechargeable batteries are consumable components"
    

If they are "consumable", why aren't they user replaceable. As far as I'm
concerned any company that seals consumable parts inside a device isn't acting
the interest of their users.

~~~
astrange
They can be replaced for $29.

~~~
pat2man
Or you can replace them yourself. Its not that hard.

~~~
Outpox
Doesn't that void your warranty tough?

~~~
lucaspiller
That’s no different than replacing parts on a car. You can pay Toyota to
replace your brakes, or do it yourself. If you choose the later, then they
fail, it’s not Toyota’s fault.

------
chx
The elephant in the room is, of course, Apple's obsession with thinness which
makes it near impossible these days to get a usable laptop because PC makers
totally copied Apple alas. It also gave us nonreplaceable batteries and any
successful lawsuit that comes out of it is totally justified.

No one asked for this. Lighter, somewhat, yes but thin to the point where
batteries are barely functional? Samsung's colossal Note failure is just
another symptom of this. I had a Panasonic CF-Y5, a 14" 1.5kg laptop _ten
years ago_ and somehow it managed to be that light without this thinness
craziness.

~~~
on_and_off
Is it also why we have these awful keyboards on the new mbp ?

I feel them absolutely awful to type on (I have never complained about a
keyboard before but I just can't stand this one), although it is subjective,
some people are fine with it.

What is unquestionably bad though is that you need to replace the whole
keyboard if one key has an issue (and apparently it happens a lot). I know
several people for which Apple had to reset the whole laptop after a keyboard
issue, but I can't make sense of it.

~~~
yodsanklai
> I feel them absolutely awful to type on (I have never complained about a
> keyboard before but I just can't stand this one), although it is subjective,
> some people are fine with it.

I don't know why some people hate these keyboards. I don't really have a
strong opinion about them. They feel slightly different and noisier but I get
identical typing speed results compared to the previous one.

------
Jedd
Lots of people saying that Apple only had two options - make old handsets
slower, or have them randomly shutdown.

Might be a reflection of the culture those commenters are from, but it's
disingenuous to assert.

Other options existed -- notably to advise the user, as part of the update,
via mail-out, etc, that this choice had been made from them, and (optionally)
what they could do about it.

~~~
cooper12
What are they gonna do about it, "Yes I do want my phone to shut down
immediately instead of continuing to be able use it"?

~~~
dingo_bat
This is not realistic. The actual options are

a) slow the phone down

b) make the battery percentage accurate so that people will know when the
battery is empty

I have used Samsung phones for a long time (since Galaxy S4), and I've never
had a phone turn off on me when the battery percentage was anything other than
0%. Are we supposed to believe that the maker of the "world's most advanced
smartphone" (their words) cannot figure out how to prevent random shutdowns
without slowing down the whole phone?

------
whamlastxmas
The Nexus 6P recently had a big consumer backlash and refund process bc phones
would shut off randomly below 20% charge once they got older. I would guess
the same thing is happening here. I would have much rather had reduced
performance than a phone unusable under 20%. Luckily I got a free upgrade to
the Pixel to fix it.

~~~
matwood
Yeah, I have owned various Android and iPhones over the years and this was a
pretty common issue especially with an older phone in either a hot or cold
climate.

~~~
t3rmi
I second that. My 2 year old Moto G was near unusable at the end. When it
reached 15% charge it would just die.

------
geophile
That's well and good, but this letter avoids the elephant in the room. Apple
has gone way too far in sacrificing functionality for style.

I'll accept a seam in the phone, and a slightly thicker phone, if I could
replace the battery myself. (That might also avoid the camera bump.)

The latest MBP really shit the bed with that poorly conceived touchbar, and
the horribly inferior keyboard.

And in general, for many years now, Apple laptops have gotten far less
serviceable in the name of sleekness.

Then there is the issue of software quality. That is a different issue,
although perhaps the decline reflects corporate priorities, (sleek hardware is
more important than anything). ITunes and Photos are just terrible. Bloated,
confusing, inconsistent even within themselves, and certainly across releases.
I dread having any contact with Apple's cloud -- it just never acts the way
that I want it to, and I tread very carefully to avoid propagating deletes to
places I don't want them to go. I _don 't want_ files to move seamlessly from
one place to another, and to be downloaded on demand. It chews up my phone's
monthly data allotment, and it doesn't work at all when I have no connection.
Sharing is a disaster. I don't share anything because it is unclear who gets
access to what.

Another aspect of software quality is a noticeable uptick in bugs. That iOS 11
texting bug (couldn't type "I" correctly) was a huge embarrassment, and it
took an astoundingly long time to fix. And I heard many reports of crashes
with iOS 11. My iPhone 6 is staying on iOS 10. Then there was the MacOS login-
as-root-with-no-password bug.

I am seriously thinking about my non-Apple computer future. I have a mid-2015
MBP -- the last good one, as far as I'm concerned. I'm hoping that when I need
an upgrade there will be some nice hardware compatible with Linux (fingers
crossed for Razer). I'm stuck on the iPhone (because I trust Google not at
all), so I'll need to figure out how to get that to coexist with Linux.

~~~
briandear
Inferior keyboard? I LOVE the new keyboard. And Touch Bar works great.

~~~
jasonlotito
Unfortunately, Apple doesn't seem willing to support the Touch Bar.

------
buryat
> First and foremost, we have never — and would never — do anything to
> intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user
> experience to drive customer upgrades.

Didn't they degrade the user experience by slowing down the cpu? I definitely
wasn't enjoying my slow iPhone

~~~
l4yao
It's choosing the lesser of two evils. The two options are to have the phone
run slower, or have the phone shut down unexpectedly with shorter battery
life.

Personally, I agree with Apple's call on this one.

~~~
michaelt
That's a false dichotomy; Apple has many options other than slowing down the
phone and having it randomly restart.

For example, they could have altered the calibration of the battery indicator
so 0% charge corresponds to the charge level where random restarts/throttling
starts to occur.

~~~
MBCook
Depending on how bad the battery is that me end up giving someone 30 to 60
minutes of battery life.

That seems almost useless. Certainly worse than having a slower phone that has
hours of battery life.

~~~
Posibyte
But it could prompt them to see an Apple Care Rep and get a new battery, which
would fix the ultimate issue according to them.

------
bobbles
What theyre doing to fix it:

"Apple is reducing the price of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement
by $50 — from $79 to $29 — for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later whose battery
needs to be replaced, starting in late January and available worldwide through
December 2018. Details will be provided soon on apple.com.

Early in 2018, we will issue an iOS software update with new features that
give users more visibility into the health of their iPhone’s battery, so they
can see for themselves if its condition is affecting performance."

~~~
nixgeek
This basically means they're giving you the battery for free. Takes 30-45
minutes of semi-skilled labor to replace it, loaded cost of the employee for
even 30 minutes has got to be pretty close to the $29 they're charging.

Wonder if this means we'll see 12-24 month phones popping up on eBay with
battery health reports, or receipts showing the owner(s) had them changed out
just prior to sale.

~~~
oblio
They wouldn't have to give anything for free if, like for many other phones,
the owner could replace the battery in 1 minute flat with no special tools...

~~~
on_and_off
I would love HN to force people to explain why they are downvoting something.

Batteries fail after a while, it has been a constant for a very long time.

What has changed is that in many recent phones it is a pain to replace it
yourself.

~~~
oblio
My guess is that the downvote was a sort of "offtopic" one: "yeah, we can't
change the battery ourselves, c'est la vie, it's Apple, get over it, let's
discuss the issue at hand".

------
sytelus
I wonder how big a hole this is going to dig in Apple’s balance sheet. I have
known many people who bought new iPhone because old one was getting too slow,
not because they wanted even more _thinner_ phone. This is especially true
with families where cost of replacing iPhone is so prohibitive that no one
wants to do it unless it’s absolutely needed. Now that this issue hasn’t got
so much media attention I would think iPhone upgrades will hit major breaks.

------
mmcnl
This is a great response imho. It doesn't fully tackle the issues I'm having
with the approach Apple is taking, but at least Apple acknowledges its
customers in a human way. This is almost un-Apple.

~~~
netsharc
How many times have Apple written "We apologize" in press releases this year?

I think I read one during the whole disk encryption fiasco a few months ago..

Edit: no, that was the username: root, password: (blank) fiasco. And literally
less than a month ago.

------
dogweather
I believe this is a poor response because,

* In the first paragraph, they only apologized after limiting the limiting the scope to "some" customers who "feel" slighted. Like an irrational person on the defensive, giving a non-apology apology.

* They didn't address issues like: the CPU throttling is 24/7, whether the device is running off A/C or not. (!) Completely unnecessary and also — inconsistent with the battery-voltage argument.

* Affected users like me have been stuck with a barely functioning phone for a year. Since it stayed nearly unusable even when plugged in, I assumed it was simply due to Apple bloatware affecting older devices.

------
akulbe
I think part of what's missed here is the fact that Apple's products aren't
just the physical things we hold in our hand.

A lot of folks would buy  stuff because they _TRUST_ Apple to provide a
stable and reliable product.

It seems like with each release, quality and stability decrease, and
customers' trust is further eroded.

I wonder if Apple management even considers issues from that perspective?

~~~
et-al
> _A lot of folks would buy  stuff because they TRUST Apple to provide a
> stable and reliable product._

Just wanted to emphasise this.

I put my parents on iPhones because I wanted to minimise them calling me for
technical support. I taught them to update the phone's OS for security
reasons, but iOS 11 came out and was dogshit for six weeks until 11.1.2 came
out and my mom (a layperson) exclaimed "A[?]'m never updating again!".

Tim & Craig need to stop making their customers beta testers. That's why we
paid the premium.

------
ohazi
One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is that Apple uses some of the smallest
cells in the industry.

iPhone 8, 8+: 1821, 2675 mAh

Galaxy s8, s8+: 3000, 3500 mAh

That's a huge difference.

Apple gets away with this because the iPhone is more energy efficient than
comparable Android phones, but that's only on average -- peak energy
consumption is still comparable.

And when cells age, nominally larger cells retain the ability to drive peak
workloads without browning out (even if they drain really fast), while Apple's
tiny cells eventually just can't do it anymore.

------
Mikho
> Early in 2018, we will issue an iOS software update with new features that
> give users more visibility into the health of their iPhone’s battery, so
> they can see for themselves if its condition is affecting performance.

So depending on the implementation of the feature iPhone users would be able
to see how fast the battery degrades due to its low capacity. Apple could do
what every other manufacturer did—provide phones with higher capacity
batteries to start from for phones not to burn the battery with too many
recharging cycles in the first year. The thing is Apple deliberately supplies
small batteries for them to require many recharges and degrade fast. Androids
now have on average 3000 mAh batteries. I got 5300 mAh. Small iPhones—1800
mAh.

------
strictnein
Apple is in this situation because they've very invested in having the fastest
mobile processor on paper. So you get a high performing part when your phone
is new, and all the reviews and benchmarks are done with the high performing
part, but after a while the battery can't handle it, so they're forced into
these shenanigans.

~~~
MBCook
It’s not like android phones are purposefully running with multi year old
chips to avoid this issue. The high-end found they are all rush to have the
newest chips as well.

I’ll ignore the “on paper“ comment. It was totally unnecessary.

~~~
mtgx
His point was that Apple's latest chips promise something like 2x the
performance of the best Qualcomm or Samsung chip.

If that gain is indeed real, or mostly real, then the difference may be
explained by the fact that Apple makes some compromises that other chip makers
don't - such as increasing the boost performance of the chip more than the
battery and the heat management can handle.

As for the "on paper" claim, I think it's justified, because largely we only
know the Apple chips are "so much faster" from synthetic benchmarks. But in
real world tests it doesn't seem to make much of a difference.

~~~
MBCook
It’s the “on paper“ that I took issue with. From what I’ve seen from
developers (which is admittedly limited) the chips Apple has do seem to be
incredibly fast. Between that and the benchmarks I have no reason to think
Apple chips are artificially optimized to look good on benchmarks and aren’t
noticeably better on normal tasks.

~~~
strictnein
> I have no reason to think Apple chips are artificially optimized to look
> good on benchmarks

I never stated that. My point was that they wanted their processors to
benchmark above everyone else's, and this quest for the highest performance
numbers in synthetic benchmarks (aka on paper) has lead them to a bad place.

------
octasimo
This smells like a direct response to latest lawsuit from France [0].

[0] - [https://www.thelocal.fr/20171228/french-lawsuit-launched-
aga...](https://www.thelocal.fr/20171228/french-lawsuit-launched-against-
apple-for-alleged-crime-of-slowing-down-iphones)

~~~
MBCook
I kind of doubt it. This is been going on for what, a week or two? I’m
guessing they’ve been working on this response that entire time, not just in
the last 24 to 48 hours.

------
avar
They've either been grossly overcharging consumers for these battery
replacements for years, and are now just listing a "normal" price, or they're
taking a loss on it for PR purposes and folding the price decrease into other
products.

I don't see how either of those builds customer trust.

~~~
frou_dh
Apple's prime business trait is making big margins on everything relating to
hardware. The fact that battery replacements were not historically being done
"at cost" should surprise precisely no one.

~~~
avar
I'm not surprised at their behavior, I'm surprised that so many in this thread
think this is a good response to these complaints.

Plenty of their customers will have already bought new phones thinking their
current ones are just broken, and their response is to stop adding a 100%
margin to this one product category temporarily.

If I was a regular customer of a company that overcharged me by that much, I'd
expect to have correspondingly awesome customer support that would make me
whole when they screwed up. I.e. in this case refund the new phone I bought
because mine was slow.

But I suppose I should stop being surprised at the low expectations people
have for Apple.

------
azhenley
> Early in 2018, we will issue an iOS software update with new features that
> give users more visibility into the health of their iPhone’s battery, so
> they can see for themselves if its condition is affecting performance.

Thank you! I've always thought phones should provide info about battery
health.

------
stalf
Trying to raise awareness to the fact that Apple's battery letter is _only_
available on the american store. We in Brazil already experience absurd prices
(a battery replacements costs R$ 449,00, equivalent to US$ 136,41), but I
doubt will see equivalent reductions...

~~~
taspeotis
The article does mention price reductions “starting in late January and
available worldwide through December 2018.“

~~~
pier25
> available worldwide through December 2018

Which is quite frankly ridiculous. Nothing really justifies waiting a year for
this.

Apple already has everything it needs to replace batteries worldwide right now
(either with third party official repair companies or their own), and the cost
of doing so will not likely change from here to December 2018.

~~~
taspeotis
The offer is "starting in late January" and goes "through [to] December 2018"
and it's "available worldwide."

~~~
pier25
Ohh right.

D'oh.

------
eloop
"making iPhones last as long as possible is an important part of that." ...
Then I suggest that you do something unheard of and really stretch Johnny Ives
to come up with the unthinkable, nearly impossible, design task....an easily
replaceable battery.

~~~
jasonlotito
Yeah. People talk about how nice the phones are, but honestly, I feel like
Apple takes the easy way out in this regard. It's easier to make what they do
when you don't have to worry about letting users services the device. The flip
side is, when everything is so tightly tied together, the quality has to be
that much greater. They should be held to a much higher standard because they
have no one to blame but themselves.

In this case, this is completely on them.

------
pookieinc
> To address our customers’ concerns, to recognize their loyalty and to regain
> the trust of anyone who may have doubted Apple’s intentions, we’ve decided
> to take the following steps:

> Apple is reducing the price of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement
> by $50 — from $79 to $29 — for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later whose
> battery needs to be replaced, starting in late January and available
> worldwide through December 2018. Details will be provided soon on apple.com.

> Early in 2018, we will issue an iOS software update with new features that
> give users more visibility into the health of their iPhone’s battery, so
> they can see for themselves if its condition is affecting performance.

> As always, our team is working on ways to make the user experience even
> better, including improving how we manage performance and avoid unexpected
> shutdowns as batteries age.

I cannot think of a better move from Apple than these three options. Bring
awareness to the user by displaying battery performance and if updating the
battery would resolve their power issues, you have a (now even cheaper) method
of fixing it. As I understand it, the only way to tell if one needs to update
their battery is by downloading some third party app (that costs money) and
then praying that it helps in some way.

Also wanted to point out that by going deeper into the issue with this article
shows (at least to me) some sense of transparency and should be really
encouraged. While I disagree that they needed a scandal to bring clarity and
it should've been brought up a while back, it's still great they did it
nonetheless. This has been a conspiracy for some time, glad to see Apple has
shed some light on it.

------
SomeHacker44
I have an iPhone 6 Plus running iOS 10.3.x.

I wish they would put a new 10.3 version with the new battery code out. I have
every intention of not using iOS 11 due to feature changes that don't work
well for me (like the control center wifi/Bluetooth silliness).

Won't happen, though - this is Apple.

I am afraid of ever breaking this phone because it is my understanding a
restore from backup forces an update to the latest code.

~~~
hateduser2
Are you sure that iOS 11 is as bad as you say? I use it on a 7 and have no
problems. maybe you just like to hate Apple, Silicon Valley, or change?

~~~
SomeHacker44
I am certain. I like the way iOS 10 works and don't want to learn different
ways of doing things, and be unable to turn off (really turn off)
WiFi/Bluetooth quickly. (I'm a pilot, these things are important.)

I like the way macOS 10.12 works (I prefer 10.8, but whatever). At least Apple
provides security and patch updates to 10.12 and I can stay on it for several
years until they put out another version I either need to upgrade to (for
third party reasons) or want to.

Apple does not allow me to stay on iOS 10. I have no option to upgrade to
10.3.4 - they won't put out a 10.3.4 even. No, the only option is 11.

If 10 is working for me, why am I forced to move to 11?

This is very anti-consumer of Apple.

~~~
hateduser2
This is indirectly pro consumer of Apple. This means they can engineer for the
current gen. Everyone on all platforms should only be served the latest and
greatest!

------
ianamartin
I'm glad they did this, but it still doesn't handle the FUD about Apple
generally slowing down old hardware in the name of planned obsolescence, which
people have been tinfoil-hatting about since forever.

The fact is that new OS and software is designed to run on the latest hardware
and checked on older hardware to see if it will work at all.

The conspiracy theorists think that Apple has been doing this with their
phones since they started making them, and for their computers for decades.

It's horseshit, of course, and I wish the statement had been stronger.

The tinfoil garbage is about like if people complained that game companies
were intentionally slowing things down for older graphics cards. No. That's
just the natural progression as technology advances.

This is a case where Apple is slowing things down, but doing so to improve the
user experience, not make it worse.

You have almost all of reddit and several other idiot websites that have been
complaining for years about perceived slow-downs now feeling vindicated over
this. And it's complete garbage.

I wish people could separate issues effectively, but that doesn't seem to be
in the cards.

------
dr1337
It's very interesting to see the cognitive dissonance of all these posts
complaining about how Apple has lost their trust etc. yet still wanting to
cling onto the brand. There wouldn't be this pseudo-Stockholm syndrome if
people just became more rational and voted with their wallet. Go buy a phone
that you mostly own instead of buying the right to use and iPhone from Apple.

------
nikisweeting
This whole battery scandal is ridiculous. It's literally the _opposite_ of
planned obsolescence, they're prolonging the usable life of these phones by
underclocking them enough to stay functional for a full day, when otherwise
they'd be shutting off randomly. I wish I could underclock even with a fresh
battery in order to have solid 2-day battery life.

~~~
chowyuncat
No, the consumer doesn't have enough information in this case. They are more
than likely going to buy a new phone rather than a new battery.

~~~
MBCook
Under the old software, where the phone would randomly turn off on you, what
do you think they would’ve done? Probably the same thing. Buy a new phone.

~~~
singhrac
I think the argument is that one would notice that the battery drains very
quickly, and starts shutting off at a certain percent. Then they could know
the battery is a problem, and pay $79 to get that replaced, instead of
upgrading.

~~~
goialoq
That's not how it works. The phone crashes when the CPU load spikes higher
than the degraded battery can support.

~~~
MBCook
I think this Siri there is that if the battery is only capable of supporting
full voltage when it’s charged to 80% or more, then you consider that top 20%
the full range of the battery and when the battery gets to 80% actual charge
you tell the user it’s at zero.

I’ll admit that I’m not sure how possible that is. If this technique would let
you pretend that the battery only had half its capacity left without slowing
down the phone then that maybe one thing. If even a slight battery degradation
meant you have to pretend the phone only had 1/20th of its original battery
left then obviously that’s pointless.

------
dandersh
For years individuals and the tech press have reported about the forced
obsolescence of Apple devices, with many detractors claiming otherwise. It
would appear that instead of "eating crow" they've decided to double down and
are now parroting how this is "manufactured" or "overhyped".

Let's be clear: Apple knew that they were pushing the hardware of older
devices so hard as to lead to premature expiration. Instead of being
forthcoming about this, or reducing the unreasonable load they were placing on
older hardware, they used software to throttle the older devices causing many
consumers to buy a new (often iPhone) device as a response.

This is especially greedy and deceptive and Apple has earned every last bit of
negative coverage (and then some).

------
RayVR
It wasn't until I upgraded to ios 11 that my iphone 6 began shutting down at
30% battery. This coincided with the phone being completely unusable. I could
not launch apps, using the message application was nearly enough to make me
quit apple.

------
tzs
I'm curious about how much slimness people would be willing to give up for
easy, cheap battery replacements for phones.

One could design a phone the thickness of the original iPhone that would be
able to take AAA batteries.

8 AAA Eneloops have about the same energy as the batteries in iPhone 6s or
iPhone 8, and just shy of an iPhone 7.

If one would accept a phone about 40% thicker than the original iPhone, 3 or 4
AA Eneloops would do it.

I was comfortable with the thickness of my original iPhone, so I would be
willing to consider an AAA powered phone. I'd probably even be OK with AA--it
would still be thinner than my wallet, which I have no problem with.

~~~
dingo_bat
Just want to note that Samsung has made their phones thicker for the last 2
generations. It has directly resulted in much better battery life compared to
their older phones and I don't think it has hurt sales at all. So maybe people
don't really want the thinnest as much as apple likes to believe.

------
camelCaseOfBeer
Personally I ditched my iPhone because the updates were forced and diligently
increased the workload put upon the device. To what end? I don't know, the
change logs were cryptic, God forbid allowing the end user selection of what
aspects they want updated. Ultimately every update left you with a less
functional device. They can say they didn't plan this obsolescence
intentionally until the cows come home, but it doesn't matter, what matters is
Apple was fucking up old devices and in turn pushed consumers into buying new
devices. Intentional or no - fuck it, fuck the tax dodging, fuck the app
store, fuck the developer-hostile platform, fuck the double-blended
mocafrappachino cult following, fuck Apple. It's over priced tech-fashion and
the masses are catching on.

------
ilamont
So how long will getting a replacement battery take? Is this something that
can be done in an Apple Store in a few minutes, or is it a matter of
leaving/sending the phone away for a few days?

------
misio
>A chemically aged battery also becomes less capable of delivering peak energy
loads, especially in a low state of charge, which may result in a device
unexpectedly shutting itself down in some situations.

In my years of experience owning smartphones, since the original iPhone, and
including a Samsung S4 (decommissioned last month - purchased in 2014). I have
never experienced sudden shut off from an aging battery.

Have I been lucky or is this extremely rare?

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
You probably just don't run on an extremely low battery very often.

I have only experienced it when my device was displaying less than a 15%
charge. It also helps if you practice good battery management, not leaving
your phone plugged in all night/day.

I also have a theory that people are damaging their batteries more if they are
a heavy user, while the phone is plugged in. If your phone is charging and you
are playing a game my phone seems to get much hotter than at any other time.

------
masonic
"Of course, when a chemically aged battery is replaced with a new one, iPhone
performance returns to normal when operated in standard conditions."

I find this disturbingly vague. If the slowdown was strictly due to physical
battery degradation (and I haven't heard what specific metric(s) they use to
_objectively_ measure age/wear), then replacement should _instantly reset
performance rationing back to its starting point_.

They only say it "returns to normal when operated in standard conditions"
without defining "standard conditions" and without saying how long it takes
before they deign to allow you the performance you paid for.

Their official Battery & Power page[1] acknowledges none of this beyond a
separate issue affecting only a two-month manufacturing window of September-
October 2015.

[1] [https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/battery-
power](https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/battery-power)

And weren't there earlier iPhone models that weren't designed with user-
replaceable batteries?

~~~
MBCook
I assume they’re referring to some of the other things they talked about, like
how performance maybe temporarily degraded if it’s extremely cold outside; not
unlike how the phone may have to shut itself down in extremely hot
temperatures.

------
tomxor
On a related note, they have used underclocking so "solve" hardware flaws on
other devices too. If anyone remembers the nVidia unleaded solder
microfracture-fest of 2008~. It affected more than just Apple, but the
difference is that Apple didn't admit to any issue with their hardware, people
who experienced the failure and attempted to go through the Apple care hoops
ended up with a logic board with the same issue (another time bomb). Apple
pushed a firmware update to underclock all affected GPUs and effectively push
the issue outside of their measly 1 year warranty.

I learned my lesson: you should only buy Apple hardware if you are happy with
it as is, if you can't be certain it will remain that way and something goes
wrong you have to accept that you will be ignored and Apple will admit to
nothing, at the most they will remotely modify your device at whatever cost to
the user to prevent them owning up and making replacements.

------
paulus_magnus2
Apple apologizes for iPhone slowdown drama, will offer $29 battery
replacements _for a year_

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/28/16827248/apple-iphone-
ba...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/28/16827248/apple-iphone-battery-
replacement-price-slow-down-apology)

------
jfoster
This seems like a thorough and good response, but look at what it took in
order for it to happen! Apple cultivates a perception that they stand by their
products, but you really can't count on that.

I've recently had a month-long (and ongoing) to-and-fro of Apple Care repairs
to my late 2016 Macbook Pro. I have Apple Care, but it's been more than a
month and they're okay with it having taken that long (and being ongoing). The
solution to a repair not having fixed a problem is another round of the same
tests as last time, followed by a repair that replaces another component. The
crash report is easily findable on Google and seems to be a long-standing
hardware issue, but Apple Support behave as though it's the first time they've
ever encountered it.

------
hoodoof
I want the option to turn this off.

What Apple is saying in this media release is "pay us and we'll fix it".

------
doctorwho
All of Apple's battery problems would disappear if I could replace the battery
in my device instead of being forced to chuck the whole thing because the
battery will no longer take/keep a charge. Surely someone at Apple can design
a device with a replaceable battery?

------
garmaine
Apple needs to continue signing iOS 10. It is unacceptable that they have
increased the software drain on power for normal activities beyond what
supported hardware can run, and then when the problem is recognized not
allowed downgrading to revert the experience.

------
hendersoon
That's a great response PR-wise, but it doesn't answer the question of why
these batteries are degrading to a point where unexpected shutdowns are a
concern in a single year. The iPhone 7 is only one year old. That just isn't
OK.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Design flaw. They use small batteries so there is absolutely no slack.

~~~
hendersoon
Perhaps. That could explain why other phone manufacturers don't do it.

[https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/12/28/16825288/...](https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/12/28/16825288/htc-
motorola-dont-slow-processor-speeds-old-batteries-apple)

------
sundvor
My son's few-years old iPad (who knows what model since Apple stopped actually
naming them) turned into a lagfest after the iOS 11 update. UI operations are
choppy where they used to be smooth. Could it be the battery?

Samsung, under intense criticism from their Note 7 battery scandal, didn't
increase battery capacity with their S8. Instead, they opted to take steps to
greatly improve battery _life_ (total capacity loss over time). Whilst I still
think retaining 95% after a year is wildly optimistic, I'm happy with this
change of focus (yes, I bought one).

PS. I noticed that Apple uses lifespan where I use life, and life where I use
capacity. Verdict?

------
ksk
The whole thing just reveals Apple's bullshit. They oppose right to repair
laws and block third party repair by denying them access to parts. The fact
that despite all the obstruction and sabotage from apple, you can still get
parts is a wonder in itself.

>Of course, when a chemically aged battery is replaced with a new one, iPhone
performance returns to normal when operated in standard conditions.

"Ofcource". Wow! How the heck is a user supposed to know this?

>We’ve always wanted our customers to be able to use their iPhones as long as
possible.

More BS. The iPhone is designed to be unrepairable.

------
vizzah
How could iOS (definitely) detect if a battery is chemically degraded? If they
slow down performance based on the "expectation" that device is old and it's
battery _must have_ degraded, then it is obviously a slowdown for many
unsuspecting users, whose batteries might be in fact absolutely fine. I have
SE and never had any shutdowns; fortunately staying on 9.3.3, without any need
nor desire to upgrade. I'd be utterly disappointed if next software update
started to "manage" performance for me, suspecting old battery.

~~~
jsz0
Charging and usage stats are logged so it should be pretty easy for Apple to
spot the problem.

------
wdn
This is not limit to Apple iOS.

Android has this problem too. If you upgrade your 2 years old phone with the
latest Android (if your phone manufacturer did happens to provide update),
your phone is not responsive at all. I know, few years ago I updated my Note 1
to Lollipop and it was completely unusable. The good thing is the Note 1 has
unlock bootloader and I was able to restore the older software.

Unfortunately, you cannot downgrade iOS. I wish I can as I am on 11.2 and the
battery drain is crazy. 10% on idle. FU Apple.

------
ProfessorLayton
My 6S was affected by the faulty batch of batteries, and it was a miserable
experience to have my phone shut down unexpectedly at 40% if I was using it
outside in ~60F or colder weather.

Apple replaced the battery once they admitted to the faulty batch, and my
phone has been great since, but the way they handle battery issues is
extremely frustrating. Going to an Apple Store and having them to their
standard test, being told everything is fine and there's nothing they can do
is not what I expect from them.

------
bprasanna
Finishing sentence says it all: "We are able to do the work we love only
because of your faith and support — and we will never forget that or take it
for granted."

~~~
Geee
That's exactly opposite of what they're doing, so it's a lie. They've just
lost my trust, faith and support, and I've sold all of my Apple stock.

------
lddemi
Coincidence that they waited till after Christmas to release this?

~~~
erikpukinskis
What would the non-coincidence reason be?

~~~
lddemi
The news could have slowed upgrades to iPhone 8/X ahead of the holidays if
buyers thought adding a battery could speed up their device.

~~~
erikpukinskis
But they already admitted such before Christmas:
[https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2017/12/21/572538593...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2017/12/21/572538593/apple-says-it-slows-older-iphones-to-save-their-
battery-life)

------
exikyut
> _Of course, when a chemically aged battery is replaced with a new one,
> iPhone performance returns to normal when operated in standard conditions._

Has Apple ever acknowledged battery replacement that explicitly? It's almost
like the iPhone just grew a removable battery door with those words.

(Also, for those curious, I'm impressed to see that this has 466 comments only
3 hours after being posted.)

------
exabrial
I'm happy with the outcome but I'm not buying their reasoning. It's forced
obsolescence and they just got caught this time.

------
Improvotter
I really hope this price drop is also available in Europe. It's currently 99
EUR at Premium Resellers, but it should also be 29 EUR.

------
decebalus1
> First and foremost, we have never — and would never — do anything to
> intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user
> experience to drive customer upgrades.

Yeah, intentionally or not, it does happen. In light of the latest Apple
'innovations' I would also look at Grey's law (just look at what a piece of
shit ITunes is). There have been numerous class action lawsuits in the past
years, which I agree, don't prove anything except for the fact that consumers
do notice that their older devices often degrade to not being usable.

Anecdotally this is how I lost my 2012 MacBook Pro. The hardware was excellent
but software upgrades made it almost unusable. Browsing was ok-ish but I ended
up using it mainly in 'terminal mode'. I couldn't find a Linux distribution
that ran properly on it so one day I decided to go with El Capitan because of
it's focus on 'performance' and that it's hardware requirements were
compatible - MacBook Pro Mid/Late 2007 or newer. It worked fine but two days
later I fried my video card while reading a PDF in Preview. I'm not saying the
upgrade fried my computer but I was really frustrated I only got 3 years of
use out of a superb (and expensive) piece of hardware.

And yes, after using an Asus for a few (awful) years, I bought another Macbook
on which I'm writing this now.

------
kodablah
Eek, I wish I hadn't capitulated so quickly when iOS 11 came out and my wife
complained and complained about performance issues on her 2-year-old iPhone 6
until we just decided to buy an 8 and be done with it. It's not like she would
be willing to move off Apple, and we had the money. I doubt my situation is
unique. Oh well.

------
siproprio
In the support article [1], it says:

> Many key areas are not impacted by this power management feature. Some of
> these include:

> * Apple Pay

How could Apple Pay ever be affected by power management? Why are they even
mentioning this service?

[1]: [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208387](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT208387)

------
SteveGregory
I think a software approach that should be considered is to dim the screen
during throttle events. This has multiple benefits:

\- clear user feedback in the moment of stress on the phone

\- it would _feel_ more like a battery issue, rather than feeling like a bug

\- saves some power that can be used to make the processor throttling less
dramatic

------
lapdanz
After the galaxy note 7 disaster and the apple throttlegate I think it is time
for us all to admit the fact that we have reached the limits of lithium
batteries. We need to compromise the size of our smartphones if we want to
continue seeing progress in their performance and features.

Or wait for a miracle from the electrochemists.

------
gdilla
Not only is my 6 slow as molasses since upgrading to 11, i've seen it display
a 30% charge and then shut itself off, claiming no charge in the same breath.
Standing in line, infact, waiting to show a ticket barcode to get into a show,
no less. Had to explain what happened and luckily they could verify my name.

------
perseusprime11
It will be interesting to see how other companies which base their products on
Lithium ion batteries deal with similar degradation. For example, How will
Tesla handle this scenario? Will they slow down the car when the battery
performance is not adequate? Interesting to see how companies make tradeoffs.

~~~
greglindahl
A car motor reacts gracefully to a battery that doesn't put out as much
current as expected. That's unlike a cpu, which crashes.

------
andy_ppp
After replacing the battery my iPhone 6s is running fast again... can I return
this iPhoneX for a full refund?

------
milankragujevic
It's funny, a service center replaced my whole iPhone for free (thought with
terrible customer service included) when it started rebooting, being slow and
-- get this -- the screen started popping out on one side cause the battery
puffed up. This was before this problem was publicized.

------
markcerqueira
> "We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down. We apologize."

Really disappointed, but not surprised, with the wording of this post. We're
sorry YOU FEEL disappointed. It's like apologizing for making someone feel
offended instead of apologizing for offending them outright.

------
gigatexal
They acknowledged they made a mistake and I buy their apology. I’ll be getting
the battery in my 6 replaced and selling it got an iPhone X now. Kudos Apple
but more so to those who sued and all the coverage the sleuthing the Geekbench
guy did to get us here.

------
ValentineC
I like the idea of first-party battery replacements, but I have chipped the
glass on the side of my iPhone 6S screen from a drop — I wonder if Apple would
still charge me the $29 battery replacement fee, or ask me to pony up the full
amount.

------
kayhi
How long has this been happening?

I upgraded from iPhone 4 to the 6S due to the declining performance.

~~~
danieltillett
I have a 4S from 2010 running on the original battery and it is fine. Of
course I have not upgraded the os past 7.

I love the size of the 4S. Please, please, please someone make a phone as
small as the 4S. Phones and pants pockets love each other :)

~~~
kayhi
Smart not to upgrade

~~~
danieltillett
It is amazing how this phone just keeps on working doing everything I want it
to do. The only thing I wish it had was a better camera, but apart from that
it is near perfect.

------
intellix
It's only a temporary reduction in price for replacing a battery. Why is it
not at least a little cheaper permanently? Especially when they've made them
extremely difficult to replace yourself.

------
trollied
I do wonder if this will make Apple look at the good old days of phones where
you could have a few spare batteries for your phone :)

I know it will never happen because it wouldn’t be aesthetically pleasing to
Mr Ive, but ‍️

------
cfontes
Iphone 5s restarting like crazy because of the battery gets nothing then...

------
caio1982
At least now they are finally making it very clear what they were caught doing
behind the curtains (from the new support page on battery performance, linked
in the press release):

In cases that require more extreme forms of this power management, the user
may notice effects such as:

Longer app launch times

Lower frame rates while scrolling

Backlight dimming (which can be overridden in Control Center)

Lower speaker volume by up to -3dB

Gradual frame rate reductions in some apps

During the most extreme cases, the camera flash will be disabled as visible in
the camera UI

Apps refreshing in background may require reloading upon launch

Many key areas are not impacted by this power management feature. Some of
these include:

Cellular call quality and networking throughput performance

Captured photo and video quality

GPS performance

Location accuracy

Sensors like gyroscope, accelerometer, barometer

Apple Pay

------
m3kw9
Not only did they have the right design decision to lower the chance of my
phone shutting down when I may need it the most, they are lowering the battery
replacement price!

------
dayaz36
Great now if you can address the hardware planned obsolescence that would be
great. Namely the glass screens that constantly shatter (it's 2018...almost)

------
epanchin
It’s not ideal manufacturers can state battery life figures as when the phone
is new, rather than at the end of their expected life (2yrs).

------
bertomartin
It's back to android for me; it's great to have a choice here, those pixel 2
xl are looking a whole lot nicer all of a sudden.

~~~
newscracker
Just a day ago I commented on a different thread about the Pixel 2 XL and its
display flaws. It won't look a whole lot nicer once you get it (pun intended).
[1] The Pixel 2 (non-XL) has a good display though. But you may just be
trading for random shutdowns instead of CPU throttling after a while (as other
Android users have commented here).

[1]: [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/10/pixel-2-and-2-xl-
rev...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/10/pixel-2-and-2-xl-review-the-
best-android-phone-you-can-buy/2/)

------
acd
A message to Apple, you have made products which users cannot exchange the
battery themselves in. Further you degrade the performance of iPhones by cpu
throtteling as the device ages and charge a fee for exchanging the battery.
Thus you hurt the environment and consumers.

One could swap batteries in cell phones previously also in Apple laptops but
now batteries and screens are glued to the device.

Please engineer phones which are made to be recycled and are easy to self
service.

------
Blazespinnaker
Sure, they don’t intentionally sabotage lifetime of their devices but they
don’t really invest in increasing them either.

------
tanderson92
It's not clear to me why this doesn't also apply to the 5S. The same software
is in operation on these, no?

------
ohiovr
I would rather pay 30 dollars for ios 10

------
myrandomcomment
I need to see the word iPad here. Need to replace a battery in an iPad Air and
would love the reduced cost.

~~~
xuki
Because iPads were not affected by this.

~~~
myrandomcomment
That we know of yet... :)

------
sg47
I sold my iPhone 6 because the performance became unacceptable after just 1
year. Do I still get $50?

------
rdiddly
Well hopefully that settles that. All this mass diaper-crapping needs now is a
-gate suffix. And ctrl-F-ing on this page I see we already have one:
Throttlegate! For when you want to indicate that this is the leader-of-the-
free-world-using-illegal-tactics-to-hang-onto-power-and-then-covering-it-up,
of iPhone performance!

~~~
askafriend
Searches of both #batterygate and #throttlegate return a lot of results on
twitter.

------
TekMol
"We’ve been hearing feedback from our customers about the way we handle
performance for iPhones"

That's a nice way to describe this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15988913](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15988913)

------
andys627
My iPhone 6 battery health is 91% and it still sucks since the update.

------
itsthejb
Discount battery replacement for my 6 will come in very handy

------
stevebmark
I hope they get sued into the ground :)

------
scirocco
"we began to receive feedback from some users who were seeing slower
performance"

In the case of Apple, "some users" = millions of users

------
taauji
iPhone's battery deteriorates to a point of not being able to sustain ideal
usage after mere 1-1.5 years. That is a very bad case as per mobile phone
standards. $1000 for 18 months averages to about $56 a month after which your
phone will start deteriorating to a point of being not usable anymore.

Not acceptable no matter how valid their argument is.

------
blondie9x
Apple is doing what is best for the user and the battery. This was poorly
reported on by those without technical backgrounds.

~~~
ArlenBales
No. They did what was best for their bottom-line.

It was common knowledge that lithium batteries chemically degrade over time.
It was not common knowledge, even to those with technical backgrounds, that
the iPhone compensated by degrading performance. That was only made recently
public by user research.

Many consumers have been buying new iPhones after at least 1 year because of
this performance degradation. Had Apple been transparent about its performance
degradation strategy from the beginning, people would have spent far less
money.

This will have a substantial effect on Apple's revenue next year as people buy
new batteries instead of new iPhones.

------
ajoseps
man... i literally just got my battery replaced. Wish I saw this an hour
earlier

------
ohiovr
So are they wreaking the ux to increase the battery life. Why not just dim the
screen?

------
hota_mazi
"We're sorry we got caught, here is a piece of chewing gum".

------
NicoJuicy
Now for the MacBook

------
staunch
On the upside, there is now a very easy way to see which "tech journalists"
understand the concept of engineering trade offs.

The tech reporters at NY Times, Linus Techtips, etc have never actually
created products. They are not technical experts. They're personalities and
communicators. And in this case, wacky conspiracy theorists.

------
jimmytucson
Child, please. Apple has taught a generation about planned obsolescence.
Observe:

2017 lawsuit claiming Apple broke FaceTime on iOS 6 to force users to upgrade
to iOS 7. [1]

2015 lawsuit alleging iOS 9 degraded performance of iPhone 4s to force users
to upgrade their device. [2]

2014 article from the New York Times showing how Google searches for "iPhone
slow" coincide perfectly with the release of new devices. [3]

2013 Brazilian lawsuit claiming Apple could have implemented 4th gen iPad
features on 3rd generation model. [4]

2013 article from the New York Times about performance degradation coinciding
with Apple's release of iPhone 5. [5]

2011 article on Apple's "innovation" of a proprietary 5-point screw to thwart
hardware upgrades on iPhone 4, Macbook Pro, and Macbook Air. [6]

2009 TC article on UI becoming sluggish, random restarts, device heating up
(is this starting to sound familiar?). [7]

2008 Movie rentals not being available on 5th generation iPods which were
released just months prior. [8]

I even found an article from 2005 complaining about the high cost of replacing
the iPod battery ($250!). [9]

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-lawsuit-facetime-
id...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-lawsuit-facetime-
idUSKBN1AG1PJ) [2] [https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2015/12/31/apple-
la...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2015/12/31/apple-lawsuit-
iphone-4s-ios-9-mobile-operating-system-upgrade/78134096/) [3]
[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/upshot/hold-the-phone-
a-b...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/upshot/hold-the-phone-a-big-data-
conundrum.html?_r=1&abt=0002&abg=0) [4]
[http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/02/21/brazilian-
lawsuit-...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/02/21/brazilian-lawsuit-
accuses-apple-of-planned-obsolescence-with-fourth-gen-ipad) [5]
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/magazine/why-apple-
wants-t...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/magazine/why-apple-wants-to-
bust-your-iphone.html) [6] [https://www.ifixit.com/blog/2011/01/20/apples-
diabolical-pla...](https://www.ifixit.com/blog/2011/01/20/apples-diabolical-
plan-to-screw-your-iphone) [7] [https://techcrunch.com/2009/06/04/the-short-
lifespan-of-the-...](https://techcrunch.com/2009/06/04/the-short-lifespan-of-
the-iphone/) [8] [https://www.wired.com/2008/01/ipod-
rentals/](https://www.wired.com/2008/01/ipod-rentals/) [9]
[https://www.technewsworld.com/story/42328.html](https://www.technewsworld.com/story/42328.html)

------
katastic
As usual, the only thing that corporations listen to... is the threat of the
dollar.

They didn't give two craps about their policy until this week.

~~~
katastic
Dear downvoter: I dare you to provide logic or a source that rebukes my point.

------
CrInhabitant
even if they offered a free iPhoneX, the answer would still be "hell no"

------
jsemrau
I don't see the difference between the Volkswagen scandal and this.

Both companies used software to their own benefit to harm other parties.

~~~
briandear
Were you actually "harmed?" Let's not compare increasing pollution to you not
being able to play Angry Birds with the same level of gusto.

~~~
igravious
Or, you know, buying a new phone instead of buying a new battery, and all the
waste that entails. Do we suddenly not care about the environment now?

------
gallerdude
This was a Half-Life 3 kind of issue. They kind of got backed into a corner
where they could never really talk about what the truth was. Would it have
been better to go out and announce: "we're not working on Half Life 3"? Tough
to say.

------
CrInhabitant
Even if the offered a FREE new iPhoneX, the answer would still be a "hell no".
Google hacks the Browser, Apple store the phones co-ords, and then they make
you upgrade to make it easier to track you, and then their associated product
"hi Sarah" crashing and locking out sounds like its trying to contact siri!!!

Free iPhone, Hell no

------
JustSomeNobody
1\. You're still trying to fix a design flaw with software.

2\. Good move on lowering cost of a replacement, because it sure seemed like
you were trying to extend the battery to a point where Apple care ran out.
However,some people are reporting throttling at 89% battery capacity as
reported by coconut battery. This is absurd! Why? Because you won't replace
batteries until at least the 80% mark!

Thanks for the clarity, but you need to stop using tiny batteries.

Edit: Let's be clear. We are here because Apple chose to use small batteries.
An 1810maH battery will degrade to a point where the iPhone shuts down faster
than a 2200maH battery would have. They didn't design the iPhone for longer
than 1 or 2 years with those tiny batteries. Period.

------
fnovd
All Apple would have had to do is enable a "Battery Saver" mode in some deep
nested menu and turned it on by default, and this would have never been an
issue in the first place. The fact that they hid it _and_ denied it is going
to cost them. It signals a deliberate misleading of consumers, and is a
legitimate scandal.

You can't hide the bad intentions in good ones and call it a wash. "Extending
the battery life for consumers" isn't a good enough reason to do what they
did. A menu option ticked by default would have given the 80% who didn't mind
this the same exact experience and the 20% that did the freedom to run their
battery to the ground. However, doing so would have forced them to admit that
the battery life was going to degrade over time given normal usage.

