
Apple addresses people saying their iPhones with older batteries are “slower” - alphabettsy
https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/20/apple-addresses-why-people-are-saying-their-iphones-with-older-batteries-are-running-slower/
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KirinDave
It's somewhat frustrating to hear folks patiently explaining the customer
benefit of this as if the audience was 5, talking about how aged batteries
aren't as good and balancing device replacement vs performance. They're
forgetting the plot:

We're in this mess because Apple decided that replaceable batteries were not
in its best interests. It then applies further technical fixes as a
consequence. All of these fixes decrease the longevity of the device as a
consequence.

But hey, our phones are 0.05cm thinner and yay, they're 2% cheaper for Apple
to manufacture. Whew.

~~~
IBM
The batteries are replaceable, by Apple or an authorized service store.
They're also replaceable by unauthorized third parties if you want to roll the
dice on batteries from China.

They aren't user replaceable and that is 100% the correct design choice.

~~~
collyw
Why do you think that its the correct design choice? I never had a problem
with all of my older phones that had replaceable batteries. Same with sim
cards, we are saving so little space and they are now a lot fiddlier to handle
and instead of one new size we have two. I don't see the benefit.

~~~
planb
I can’t remember a single phone with a replaceable battery that did not need
tape to fix it after a year of usage... and I never bought a replacement
battery.

~~~
michaelmrose
Your experience is either imaginary or ridiculously atypical. Its literally
not a real thing. Devices with replaceable batteries don't normally fall apart
unless you are in the habit of dropping them all the time. This isn't a design
consideration or a justification.

Phones are designed without user replaceable batteries because it makes it
slightly cheaper to manufacture, generates revenue from users who require
replacement, and makes it less desirable to keep an existing device vs buying
a new one.

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LeifCarrotson
> _This will not affect the average performance of your device and it is
> emphatically not throttling, it’s capping the peak demands and not allowing
> them to be as high..._

I'd be interested to know what this writer thinks throttling is.

Part of the problem is that Apple wants to market their devices as quality,
long-lasting, and also sleek objects, but can't really do so as effectively if
they admit that one of the internal components wears out and needs to be
replaced periodically.

~~~
s0rce
I'm not sure high quality, long-lasting and sleek objects are incompatible
with periodic maintenance and replacement of parts. Lots of people drive high-
end cars (BMW, Mercedes, etc.) and consider the cost and effort of replacing
parts for maintenance part of ownership. We are all used to this. We have been
convinced with consumer electronics that we just need to replace the item but
really they would be longer lasting if they simply facilitated battery
replacement easily and not try to hide the fact. Just report that after N
recharge cycles you need to replace, just like my timing belt after 100k
miles.

~~~
mikeash
Battery replacement is pretty easy. Walk into your Apple store, ask for a
battery replacement, and fork over $79. Or find a third party who will do it
cheaper, or buy the part and tools and do it yourself.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
It could be a $10 operation you could do while walking, as on many older
phones. But marketing studies indicate people initially like the look and feel
of glued-up phones, and shortsighted capitalism is winning out in part because
consumers have little choice and they are uninformed about the long-term
consequences, like iOS throttling based on battery health.

~~~
mikeash
I doubt it could be that cheap. The naked replacement battery costs more than
that when purchased from a third party.

I don't see why this is shortsighted. It doesn't make sense to me to optimize
for something you might do once every two years.

Let's be realistic: even if iPhones had batteries like you describe, 99% of
owners _still_ would not replace them this quickly, and _still_ would suffer
from mysterious performance degradation as the electronics throttled to avoid
overstressing the old batteries. The long term consequences are the same
either way. The only difference is that it costs a bit more and takes a bit
longer to replace the battery.

------
lnanek2
Wow, I thought the article was going to say it doesn't actually happen. But it
flat out stated they do slow down the phone intentionally when the battery is
old.

This is to avoid a forced shutoff issue, so is arguably the preferred
behavior, but it is also does indeed happen.

~~~
tspike
Yeah. Not just iPhones either. After reading the original article, I replaced
the battery in my 2012 MBA. Runs like a new machine.

~~~
jtokoph
Was it still slow when plugged into the wall? And did the system say your
battery was still in the “heathy” range? I was seeing odd slow downs of my MBP
and didn’t think of this.

~~~
tspike
Yeah, I was getting the "Service battery" message. Didn't matter if plugged in
(always was because it would die within half an hour), still slow.

~~~
walterbell
Why would Apple need to slow the system when AC power is available?

Are battery-free systems (e.g. Mac Mini) throttled by using some other proxy
for system age?

------
freehunter
I do wish there was a way for modern devices to let users know when they're
"thinking" about something. Back in the day you could look at the disk access
light. If it was blinking quick, your computer is slow because something is
taking time reading from the disk. If it's solidly on, the entire system may
be hung and it's probably quicker to just reboot and try again.

Even with my old iPod Mini, if it was running slow I could put it up to my ear
and hear if the hard drive was cranking away. My desktop has an SSD, but if
the fans kick on slightly higher, it's probably chewing on something and it
might come back, just give it a sec.

But with a phone? With modern fanless laptops? There's no indicator that the
system is working or if it's straight up hung and you'll need to reboot. And
oftentimes for the sake of user friendliness, they just say "please wait" or
have a spinning icon instead of saying what they're doing and showing a
progress bar.

Troubleshooting has gotten a lot harder as devices get faster and smarter.

------
walterbell
Please bring back user-swappable batteries.

When users are resorting to carrying around phone-sized external battery packs
to get through their day, the “thin” argument loses to “dongle” unportability.

~~~
DenisM
Here's your user-replaceable battery for iPhone. Make the device a wee bit
thicker, but doubles up as a phone case, and then I can also glue things to
the back of it. Been using it for a few months now, without issue.

[1]
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01DNEDQMS](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01DNEDQMS)

~~~
walterbell
Thanks. Now the question is whether Apple will disable throttling when
external power is connected.

------
8bitben
Apple probably needs to address the wider misconception that electronics
"don't age" just by nature. Batteries, thermal compounds, metal bodies, glass,
all are worn by regular usage and consumers ought not to expect them to be
perfect 3 years after purchase.

While counterintuitive, these changes are decidedly in the interest of the end
user.

~~~
michaelmrose
Swapping out a battery ought to be a 30 second operation. Everything else on a
thousand dollar device ought to last 10 years unless the user drops it.

------
MekaiGS
If Apple knows the battery is getting to the point where this is happening,
shouldn't they just let the user know it's probably time get their battery
replaced and throttle? Wouldn't this kind of make everyone happy?

This seems no brainer to me.

~~~
MBCook
Apple probably knows how often this happens. Perhaps enough users just buy new
phones it’s not that common (as a percentage of phones in use).

That said can you imagine the furor if Apple just started popping up a dialog
essentially saying ‘Pay us $130 or we’re going to cripple your phone’?

The press would have a field day. It would perfectly fit the ‘Apple breaks
your phone’ narrative.

I mean they fixed the ‘my phone randomly restarts when it has plenty of
battery left’ and now they’re in trouble for this.

They can’t win.

~~~
mikeash
They could win by anticipating battery degradation and designing the
electronics to draw no more power than a reasonably aged battery can supply.

~~~
pwinnski
They did that using something they call 'powerd' and that's exactly what the
current kerfuffle is about.

Unless you're saying _all_ phones should be constrained to only use the power
a two-year-old battery can supply?

~~~
mikeash
Yes, that second one. Size the battery and the electronics so that when
everything is operating at 100%, it doesn't pull so much power that it would
shut down on a reasonably degraded battery.

Personally I'd like to see this done by keeping the electronics the same but
making the battery bigger.

~~~
MBCook
If you do that the battery will last longer. So what you didn’t up with is
basically what’s already happening: you have longer battery life on the phone
is new and shorter battery life when the phone is old.

And then people will once again claim that Apple is shortening their battery
life with updates.

Of course you could artificially The battery life so that people can’t tell
that when new it’s longer than it appears.

But someone will figure that out and clean that Apple is purposefully
hampering things so they can make people buy new phones. Because they ARE.

There is no solution to any of these problems that people will like and won’t
end up with terrible headlines.

~~~
mikeash
This isn’t about battery life, it’s about sudden shutdowns. Older batteries
can’t supply as much current. Apple limits performance to avoid pulling more
current than the battery can supply. A bigger battery can supply more current.

People expect battery life to get worse as the battery ages. They don’t expect
performance to get worse or for the phone to start shutting down
spontaneously.

~~~
pwinnski
And yet that's what battery life getting worse does: spikes cause shutdowns.
If people don't expect that, they don't know much about lithium-ion batteries.
Which is fine, but that's exactly 100% what Apple is handling here.

------
michaelmrose
I thought that power management and throttling to stay within thermal and
power boundaries was a basic hardware function built into any OS.

Example: I haven't heard of similar issues with other manufactures phones.
Presumably because keeping the phones basic function working has more to do
with the firmware than the OS on top of it.

------
nradov
This is one of several reasons why building phones without replaceable
batteries is a terrible, consumer hostile practice. Unfortunately almost every
mobile device available today now has the battery glued in.

~~~
mikeash
Apple will replace the battery in an iPhone for $79. Lots of third parties
will do it for less. You can buy the battery and required tools and do it
yourself if you're handy with a screwdriver. It's not quite as easy as
snapping the new one into place, but it's far from being non-replaceable.

~~~
collyw
Last time I replaced a battery on a phone I am sure it cost less than 10 euros
and was a case of popping the back off of the phone. $79 sounds hideously
expensive in comparison, but then you have to pay for some semi skilled labor
rather than do it yourself these days.

~~~
mikeash
I definitely wouldn't call it cheap, but it's totally doable. $79 is a lot,
but way cheaper than a new iPhone.

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mankash666
Fucking ludicrous. TechCrunch might as well be Apple's blog/P.R department.

Apple has a history of victim shaming, or glossing over bugs as features
benefiting customers. From "You're holding the phone wrong" response to
antennagate to this response for badly engineering their phones (LiOn battery
ageing is well known, they should've mitigated it reasonably in their design),
they just don't get it

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chisleu
The article is basically Apple saying they hurt you because they love you.
Batteries are cheap compared to the devices and would be easy to replace if
designed to be replaced (even if not user serviceable.)

Kill the batteries and recycle them...

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paulus_magnus2
$1000 phones are a bubble. Time to wake up and rationally look at the other
end of (generalised) Moore's law.

$100 one laptop per child, still waiting for it.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child)

$100 phone today is probably as fast as 4-year old flagship and I can't think
of anything I can do on my phone now that wasn't possible 4 years ago.

------
binarysaurus
This is one of many reasons why I think phones should have easily replaceable
batteries. I'm on my second Note 4 since launch and couldn't be much happier.

~~~
adjkant
The problem with easy replace is what a lot of old phones had - a drop and the
battery comes flying out too. Obviously, this has gotten a lot better since
then, but I think there is an advantage in design for daily use for not having
batteries being easily accessible to the end user. What Apple should offer is
easy battery replacement for a price that isn't marked up significantly like
the rest of their products, and treat it like a free maintenance plus the cost
of the replacement part.

~~~
s0rce
While having it externally accessible for trivial swapping is nice, the
obvious downside is that it can come out inadvertently. A compromise where it
is behind a screwed down panel and held in place with a connect (not
soldered). This would mean easy replacement either by either by the end user,
an authorized repair shop or apple. I don't really see this as any different
than routine maintenance and replacement of car parts. If Apple charged 5x
battery replacement costs compared to other phone vendors then this might cost
them marketshare, however, people still buy fancy cars where parts are much
more expensive.

~~~
mikeash
This is what Apple does. They'll replace your battery for $79. Third parties
will do it for a bit less. Doing it yourself requires a weird screwdriver and
some other tools, but isn't terribly hard, and you can get a kit with a new
battery and all the required tools for $25.

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brador
Placating the audiance before a potential lawsuit hits.

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hrasyid
This posting is flagged as "dupe". Which one is the canonical HN thread?

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lechiffre10
If you're out of warranty they'll charge you an arm and a leg to change your
battery too, if you opt to go to a service that isn't approved by them they
immediately cut off any service or support for your device. $$$$$$$$$$ is all
that matters

