17 ms·

I feel like more transparency would have been welcomed, but aside from that this is a "no win" situation, since you have to pick a winner: - Do you degrade per

I feel like more transparency would have been welcomed, but aside from that this is a "no win" situation, since you have to pick a winner: - Do you degrade performance but leave screen-on time relatively unchanged? - Do you degrade screen-on time but leave performance relatively unchanged? Most Android devices seem to do the opposite (lose screen-on time, but keep performance relatively unchanged). Different people will have a different perspective on what the "right" strategy is for this, but I think we can all agree that better transparency and maybe even leaving it to the consumer to make the choice would be welcome. PS - "Planned obsolescence" only applies if Apple was doing this artificially. It seems like if they didn't degrade performance you'd lose screen-on time instead, so you'd still likely replace the handset and perhaps even sooner (since core services e.g. calling, texting, etc, work even with lower performance but not on a phone out of juice).

EGreg 9y ago
With Apple being Apple, I think they can do it in an Apple way and degrade screen-on time for performance, switching it to favor battery whenever you turn on the "Low Power Mode" setting. Simple binary decision in the user's hands. I would also put "Conserve Battery" in the control center.
- conradev 9y ago
  You can put Low Power Mode in Control Center on iOS 11
- derefr 9y ago
  This is already a (separate) thing, though. When battery life drops to 20% (and then again at 10%), iOS devices suggest that you enable "Low Power Mode." In effect, right now, on old devices, Low Power Mode is always either fully-enabled, or half-enabled, but never fully-disabled. All they'd have to do is to change it from a binary switch (between enabled and {disabled, secretly half-enabled}) to a three-level switch.
asdjasldkjkljd 9y ago
Allow the user to decide because there's no right answer.
MBCook 9y ago
If anything his seems like a reaction to the yearly ‘planned obselescense’ stuff where people claim Apple killed their battery life to make them upgrade. People don’t want to lose battery life? Ok, we can adjust so it doesn’t change much over the life of the phone. Of course that just lead to ‘Apple slows your phone down’. You’re right, it’s a tough spot.
- MBCook 9y ago
  Another idea: Apple could pop up a dialog at a certain point saying your battery is sub-optimal (but not doomed) and you should replace it for the best experience. I’m sure that would go over GREAT.
  - rconti 9y ago
    My 2011 MacBook Air has been saying this for YEARS
    - MBCook 9y ago
      I know they do it when the battery gets really bad, they could move it up to happen sooner. I just imagine it would fit into the planned obsolescence narrative too easily.
      - lucaspiller 9y ago
        My 2014 MBA has recently started saying this, but I haven’t noticed any sudden change in battery life, I still get 5-6 hours.
        finaliteration 9y ago
        It’s based on a certain number of charge “cycles” and not necessarily actual remaining capacity. When I was working as a “Genius” equivalent for an Apple reseller about five years back the number of cycles before that warning would pop up was around 500.
pbreit 9y ago
How about a bigger battery? My primary criterion with each iPhone purchase is which has longest battery life.
- yoodenvranx 9y ago
  Apple has decided that people want to buy razorthin phones and there is just not way to fit a large battery in there. I wish there were phones built like the old IBM thinkpads. Bulky, square, ugly but also indestructible and fully user servicable with replaceable batteries.
  - ianlevesque 9y ago
    Sounds like a blackberry and we know how that turned out for them in the current market.
  - codeulike 9y ago
    Sounds a bit like Fairphone (well, not the ugly part) https://www.fairphone.com/en/ https://www.fairphone.com/en/
    - chocolatebunny 9y ago
      It's cool that they have two SIM slots and an SD slot. I wish more phones had that. But the removable battery doesn't seem to be particularly large.
      - Fnoord 9y ago
        Its not, and its a smartphone from 2015 with a SD800 with 2 GB RAM. There's a lot of pros and cons about it, but at least you can repair the components yourself. Just the other day I installed a new camera module, all on my own. I also replaced the battery. For a mere 20 EUR. (The camera module was front + back for 75 EUR.)
  - mtgx 9y ago
    > there is just not way to fit a large battery in there And if they do find a way, they'll just make the phone even thinner instead. It's not about Apple not being able to do it. It's about their priorities. And in this case their priorities seem to coincide (as if by magic) with getting people to upgrade the phones faster. It's especially silly when you consider that Apple, a design-focused company, is making phones thinner despite using very obvious camera bumps on their phones -- a clear sign that maybe their phones shouldn't be that thin.
revelation 9y ago
This post is written as if it wasn't Apple that introduced the hard-glued battery. They made a consumable hard to replace and backed themselves fully willing into this "no win" situation. And now they are not being forthright about the tradeoffs they made and certainly aren't making an effort to fix any of it. That is planned obsolescence. These batteries can be replaced but Apples absolute refusal to enable customer or 3rd party repair make all of this infinitely more difficult. (It's not just screen-on time, a naturally expected decline in operating time. As the batteries age resistance goes up and peak currents decline, so in some circumstances the device would actually hard turn off)
- hk__2 9y ago
  > This post is written as if it wasn't Apple that introduced the hard-glued battery. They made a consumable hard to replace As others have pointed out in this thread the batteries aren’t hard to replace; this is just not something you can do directly as a user. That probably makes sense; it’d be difficult to make a super-thin smartphone while at the same time provide an easy way to replace each part.
  - revelation 9y ago
    The problem isn't necessarily the replacement, even though it's certainly not for a large majority of iPhone customers. The problem is sourcing the battery in the first place. Apple certainly isn't supplying any of them. In the best case you get one that works properly, if you're unlucky you might get one that has lower capacity, and if you're very unlucky you might just get one that puffs up and catches on fire.
    - baddox 9y ago
      They’re not user replaceable. Apple and their certified shops will absolutely repair the battery for you, although I don’t know how many generations of iPhones they support.
      - pishpash 9y ago
delecti 9y ago
I think out of the two options, Apple picked the far more deceptive one, or at least the one that will be perceived to be deceptive (which IMO is the same thing). Few people would be surprised that batteries degrade over time, eventually causing noticeable drops in battery life, many people seem surprised that performance is intentionally and artificially reduced over time.
- lallysingh 9y ago
  I completely disagree. Apple chose to have the phone continue to work all day. That will keep it useful more than being fast. A better option is a larger battery, but without that, I think they make more customers happy than I'd they did the alternative.
  - sithadmin 9y ago
    Nothing you've expressed is an effective counterclaim to the assertion that Apple chose a more deceptive route to dealing with the inevitable degradation of batteries in its devices. On balance, the expected behavior for an aging phone is to suffer from decreased battery life as total battery cycles increase. Apple instead has chosen to decrease system performance to hide diminished battery life, and failed to disclose this. This kind of behavior wouldn't be tolerated in other market segments. Can you imagine the public backlash against an auto manufacturer that shipped a vehicle which intentionally decreased performance as its fuel tank drained in order to boost their 'maximum range' metric, but never disclosed this 'feature' to the public?
    - tbrock 9y ago
      For people familiar with electronics yes. Most people don’t understand this and think the phone is a cheap piece of crap if the battery starts dying early.
      - sithadmin 9y ago
        >For people familiar with electronics yes. Familiarity with electronics doesn't matter. We can't allow vendors to simply simply cover up what are normal behaviors from components given typical operating conditions.
bsg75 9y ago
Let me choose performance vs time? They already let you choose lower mode on charge < 20%, why not extend it for older devices. ... unless they would rather I just buy a new device.
flashman 9y ago
> Most Android devices seem to do the opposite (lose screen-on time, but keep performance relatively unchanged). I'm guessing this is why my previous Samsung phone used to unexpectedly restart, and semi-predictably do so when I activated the torch. I never realised it could have been due to the battery output dropping.
mastax 9y ago
> Do you degrade screen-on time but leave performance relatively unchanged? I don't think Screen on Time is the concern (though I admit that article isn't extremely clear). Given that devices were shutting down at 40% capacity I think it was more of a brown-out condition, where the device shut down despite having more energy left in the battery. Given: 1. Battery voltage decreases as charge decreases. 2. Battery voltage sags as current draw increases, due to internal resistance. 3. Internal resistance increases with battery wear. 4. If battery voltage drops too low the phone will turn off. a moment of high current draw could cause a device to suddenly shut down. Since this issue was endemic to 6S devices, perhaps some unusually large number of those batteries had unusually high internal resistance due to wear. If this were the case the fix would be to reduce peak power draw and thus peak performance. This change would be especially evident in geekbench, but could also affect regular usage since mobile devices typically try to alternate (sleep) -> (high performance) -> (sleep).
ohyes 9y ago
The solution is a battery you can replace, like every phone used to have. There aren’t only two solutions to this problem. (Technically you can still replace the iPhone battery, unfortunately it isn’t trivial like in the bad old days when phones didn’t have high def touch screens.)
- jamesrom 9y ago
  This isn't a solution. It's a trade off like every other decision.
  - ohyes 9y ago
    Yeah thats true it’s a tradeoff, but by that definition there are no solutions to anything. So I’d argue it’s both a solution and a tradeoff.
    - asimpletune 9y ago
      There are definitely still solutions.
      - Whitestrake 9y ago
        Other than: 1. Allow performance to degrade 2. Allow longevity to degrade 3. Allow the battery to be replaced 4. Some revolutionary battery technology that doesn't degrade?? What solutions are you thinking of?
        rileymat2 9y ago
        Let the user toggle between 1 and 2? Which could be useful for new phones where, even though currently full, you know you won’t be able to charge next.
        Fnoord 9y ago
        > Let the user toggle between 1 and 2? Wrong company, pal. Apple historically decides for the user. Heck, they still do it with their App Store. Often that may go right, but not always.
raz32dust 9y ago
I am sure they could make an iPhone with replaceable batteries. I actually wouldn't mind paying $100 every 18-24 months for a genuine iPhone battery replacement if the perf and battery life is restored with that. But of course they won't. If iPhone X lasted 5 years with the same perf and battery life with two $100 battery replacements, I would happily shell out $1200 for it. But I know it won't last more than 2 years (like almost every other phone at this point), and then the math doesn't work out for me.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- userbinator 9y ago
  Of course Apple can make an iPhone with a replaceable battery. A small Chinese company made an Android-based iPhone 4/5 clone with one, and also the option of having a 50% larger battery with a slightly thicker phone: http://www.jiayu-store.com/jiayu-g5-quad-core-mtk6589-4-5-inch-ogs-ips-screen-smart-phone-ram-2gb-dual-camera-32gb.html http://www.jiayu-store.com/jiayu-g5-quad-core-mtk6589-4-5-in... https://www.gizchina.com/2013/11/07/jiayu-g5-unboxing-hands-on-video/ https://www.gizchina.com/2013/11/07/jiayu-g5-unboxing-hands-... The Jiayu also has dual SIM, microSD, USB, and costs a fraction of the Apple while having a more rigid and expensive housing (stainless steel, not aluminium.) Apple could, if they wanted to, make a phone with as much user-friendly features if not more, but they deliberately chose not to.
- raz32dust 9y ago
  I was wrong and Apple does replace battery for a very reasonable fee of $79 (https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/battery-power https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/battery-power). Hmph. TIL! Can't edit the original post any more so I'll leave this here.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
CamperBob2 9y ago
c) You tell the user what's going on and let them decide whether performance or battery life is more important to them.
pishpash 9y ago
Or, you know, make the battery replaceable like almost every electronic device ever built before fruitfans accepted this shit.
Neil44 9y ago
You make your phone buying decision based on the advertised performance of the device. To sell you one level of performance then subtly take that away I would call dishonest.
- k3a 9y ago
  My "friend" started to be aggresive and supporting this Apple explanation. It feels to me they behave like addicted. They need a new iPhone dose for xmass this year.
swiley 9y ago
It would be better if it where user adjustable since they know what they need in their situation.
TheYcMaster 9y ago
The interesting fact is that Android 7+ scales down the UI effects in case of bad battery life and I suspect even on bad battery status. iOS could do the same, scaling down those useless effects and transparencies, boosting performance and guaranteeing a more qualitative experience.
- kn0where 9y ago
  iOS has had low-power mode for some time, which disables some of the most power-hungry UI effects and background processes.
MagnumOpus 9y ago
This is not a binary choice. If Apple had had good intentions, they could have (a) set back the clock speed to 100% when plugged in, so you can at least use you phone properly when it is not using the battery, (b) provide a setting for users to choose between the two choices you provide, (c) tell users that a battery change will fix the slowness rather than making them infer that they need a faster phone.

EGreg 9y ago

With Apple being Apple, I think they can do it in an Apple way and degrade screen-on time for performance, switching it to favor battery whenever you turn on the "Low Power Mode" setting. Simple binary decision in the user's hands. I would also put "Conserve Battery" in the control center.

conradev 9y ago
You can put Low Power Mode in Control Center on iOS 11
derefr 9y ago
This is already a (separate) thing, though. When battery life drops to 20% (and then again at 10%), iOS devices suggest that you enable "Low Power Mode." In effect, right now, on old devices, Low Power Mode is always either fully-enabled, or half-enabled, but never fully-disabled. All they'd have to do is to change it from a binary switch (between enabled and {disabled, secretly half-enabled}) to a three-level switch.

asdjasldkjkljd 9y ago

Allow the user to decide because there's no right answer.

MBCook 9y ago

If anything his seems like a reaction to the yearly ‘planned obselescense’ stuff where people claim Apple killed their battery life to make them upgrade. People don’t want to lose battery life? Ok, we can adjust so it doesn’t change much over the life of the phone. Of course that just lead to ‘Apple slows your phone down’. You’re right, it’s a tough spot.

MBCook 9y ago
Another idea: Apple could pop up a dialog at a certain point saying your battery is sub-optimal (but not doomed) and you should replace it for the best experience. I’m sure that would go over GREAT.
- rconti 9y ago
  My 2011 MacBook Air has been saying this for YEARS
  - MBCook 9y ago
    I know they do it when the battery gets really bad, they could move it up to happen sooner. I just imagine it would fit into the planned obsolescence narrative too easily.
    - lucaspiller 9y ago
      My 2014 MBA has recently started saying this, but I haven’t noticed any sudden change in battery life, I still get 5-6 hours.
      - finaliteration 9y ago
        It’s based on a certain number of charge “cycles” and not necessarily actual remaining capacity. When I was working as a “Genius” equivalent for an Apple reseller about five years back the number of cycles before that warning would pop up was around 500.

pbreit 9y ago

How about a bigger battery? My primary criterion with each iPhone purchase is which has longest battery life.

yoodenvranx 9y ago
Apple has decided that people want to buy razorthin phones and there is just not way to fit a large battery in there. I wish there were phones built like the old IBM thinkpads. Bulky, square, ugly but also indestructible and fully user servicable with replaceable batteries.
- ianlevesque 9y ago
  Sounds like a blackberry and we know how that turned out for them in the current market.
- codeulike 9y ago
  Sounds a bit like Fairphone (well, not the ugly part) https://www.fairphone.com/en/ https://www.fairphone.com/en/
  - chocolatebunny 9y ago
    It's cool that they have two SIM slots and an SD slot. I wish more phones had that. But the removable battery doesn't seem to be particularly large.
    - Fnoord 9y ago
      Its not, and its a smartphone from 2015 with a SD800 with 2 GB RAM. There's a lot of pros and cons about it, but at least you can repair the components yourself. Just the other day I installed a new camera module, all on my own. I also replaced the battery. For a mere 20 EUR. (The camera module was front + back for 75 EUR.)
- mtgx 9y ago
  > there is just not way to fit a large battery in there And if they do find a way, they'll just make the phone even thinner instead. It's not about Apple not being able to do it. It's about their priorities. And in this case their priorities seem to coincide (as if by magic) with getting people to upgrade the phones faster. It's especially silly when you consider that Apple, a design-focused company, is making phones thinner despite using very obvious camera bumps on their phones -- a clear sign that maybe their phones shouldn't be that thin.

revelation 9y ago

This post is written as if it wasn't Apple that introduced the hard-glued battery. They made a consumable hard to replace and backed themselves fully willing into this "no win" situation. And now they are not being forthright about the tradeoffs they made and certainly aren't making an effort to fix any of it. That is planned obsolescence. These batteries can be replaced but Apples absolute refusal to enable customer or 3rd party repair make all of this infinitely more difficult. (It's not just screen-on time, a naturally expected decline in operating time. As the batteries age resistance goes up and peak currents decline, so in some circumstances the device would actually hard turn off)

hk__2 9y ago
> This post is written as if it wasn't Apple that introduced the hard-glued battery. They made a consumable hard to replace As others have pointed out in this thread the batteries aren’t hard to replace; this is just not something you can do directly as a user. That probably makes sense; it’d be difficult to make a super-thin smartphone while at the same time provide an easy way to replace each part.
- revelation 9y ago
  The problem isn't necessarily the replacement, even though it's certainly not for a large majority of iPhone customers. The problem is sourcing the battery in the first place. Apple certainly isn't supplying any of them. In the best case you get one that works properly, if you're unlucky you might get one that has lower capacity, and if you're very unlucky you might just get one that puffs up and catches on fire.
  - baddox 9y ago
    They’re not user replaceable. Apple and their certified shops will absolutely repair the battery for you, although I don’t know how many generations of iPhones they support.
    - pishpash 9y ago

delecti 9y ago

I think out of the two options, Apple picked the far more deceptive one, or at least the one that will be perceived to be deceptive (which IMO is the same thing). Few people would be surprised that batteries degrade over time, eventually causing noticeable drops in battery life, many people seem surprised that performance is intentionally and artificially reduced over time.

lallysingh 9y ago
I completely disagree. Apple chose to have the phone continue to work all day. That will keep it useful more than being fast. A better option is a larger battery, but without that, I think they make more customers happy than I'd they did the alternative.
- sithadmin 9y ago
  Nothing you've expressed is an effective counterclaim to the assertion that Apple chose a more deceptive route to dealing with the inevitable degradation of batteries in its devices. On balance, the expected behavior for an aging phone is to suffer from decreased battery life as total battery cycles increase. Apple instead has chosen to decrease system performance to hide diminished battery life, and failed to disclose this. This kind of behavior wouldn't be tolerated in other market segments. Can you imagine the public backlash against an auto manufacturer that shipped a vehicle which intentionally decreased performance as its fuel tank drained in order to boost their 'maximum range' metric, but never disclosed this 'feature' to the public?
  - tbrock 9y ago
    For people familiar with electronics yes. Most people don’t understand this and think the phone is a cheap piece of crap if the battery starts dying early.
    - sithadmin 9y ago
      >For people familiar with electronics yes. Familiarity with electronics doesn't matter. We can't allow vendors to simply simply cover up what are normal behaviors from components given typical operating conditions.

bsg75 9y ago

Let me choose performance vs time? They already let you choose lower mode on charge < 20%, why not extend it for older devices. ... unless they would rather I just buy a new device.

flashman 9y ago

> Most Android devices seem to do the opposite (lose screen-on time, but keep performance relatively unchanged). I'm guessing this is why my previous Samsung phone used to unexpectedly restart, and semi-predictably do so when I activated the torch. I never realised it could have been due to the battery output dropping.

mastax 9y ago

> Do you degrade screen-on time but leave performance relatively unchanged? I don't think Screen on Time is the concern (though I admit that article isn't extremely clear). Given that devices were shutting down at 40% capacity I think it was more of a brown-out condition, where the device shut down despite having more energy left in the battery. Given: 1. Battery voltage decreases as charge decreases. 2. Battery voltage sags as current draw increases, due to internal resistance. 3. Internal resistance increases with battery wear. 4. If battery voltage drops too low the phone will turn off. a moment of high current draw could cause a device to suddenly shut down. Since this issue was endemic to 6S devices, perhaps some unusually large number of those batteries had unusually high internal resistance due to wear. If this were the case the fix would be to reduce peak power draw and thus peak performance. This change would be especially evident in geekbench, but could also affect regular usage since mobile devices typically try to alternate (sleep) -> (high performance) -> (sleep).

ohyes 9y ago

The solution is a battery you can replace, like every phone used to have. There aren’t only two solutions to this problem. (Technically you can still replace the iPhone battery, unfortunately it isn’t trivial like in the bad old days when phones didn’t have high def touch screens.)

jamesrom 9y ago
This isn't a solution. It's a trade off like every other decision.
- ohyes 9y ago
  Yeah thats true it’s a tradeoff, but by that definition there are no solutions to anything. So I’d argue it’s both a solution and a tradeoff.
  - asimpletune 9y ago
    There are definitely still solutions.
    - Whitestrake 9y ago
      Other than: 1. Allow performance to degrade 2. Allow longevity to degrade 3. Allow the battery to be replaced 4. Some revolutionary battery technology that doesn't degrade?? What solutions are you thinking of?
      - rileymat2 9y ago
        Let the user toggle between 1 and 2? Which could be useful for new phones where, even though currently full, you know you won’t be able to charge next.
        Fnoord 9y ago
        > Let the user toggle between 1 and 2? Wrong company, pal. Apple historically decides for the user. Heck, they still do it with their App Store. Often that may go right, but not always.

raz32dust 9y ago

I am sure they could make an iPhone with replaceable batteries. I actually wouldn't mind paying $100 every 18-24 months for a genuine iPhone battery replacement if the perf and battery life is restored with that. But of course they won't. If iPhone X lasted 5 years with the same perf and battery life with two $100 battery replacements, I would happily shell out $1200 for it. But I know it won't last more than 2 years (like almost every other phone at this point), and then the math doesn't work out for me.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
userbinator 9y ago
Of course Apple can make an iPhone with a replaceable battery. A small Chinese company made an Android-based iPhone 4/5 clone with one, and also the option of having a 50% larger battery with a slightly thicker phone: http://www.jiayu-store.com/jiayu-g5-quad-core-mtk6589-4-5-inch-ogs-ips-screen-smart-phone-ram-2gb-dual-camera-32gb.html http://www.jiayu-store.com/jiayu-g5-quad-core-mtk6589-4-5-in... https://www.gizchina.com/2013/11/07/jiayu-g5-unboxing-hands-on-video/ https://www.gizchina.com/2013/11/07/jiayu-g5-unboxing-hands-... The Jiayu also has dual SIM, microSD, USB, and costs a fraction of the Apple while having a more rigid and expensive housing (stainless steel, not aluminium.) Apple could, if they wanted to, make a phone with as much user-friendly features if not more, but they deliberately chose not to.
raz32dust 9y ago
I was wrong and Apple does replace battery for a very reasonable fee of $79 (https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/battery-power https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/battery-power). Hmph. TIL! Can't edit the original post any more so I'll leave this here.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

CamperBob2 9y ago

c) You tell the user what's going on and let them decide whether performance or battery life is more important to them.

pishpash 9y ago

Or, you know, make the battery replaceable like almost every electronic device ever built before fruitfans accepted this shit.

Neil44 9y ago

You make your phone buying decision based on the advertised performance of the device. To sell you one level of performance then subtly take that away I would call dishonest.

k3a 9y ago
My "friend" started to be aggresive and supporting this Apple explanation. It feels to me they behave like addicted. They need a new iPhone dose for xmass this year.

swiley 9y ago

It would be better if it where user adjustable since they know what they need in their situation.

TheYcMaster 9y ago

The interesting fact is that Android 7+ scales down the UI effects in case of bad battery life and I suspect even on bad battery status. iOS could do the same, scaling down those useless effects and transparencies, boosting performance and guaranteeing a more qualitative experience.

kn0where 9y ago
iOS has had low-power mode for some time, which disables some of the most power-hungry UI effects and background processes.

MagnumOpus 9y ago

This is not a binary choice. If Apple had had good intentions, they could have (a) set back the clock speed to 100% when plugged in, so you can at least use you phone properly when it is not using the battery, (b) provide a setting for users to choose between the two choices you provide, (c) tell users that a battery change will fix the slowness rather than making them infer that they need a faster phone.