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> 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 dr
by buryat 9y ago
> 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
- derpaderp1 9y agoThey have to say that for legal because reasons.
- l4yao 9y agoIt'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.
- wslh 9y agoThere is an obvious third option: replacing your battery with a new one instead of playing this planned obsolescence game.
- curiousgal 9y agoMake it an option? Plus, having the phone shutdown would force users to upgrade out of necessity without feeling swindled.
- l4yao 9y ago>Make it an option? Hmm, that could work, but I feel like that might go against Apple's ethos. Not malicious, they just seem to like telling the user what's best and surfacing fewer options. I feel like the average user doesn't want to have to make this decision >Plus, having the phone shutdown would force users to upgrade out of necessity without feeling swindled. I'd disagree, but may be in the minority. I would hate having to upgrade because my battery life is shot. A large reason I chose iPhone was the battery life
- BoorishBears 9y agoAs the owner of an iPhone 6 that was degraded enough that even with the mitigation I had the issue, I agree. Any time my phone was under ~15% battery, it would randomly crash during demanding tasks. I'd think the battery had died, but turning it back on would work immediately and my battery wouldn't be at 1%/0%. At that point the battery capacity might as well be 85% of the already degraded value since the phone stops being stable.
- rconti 9y agoMy 6 would die at 30% with some regularity, even though supposedly only the 6S was impacted and hence only the 6S got free repairs.
- strictnein 9y agoThe right call is actually targeting performance at a level that would allow for longer consistent performance state. If they're having to go to measures this drastic to keep their phones from shutting down, their batteries are underspec'd and their processors are overspec'd.
- minimaxir 9y agoThe issue only affected the 6/6S generation (EDIT: with overwatch for the 7); presumably Apple identified and fixed the issue for the 8 onwards.
- strictnein 9y agoNo, that's not what is being stated here. The iPhone 7 came out a year ago. iPhone 7 users are also being offered the $29 battery replacement.
- minimaxir 9y agoFixed comment with clarity.
- mmcnl 9y agoAre you sure? I bet the iPhone 7 batteries simply haven't aged enough.
- l4yao 9y agoI agree, and imagine they probably tried. Maybe it's a new supplier, maybe newer apps are more power hungry than predicted?
- jasonlotito 9y agoThe other option would have been to alert the user this was going on. This didn't always happen. They were degrading users phones while showing the battery as fine. That's the problem, you can't just start degrading performance without telling people why. When you have people running 3rd party apps to determine whether their phones are still running fine, and then going to get battery replacements and finding performance returning, and nothing the OS told them indicated anything was wrong, that's a problem.
- michaelt 9y agoThat'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 9y agoDepending 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 9y agoBut it could prompt them to see an Apple Care Rep and get a new battery, which would fix the ultimate issue according to them.
- l4yao 9y agoWhat are some other options? Calibrating for a new "0%" effectively lead to a "shorter battery life". I don't know the intricacies of these options, but I can make a guess. The point which a phone resets isn't accurately predicted. Some user actions may cause larger voltage drops than others. For which action do you calibrate to 0%? What if you only do that action once a day? Is this trade off worth sacrificing 1% of your full capacity? What about 10% or 30%?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- flamedoge 9y agoThere is an obvious third option - have the phone run slower but tell user about it, that it's running in limp mode because of deteriorated battery.
- b4lancesh33t 9y agoKeep reading the article and you will find out.
- nixgeek 9y agoRock and a hard place for Apple, after 600 cycles or 2 years 'average usage' (based on reports I've seen in the past) the battery might only have 50-60% of the design capacity, so their choice is between reducing battery consumption (via throttling) or having users whose phones are totally drained in significantly less than an 'average working day'.
- ropiku 9y agoIt's not just battery life, some people might live with 50% battery but due to chemistry they can't put out the designed voltage leading to the iPhone suddenly turning off.
- jdietrich 9y agoIf iPhones are really experiencing that rate of degradation, then Apple are solely to blame for using such an aggressive battery management profile. If they had given up a millimetre of thickness, overprovisioned the battery and managed it less aggressively, they could have easily reduced battery degradation to <20% after 1,500 cycles. Adding 50% to the capacity also gives you 50% more current at the same C-rate. I think this is a clear case of Apple prioritising shelf appeal over durability; it's the same root cause as the Galaxy S7 battery crisis.
- baddox 9y agoIdk if the grandparent comment is correct about the degradation rate, but I’d need to see more evidence supporting the claim that Apple is doing something aggressive relative to the rest of the industry. Overprovisioning the battery is silly, and would deservedly cause a much bigger controversy if it were discovered.
- jdietrich 9y ago>Overprovisioning the battery is silly, and would deservedly cause a much bigger controversy if it were discovered. Really? Would there be a strong negative reaction if Apple said "we've designed the iPhone 9 to give you all-day battery life for four years"? Would customers be angry that their device was built to last longer and perform better? To my mind, it's a marketable feature. All battery management is a trade-off between capacity and durability. Manufacturers have an obvious commercial incentive to sacrifice durability - you get a thinner device with longer initial battery life. Purchasing habits are starting to change in the mobile market. Pricing is moving away from an all-inclusive line rental price to separate usage charges and device payments. As the market matures, customers are holding onto their devices for longer. I think it's inevitable that manufacturers will have to improve durability as we move away from the lock-step of 24 month contracts.
- derpaderp1 9y ago"We’ve been hearing feedback from our customers" (sic: "we've been sued")
- kevinherron 9y agoSlowing down the CPU is a better experience than your phone shutting off or battery lasting half a day...
- mulmen 9y agoThey said they wouldn't degrade the UX to drive upgrades but said nothing of other reasons to degrade the UX.
- jhgg 9y agoWould you rather have a slightly slower phone, or one that shuts off at random due to the battery not being able to provide peak current. I think the only major mistake Apple made here was not being originally transparent about this. I don't think that Apple is being 100% noble in its intents either. In addition to driving users to buy new devices, there's the much less obvious side-effect which is a lot of people attempting to get their batteries replaced at roughly the same time as devices age. Which creates a tremendous support burden at Apple Stores around the world as people pile in to get their batteries replaced. (Although more daring consumers may attempt the DIY route, but I expect that to be a very small minority).
- Y-bar 9y agoI am affected by this issue. I would rather have a risk of my phone shutting down at <40% than my phone gas lighting me with performance degradation. If my phone shut down when it shouldn't then I know to search out diagnostics about my battery. But if my phone slows down I have actually done these things: * complained to developers that their apps are slower, wasting their time and resources when my battery should have been changed. * reinstalled my OS. Which did not help when I should have changed my battery. * searched and searched and searched resources online. When I should have researched a new battery. * I also have to mea culpa all friends to whom I have ensured through the years that Apple never intentionally slows down their hardware. I have lied to my friends and need to apologise to them.
- BugsJustFindMe 9y ago> Would you rather have a slightly slower phone, or one that shuts off at random due to the battery not being able to provide peak current. I wish people would stop inventing this false dichotomy. What people want is a phone that doesn't degrade horribly after only a year, regardless of whether that degradation is that it shuts itself off at 40% (which is fucking ridiculous) or that it gets noticeably slower. When a phone degrades so noticeably after only a year, people feel like they've been cheated. Do any other phones turn themselves off at 40% charge? My android phones certainly don't.
- 9y ago
- mikestew 9y ago“degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades” (emphasis mine because you left that important part out) If you bought a new phone strictly because your old one was slow, you might have an anecdotal point to make.
- asendra 9y agoI did. 6s to X one year before planned.
- fezz 9y agoWhy is it that low power mode is usable but slowed down mode because of a battery is sometimes almost unusable?
- baddox 9y agoProbably because low power mode is completely different, and probably doesn’t do much to reduce the CPU usage peaks that the old battery protection code protects against.