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> It took too much trouble and too long for it to happen, but Apple is stepping up and doing the right thing. The right thing would have been for Apple to eith
by jhack 9y ago
> It took too much trouble and too long for it to happen, but Apple is stepping up and doing the right thing.
The right thing would have been for Apple to either stop this behaviour or give users the option (retain performance or retain battery life). They're doing neither.
- askafriend 9y agoI disagree. I think they're doing the right thing here. Most users shouldn't need to manage their battery performance actively at all. What's next? Users should manage their own RAM usage? Absolutely not. They're giving away batteries for free, and giving users more visibility into the health of their battery in an upcoming update. That's the right thing.
- PacketPaul 9y agoThe batteries are not free. How about a user replaceable battery design?
- austenallred 9y agoThe trade-offs that come with that would completely destroy everything that makes iPhones great.
- jhack 9y agoMaybe if they made their iPhones that fraction of a millimetre thicker, they'd have the courage to bring back a headphone jack into their $1000 phones.
- ceejayoz 9y agoWasn't the point to have better waterproofing? IIRC the keynote mentioned it being the main spot for water intrusion.
- mad182 9y agoI have a waterproof phone with jack.
- austenallred 9y agoI know it's not common for people to say this out loud, but I spent $1200 on an iPhone last month, and a. I don't care about a headphone jack, at all; I use Airpods and the experience is phenomenal b. Consider me crazy, but I actually like my phones getting smaller and lighter What if Apple is just making a phone for people like me, and is comfortable with those trade-offs?
- matwood 9y agoI'm with you. The iPhone X is the best iPhone I've ever used. The headphone jack uproar was a tempest in a teapot. Apple saw the stats that either a) people use the headphone that come with the phone or b) they upgrade to wireless headphones. The small group of people using expensive wired headphones can afford an additional $7 permanent attachment. Yes, Apple prioritizes size and design over everything else. Removable batteries add size, weight, and likely impact the water proof ability of the device. Even when I had a phone that could easily swap batteries I never bought additional ones because they were not cheap and would be discarded when I got a new phone. I'll also say that I'm happy with the change Apple did here. They failed at communicating it, but I have been on the receiving end of an older phone that would shutdown/crash with plenty of battery left, and would have preferred it to slow down so I could at least use it.
- thanatropism 9y agoI'm just an anecdote, but I lamented the removal of the headphone jack because it means my 6SE is my last iPhone. I take pills for attention deficit disorder. I lose stuff. I lose corded and cordless headphones multiple times a month. And hey, I know my inattentiveness to be an annoying end of a spectrum. People have things going on in their lives. Not everyone neatly takes care of their in-separate-ears tiny bluetooth speakers. We're a segment of the market. They're betting that they can do better without the likes of us -- lose some, earn more from the rest. Maybe their cash position enables them to take such risks.
- EdSharkey 9y agoCompanies like Apple actually take accessibility really seriously though, which I applaud. That said, there's a pecking order to disabilities that these companies have to service. I can tell you that blindness is top of the heap and cognitive disabilities are bottom of the heap. It's a crummy situation for users like you when a disability doesn't weigh as heavily as the product design goals - grumble, the world is broken. I imagine a headphone jack must use a lot of space within the case, which creates a lot of hardware design headaches that go beyond waterproofing. I see some people at my workplace who walk around all day with a full bluetooth headset around their neck (not earbuds, like the big cans type) even when not in use, almost as a fashion accessory or statement. Perhaps you could experiment with those kinds of bluetooth headsets if you upgrade to a new iPhone. Obviously that doesn't solve your headset needs for running though, grumble grumble.
- jsz0 9y agoThe iPhone X is thicker than previous generation models.
- megaman22 9y agoIt was pretty fantastic on the Samsung hardware that was contemporaneous with many iPhone designs. Sadly the Galaxies have jumped on that bandwagon.
- austenallred 9y agoDo you ever wonder if there's a reason why that's the case?
- megaman22 9y agoI'm sure it's cheaper to solder it in, and you don't have to make the components sturdy enough to stand up to repeated assembly and dissassembly. I still hate it. It was nice to be able to have a stack of charged batteries and not worry about being away from an outlet for three or four days. Especially with a phone that had its USB port melted by a shoddy cable.
- austenallred 9y agoI don't think it's just about it being cheap; I think it's about literally making some sizes and configurations of phones work. If you look at where the battery is currently (https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/2oa2QHEoq4Ke16su.medium https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/2oa2QHEoq4Ke16su.m...) there's no way to make the battery accessible without letting you easily open the entire case. It's just a trade-off, and a replacable battery isn't worth the trade-offs. I 100% agree with Apple on this.
- MBCook 9y agoWhich all of a sudden makes it EXTREMELY hard to waterproof compared to what you’re working on right now, which was a big win on the 6S and seven.
- xbkingx 9y agoGalaxy S5 was waterproof with a removable back. All the current waterproof phones have SIM card trays, mic holes, cord connectors, speakers, etc, so it might not be as 'extreme' as you're thinking. Just need a continuous rubber gasket and a tight fit. Of course making your phone out of materials that bend or shatter instead of flexing becomes a bigger problem, especially since the former offers no practical benefit beyond 'feel'.
- looiid 9y agoThe battery is user replaceable. If a minimum wage earner in the mall can do it with a few basic tools it isn’t that difficult.
- goialoq 9y agoHow do you know the wage for battery replacement?
- oneeyedpigeon 9y agoIf replacing the battery voids the warranty, that doesn't count as 'user replaceable' in my book.
- MBCook 9y agoIf the phone is in warranty then they’ll take care of it for you. If it’s out of warranty then it doesn’t matter.
- scarface74 9y agoIf replacing the battery voids the warranty, that doesn't count as 'user replaceable' in my book. If the phone is under warranty, why wouldn't you take it to Apple and let them replace it for free?
- blensor 9y agoSo you think a Popup "Hey you're battery is going bad. Do you want to [keep the performance] or [save the battery life]?" Would be too much??
- JoeAltmaier 9y agoOr maybe "How long do you want your battery to last?" Choose 6 hours, or 8, or 12.
- mikeash 9y ago“How often do you want your phone to suddenly shut off without warning?” [Never] [Sometimes] [Often]
- oneeyedpigeon 9y agoDo we actually know the numbers (e.g. battery life and expected number of shutdowns) required to make any of these points more than moot? Because there are definitely values that would win hands-down for either side.
- mikeash 9y agoI don’t think we have any numbers, but the sudden shutdown problem was pretty frequent, enough that Apple issued a recall for one model and a lot of people saw it happen.
- mikeash 9y agoIt’s not about battery life. It’s about not pulling so much current that it suddenly shuts down the entire device. Why do so many people think this is just about making a charge last longer?
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoThe hardware/software behavior could be 100% justified and it still wouldn't excuse the fact that they've hidden it all this time, driving millions of people to buy new phones when they really just needed a new battery.
- CaptSpify 9y agoYeah, why should we let users manage the devices they own? That'd be absurd! /s
- ihuman 9y agoI don't think Apple would ever introduce a switch that could allow the phone to randomly power down.
- bytecodes 9y agoWell, there is a button that turns the phone off. The angry users could use that and experience the same thing.
- wodenokoto 9y agoSo the right thing is to have phones crash as the battery age? This is not a question about battery life in terms of how many hours the phone can run. This is a question about the phones ability to draw high amounts of power for short intervals.
- kleptco 9y agoThe right thing is that people who replaced their deliberately slowed down iPhones with new iPhones because of their ignorance about what Apple had done, should have an appropriate remedy not contained in this "we're sorry if you didn't understand that we care a lot about you" press release. It doesn't matter anyway, even though millions of similar batteries in Android phones apparently didn't require a similar secret performance degradation, we are still a long way from reaching the depths that Apple can go to before Apple fans will seriously consider an alternative.
- bb88 9y agonitpick: "ignorance" puts the blame on the consumer -- in this case it's not their fault. > should have an appropriate remedy I think a lawsuit is appropriate.
- rlanday 9y ago> even though millions of similar batteries in Android phones apparently didn't require a similar secret performance degradation You know for sure how the power-management code works in every Android device ever produced?
- JesseObrien 9y ago> we are still a long way from reaching the depths that Apple can go to before Apple fans will seriously consider an alternative. You're literally proving the point here. There's much, much more transparency on the Android side of things. Custom ROMs and the stock Google Android images have been combed over for almost the last decade by loads of different individuals and groups around the world. Now, we surely don't control the Samsung-esque bloatware that they slap on top of stock Android, but there's absolutely no way there's throttling code that lives in Android that we don't know about yet. Anecdotal evidence of my own: I have a Nexus 5 that's nearly 5 years old now that my kids use daily. It's using a stock Lineage ROM. The battery certainly isn't the best anymore, but the phone doesn't feel different than the day I bought it, and it doesn't crash.
- sjrd 9y agoAh, so you prefer your phone just shutting down unexpectedly when you open your picture-taking app, update the public transportation app to buy a ticket because they updated the server, or exit the metro into the freezing cold of winter? Right. Not an Apple customer (never was, probably never will), I use a Samsung Android, and I wish my phone were doing that performance limitation thing, because I do feel the issues caused by unexpected shutdowns on a daily basis. I constantly carry an extra battery to be able to reboot my phone when that happens.
- Woofles 9y agoAnecdotal evidence, but my 6s (which I had the battery replaced a year ago under the iPhone 6s battery replacement program) was shutting down just last week when I would walk outside, even if it was at or above 50%. I'm really interested as to where this issue came from, because before I had the unexpected shutdowns with my 6s that Apple came out and admitted was the battery's fault, I had never had this problem with a previous iPhone (or even in the first 6-9 months that I owned the 6s).
- braderhart 9y agoSounds like very poor design and more dishonesty from Apple.
- MBCook 9y agoThese kind of things are worse with the temperature is very cold outside. Is that the case for where you are?
- sjy 9y agoI know three Australian iPhone 6 users who had this problem when their phones were exposed to 0 °C on holiday in Europe. I wondered whether batteries sold and used in Australia might have different specs or somehow become accustomed to the higher temperature.
- LoSboccacc 9y agoThe rigt thing would have been a model recall changing the battery with something that has enough voltage margin to keep the cpu running after the usual degradation for at least the 500 cycles it’s rated for This is an engineering issue on evaluating margins properly repackaged as “we’re improving battery life” to hide stability issue caused by bad assumptions on cpu stability across voltage ranges.
- pishpash 9y agoExactly, this does nothing to prevent Apple from shoving a dinky battery in future phones and selling $99 annual battery replacements (after 2018). Battery itself costs nothing. $29 may be at-cost for labor. $99 is a large margin.
- tigershark 9y ago3.3 years on the iPhone 6 charging it once a day is 1000 cycles, well above 500..
- LoSboccacc 9y agoBecause you’re being throttled, duh
- tigershark 9y agoBetter being throttled than having to endure boot loops, daily crashes and a battery dead at 5 pm honestly..
- LoSboccacc 9y agoBetter having faulty hardware replaced tbh. Especially expensive hardware.
- goialoq 9y agoCycles are floats, not integers. It's only a full cycle if the battery is discharged very deeply. http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_li...
- evilduck 9y agoCorrection, it's "retain performance and experience random shutdowns or, reduce performance and avoid random shutdowns". You can't choose performance 100% of the time without compromise on battery power. That goes for literally any device. After they figured out that it's a current draw issue with old batteries that caused it, they would _never_ give you a checkbox option to allow unexpected shutdowns.