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The battery was sufficiently large to start with. Then normal wear and tear caused the battery to be weaker. That’s fine. Throttling on a weak battery is sensib

The battery was sufficiently large to start with. Then normal wear and tear caused the battery to be weaker. That’s fine. Throttling on a weak battery is sensible imo. The inexcusable part was that the throttling was silent. If there had been any sort of notification then it had been good design.

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jdietrich 8y ago
>The battery was sufficiently large to start with. Then normal wear and tear caused the battery to be weaker. Your second sentence contradicts your first. Apple know that battery performance degrades over time. They knew that the batteries they were fitting to iPhones would be unable to supply sufficient current within the normal working life of the phone. They either didn't care about longevity, or chose to prioritise aesthetics. For a company that likes to brag about their environmental credentials and the quality of their devices, that's not a good look.
- AnthonBerg 8y ago
  No, there is no contradiction. We just don’t agree on what level of battery wear and tear we find acceptable. I had a phone that was affected. Batteries are a wear item, and they are replaceable. It was after a long service life and I was fine with the whole thing, including the throttling, except the unforgivable part, which was that they didn’t tell me they were throttling.
  - nitrogen 8y ago
    Right, it's the lack of user messaging that was the problem.
- jplayer01 8y ago
  The problem isn't capacity. It's voltage. Old batteries are sometimes no longer able to provide adequate voltage at peak loads, leading to phones turning off when running on low battery (but before it's actually empty enough for it to turn off in normal circumstances). Until now I've assumed that this generally affects all li-ion batteries over time, but I'm honestly not sure why this issue hasn't cropped up in the Android camp in the same way. Maybe the only reason it became such a big deal was how Apple decided to fix the problem (silently throttling performance).
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    >The problem isn't capacity. It's voltage. It's not voltage, it's discharge rate, which is directly proportional to capacity. All else being equal, bigger batteries can supply more current. It hasn't cropped up in the Android camp because Android phones use bigger batteries. https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/what_is_the_c_rate https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/what_is_the_c_ra...
    - Scoundreller 8y ago
      What about physics? A colder battery will have a slower chemical reaction and may not be able to supply enough current to avoid a crash without throttling.
      - jdietrich 8y ago
        A phone should be able to operate reliably within it's thermal specifications. It's perfectly reasonable for a phone to occasionally throttle because it's unusually hot or cold, but it's exceedingly shoddy for throttling to be routinely used to mitigate an under-specified battery.
    - jhayward 8y ago
      > It hasn't cropped up in the Android camp Samsung was fined for exactly the same thing Apple was doing. https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-samsung-5-million-fine-phone-slowdown-2018-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-samsung-5-million-fine...
      - jdietrich 8y ago
        According to The Register, Samsung were fined because they pushed Android Marshmallow to the Note 4, not because of any sort of battery-related throttling. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/24/apple_samsung_fined/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/24/apple_samsung_fined...
    - deleted 8y ago
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jdietrich 8y ago

>The battery was sufficiently large to start with. Then normal wear and tear caused the battery to be weaker. Your second sentence contradicts your first. Apple know that battery performance degrades over time. They knew that the batteries they were fitting to iPhones would be unable to supply sufficient current within the normal working life of the phone. They either didn't care about longevity, or chose to prioritise aesthetics. For a company that likes to brag about their environmental credentials and the quality of their devices, that's not a good look.

AnthonBerg 8y ago
No, there is no contradiction. We just don’t agree on what level of battery wear and tear we find acceptable. I had a phone that was affected. Batteries are a wear item, and they are replaceable. It was after a long service life and I was fine with the whole thing, including the throttling, except the unforgivable part, which was that they didn’t tell me they were throttling.
- nitrogen 8y ago
  Right, it's the lack of user messaging that was the problem.
jplayer01 8y ago
The problem isn't capacity. It's voltage. Old batteries are sometimes no longer able to provide adequate voltage at peak loads, leading to phones turning off when running on low battery (but before it's actually empty enough for it to turn off in normal circumstances). Until now I've assumed that this generally affects all li-ion batteries over time, but I'm honestly not sure why this issue hasn't cropped up in the Android camp in the same way. Maybe the only reason it became such a big deal was how Apple decided to fix the problem (silently throttling performance).
- jdietrich 8y ago
  >The problem isn't capacity. It's voltage. It's not voltage, it's discharge rate, which is directly proportional to capacity. All else being equal, bigger batteries can supply more current. It hasn't cropped up in the Android camp because Android phones use bigger batteries. https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/what_is_the_c_rate https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/what_is_the_c_ra...
  - Scoundreller 8y ago
    What about physics? A colder battery will have a slower chemical reaction and may not be able to supply enough current to avoid a crash without throttling.
    - jdietrich 8y ago
      A phone should be able to operate reliably within it's thermal specifications. It's perfectly reasonable for a phone to occasionally throttle because it's unusually hot or cold, but it's exceedingly shoddy for throttling to be routinely used to mitigate an under-specified battery.
  - jhayward 8y ago
    > It hasn't cropped up in the Android camp Samsung was fined for exactly the same thing Apple was doing. https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-samsung-5-million-fine-phone-slowdown-2018-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-samsung-5-million-fine...
    - jdietrich 8y ago
      According to The Register, Samsung were fined because they pushed Android Marshmallow to the Note 4, not because of any sort of battery-related throttling. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/24/apple_samsung_fined/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/24/apple_samsung_fined...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]