6 ms·

To be fair, you'll get the "service battery" message even if you place an original Apple battery in the iPhone. A used device that was serviced perfectly well b

To be fair, you'll get the "service battery" message even if you place an original Apple battery in the iPhone. A used device that was serviced perfectly well but not by Apple will still display this message. All this means is that the battery wasn't replaced by Apple themselves.

soganess 7y ago
Good catch! I will adjust my original message with an edit. That is straight up anti-competitive. Egg on my face for giving apple the benefit of the doubt.
- Betelgeuse90 7y ago
  To be even more fair... ;) We don't know what Apple does when they replace batteries for customers. Maybe there's a calibration process or something of the sort. After all they're reporting battery health, which nobody else does, and that's notoriously difficult to get right. I think there's still room for giving the benefit of the doubt. We're just assuming that all they do is plop a battery with an Apple logo on it and call it a day, but we don't know that.
  - protomyth 7y ago
    They replace the whole phone. They do not swap batteries when you bring it in for a battery replacement.
    - zwily 7y ago
      That’s not true. They may replace the phone sometimes but I’ve only ever had them replace the battery.
      - protomyth 7y ago
        I've had 4 battery replacements and Apple has never done anything other than exchange the whole phone.
        kalleboo 7y ago
        I've had 2 battery replacements and both times they only replaced the battery.
    - rootusrootus 7y ago
      That has not been my experience. They will swap the battery as long as there is no reason to believe it has damaged the phone (if it has swelled at all, they replace the phone).
- sjwright 7y ago
  How is it anti-competitive if the swapped battery works perfectly fine? Who cares about what the battery status page says?
  - mebo 7y ago
    A company that cares about eroding trust in third-party repairs shops getting blamed for ripping off their customers when the battery still reports as broken.
    - derefr 7y ago
      It’s not reporting as broken; it’s just reporting as “not our problem if it fails.” The Right-to-Repair discussion often ignores a key problem companies have: figuring out whether a device is under warranty (i.e. whether they’re obligated to repair the device for free) when it’s submitted for repair. Some repairs make themselves obvious, and so make the removal of warranty obligation obvious. Other repairs—like third-party battery replacements, done following the Apple process for repair and with Apple OEM components—make the warranty status of the device illegible. If the phone accepted a new Apple OEM battery without saying anything about it, the user might be misled into thinking that the device is still under warranty. But it’s not. It’s been repaired by a non-authorized third-party. It’s no longer Apple’s fault if the device breaks, because that third party may have screwed things up inside the device in any number of ways. This is, in a sense, a “chain of trust” thing. It’s the same reason Chromebooks have that on-boot warning in development mode. The user needs to be aware that the chain of trust between the OEM and the end-user has been broken; and that, when that happens, anything may potentially have been done to the device. That’s not to argue against Right-to-Repair. Non-authorized third-party repair shops should have every right to operate as businesses, and end-users should have every right to do business with them. But Apple also should have every right to warn users that the chain of trust has been broken—because it has. The user knowingly broke it themselves! (And, of course, Apple shouldn’t have the right to misconstrue breaking the chain of trust as anything more than that. The battery health is unknown because it’s not an Apple-certified repair, certainly; but that doesn’t mean that the battery is bad, and it would be anti-competitive to claim that.)
buildzr 7y ago
Theoretically they could properly detect a crappy replacement too by doing some basic math to determine approximate capacity. I'm not sure of the situation on iOS but on Android tools like Accubattery do a decent job of this. As such, even requiring an Apple original battery would be poor practice in my opinion.
- dilippkumar 7y ago
  > Theoretically they could properly detect a crappy replacement too by doing some basic math to determine approximate capacity sigh If such "basic math" exists, can someone please point me to it? Estimating capacity on a fully known, completely characterized cell is the bane of my existence. Basic math that can help estimate approximate capacity of an unknown replacement battery- that's a billion dollar startup worthy technology right there.
  - buildzr 7y ago
    Please explain, what exactly are you doing that the standard look at the charge curve and compare with battery voltage and use known charge current and time won't solve? This is pretty much how all the battery capacity estimators work to my knowledge. As long as the chemistry is known it should hold true, sure, you'll get some variation based on load but you should be able to account for that pretty with some testing or careful probing at minimal current draw. Accubattery seems to give a pretty good approximation using just this information at least, would definitely be sufficient for detecting cells that were fraudulent by more than 10-20%. If you want higher accuracy, yeah I'm sure things could get extremely involved, but many of the fraudulent batteries are 25-50% of the expected capacity.
    - dilippkumar 7y ago
      > Please explain, what exactly are you doing that the standard look at the charge curve and compare with battery voltage and use known charge current and time won't solve? If only it were that simple. In the real world, when you have a load that’s drawing from the battery, the voltage across the terminals will be different from the voltage on an open circuit for the same battery at the “battery level” (state of charge is the commonly used term) To make matters worse, the life of the battery remaining at any point depends upon the current drawn from it. If you were to draw a smaller current, it’ll last longer - and this is purely because batteries are weird and has nothing to do with the charge curve. For something like a LED flashlight that always draws the same current - this isn’t a problem. A modern smartphone on the other hand is essentially unpredictable. Then you have the numerical problem with integrating current over time - the errors add up over time too! Now you have to measure the current out of the battery with a high sampling rate with a great adc - it’s a massive power draw. Most modern fuel gauge ICs are moving away from measuring current because of all the trouble with cumulative errors. I can go on for a while longer, but I think you get the picture. > Accubattery seems to give a pretty good approximation using just this information at least, would definitely be sufficient for detecting cells that were fraudulent by more than 10-20% Accubattery can afford to monitor multiple charge and discharge cycles before converging on a battery model. A smartphone needs to know what battery it has when you plug in your newly replaced battery to charge it for the very first time to ensure it doesn’t become a fire or safety hazard. Similar concerns with discharging a battery. Look up the exploding Samsung Galaxy note 7 for an example of how serious this can be. > As long as the chemistry is known it should hold true, sure, you'll get some variation based on load but you should be able to account for that pretty with some testing or careful probing at minimal current draw. If only it were this easy. I’ve had battery vendors - the people who make this stuff - give me specs on charging that battery that would kill the battery in 250 charge cycles. It’s a very bizarre field to work in - many times, you can get away with very crude approximations and no one can tell the difference. But once in a while, a very very tiny deviation from the spec will give you exploding devices and have your product be announced as a safety hazard in every flight before take off (yay! free publicity...) The challenge is that you never know when you can get away with something and when 1 in a million devices will explode on a tech journalist/reporter/reviewer. With batteries, esp with Lithium Ion cells, nobody is going to take chances with approximations.
konschubert 7y ago
The only way for apple to make sure that the replacement battery is original is by doing the replacement themselves. Or DRM. Do you want battery DRM?
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Isn't that what the battery chip is?

soganess 7y ago

Good catch! I will adjust my original message with an edit. That is straight up anti-competitive. Egg on my face for giving apple the benefit of the doubt.

Betelgeuse90 7y ago
To be even more fair... ;) We don't know what Apple does when they replace batteries for customers. Maybe there's a calibration process or something of the sort. After all they're reporting battery health, which nobody else does, and that's notoriously difficult to get right. I think there's still room for giving the benefit of the doubt. We're just assuming that all they do is plop a battery with an Apple logo on it and call it a day, but we don't know that.
- protomyth 7y ago
  They replace the whole phone. They do not swap batteries when you bring it in for a battery replacement.
  - zwily 7y ago
    That’s not true. They may replace the phone sometimes but I’ve only ever had them replace the battery.
    - protomyth 7y ago
      I've had 4 battery replacements and Apple has never done anything other than exchange the whole phone.
      - kalleboo 7y ago
        I've had 2 battery replacements and both times they only replaced the battery.
  - rootusrootus 7y ago
    That has not been my experience. They will swap the battery as long as there is no reason to believe it has damaged the phone (if it has swelled at all, they replace the phone).
sjwright 7y ago
How is it anti-competitive if the swapped battery works perfectly fine? Who cares about what the battery status page says?
- mebo 7y ago
  A company that cares about eroding trust in third-party repairs shops getting blamed for ripping off their customers when the battery still reports as broken.
  - derefr 7y ago
    It’s not reporting as broken; it’s just reporting as “not our problem if it fails.” The Right-to-Repair discussion often ignores a key problem companies have: figuring out whether a device is under warranty (i.e. whether they’re obligated to repair the device for free) when it’s submitted for repair. Some repairs make themselves obvious, and so make the removal of warranty obligation obvious. Other repairs—like third-party battery replacements, done following the Apple process for repair and with Apple OEM components—make the warranty status of the device illegible. If the phone accepted a new Apple OEM battery without saying anything about it, the user might be misled into thinking that the device is still under warranty. But it’s not. It’s been repaired by a non-authorized third-party. It’s no longer Apple’s fault if the device breaks, because that third party may have screwed things up inside the device in any number of ways. This is, in a sense, a “chain of trust” thing. It’s the same reason Chromebooks have that on-boot warning in development mode. The user needs to be aware that the chain of trust between the OEM and the end-user has been broken; and that, when that happens, anything may potentially have been done to the device. That’s not to argue against Right-to-Repair. Non-authorized third-party repair shops should have every right to operate as businesses, and end-users should have every right to do business with them. But Apple also should have every right to warn users that the chain of trust has been broken—because it has. The user knowingly broke it themselves! (And, of course, Apple shouldn’t have the right to misconstrue breaking the chain of trust as anything more than that. The battery health is unknown because it’s not an Apple-certified repair, certainly; but that doesn’t mean that the battery is bad, and it would be anti-competitive to claim that.)

buildzr 7y ago

Theoretically they could properly detect a crappy replacement too by doing some basic math to determine approximate capacity. I'm not sure of the situation on iOS but on Android tools like Accubattery do a decent job of this. As such, even requiring an Apple original battery would be poor practice in my opinion.

dilippkumar 7y ago
> Theoretically they could properly detect a crappy replacement too by doing some basic math to determine approximate capacity sigh If such "basic math" exists, can someone please point me to it? Estimating capacity on a fully known, completely characterized cell is the bane of my existence. Basic math that can help estimate approximate capacity of an unknown replacement battery- that's a billion dollar startup worthy technology right there.
- buildzr 7y ago
  Please explain, what exactly are you doing that the standard look at the charge curve and compare with battery voltage and use known charge current and time won't solve? This is pretty much how all the battery capacity estimators work to my knowledge. As long as the chemistry is known it should hold true, sure, you'll get some variation based on load but you should be able to account for that pretty with some testing or careful probing at minimal current draw. Accubattery seems to give a pretty good approximation using just this information at least, would definitely be sufficient for detecting cells that were fraudulent by more than 10-20%. If you want higher accuracy, yeah I'm sure things could get extremely involved, but many of the fraudulent batteries are 25-50% of the expected capacity.
  - dilippkumar 7y ago
    > Please explain, what exactly are you doing that the standard look at the charge curve and compare with battery voltage and use known charge current and time won't solve? If only it were that simple. In the real world, when you have a load that’s drawing from the battery, the voltage across the terminals will be different from the voltage on an open circuit for the same battery at the “battery level” (state of charge is the commonly used term) To make matters worse, the life of the battery remaining at any point depends upon the current drawn from it. If you were to draw a smaller current, it’ll last longer - and this is purely because batteries are weird and has nothing to do with the charge curve. For something like a LED flashlight that always draws the same current - this isn’t a problem. A modern smartphone on the other hand is essentially unpredictable. Then you have the numerical problem with integrating current over time - the errors add up over time too! Now you have to measure the current out of the battery with a high sampling rate with a great adc - it’s a massive power draw. Most modern fuel gauge ICs are moving away from measuring current because of all the trouble with cumulative errors. I can go on for a while longer, but I think you get the picture. > Accubattery seems to give a pretty good approximation using just this information at least, would definitely be sufficient for detecting cells that were fraudulent by more than 10-20% Accubattery can afford to monitor multiple charge and discharge cycles before converging on a battery model. A smartphone needs to know what battery it has when you plug in your newly replaced battery to charge it for the very first time to ensure it doesn’t become a fire or safety hazard. Similar concerns with discharging a battery. Look up the exploding Samsung Galaxy note 7 for an example of how serious this can be. > As long as the chemistry is known it should hold true, sure, you'll get some variation based on load but you should be able to account for that pretty with some testing or careful probing at minimal current draw. If only it were this easy. I’ve had battery vendors - the people who make this stuff - give me specs on charging that battery that would kill the battery in 250 charge cycles. It’s a very bizarre field to work in - many times, you can get away with very crude approximations and no one can tell the difference. But once in a while, a very very tiny deviation from the spec will give you exploding devices and have your product be announced as a safety hazard in every flight before take off (yay! free publicity...) The challenge is that you never know when you can get away with something and when 1 in a million devices will explode on a tech journalist/reporter/reviewer. With batteries, esp with Lithium Ion cells, nobody is going to take chances with approximations.

konschubert 7y ago

The only way for apple to make sure that the replacement battery is original is by doing the replacement themselves. Or DRM. Do you want battery DRM?

saagarjha 7y ago
Isn't that what the battery chip is?