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> The mistakes Apple made were: > - Designing the phone hardware with barely enough battery capacity, such that some moderately old phones might not be able to
by chooseaname 7y ago
> The mistakes Apple made were:
> - Designing the phone hardware with barely enough battery capacity, such that some moderately old phones might not be able to keep working properly when the batteries decayed.
Indeed! This was (and still is) very much a design flaw. People like to say, all phones have this issue, but where are the examples? Also, look at the iPads which are just scaled up iPhones. They don't have this issue because they don't suffer the same design flaw.
Apple put a bandage on the issue and people throw praise at them.
- manfredo 7y agoThis is like saying my car's gas tank is a design flaw because I want to drive farther than my tank will allow. Increasing battery capacity means increasing the volume of the battery, which results in a phone that isn't as sleek. This isn't a design flaw, this is a tradeoff between form factor and battery capacity - just like how car designers have to make a tradeoff when selecting a fuel tank capacity. The examples are, literally, every device that uses a lithium ion battery. Take any phone or tablet, repeatedly charge and discharge the battery fully (better yet, do so in a hot climate) and eventually it will not put out sufficient voltage. This will either trigger CPU throttling, or your device will start crashing. The iPhone was the most widely publicized example, but this is a fundamental issue with battery chemistry that all battery powered devices are subject to.
- chooseaname 7y agoOther phones don't have the issue because they didn't match a tiny battery with an over sized CPU. To use your analogy (which still isn't adequate at explaining the issue), this is like paring a top fuel dragster with a tiny fuel tank.
- edmundsauto 7y agoThere is no correct answer here (no arguing matters of taste), but consumers seem to have voted for the sleek design.
- gentleman11 7y agoWe did not. I can’t buy an iPhone 5 anymore that can still run iOS properly, so I had to get one of these huge but thin things
- colejohnson66 7y agoApples newer phones are actually thicker. They stopped the “make it thinner each year” thing.
- chooseaname 7y agoNo, they didn't. Apple never gave a choice. If you want an Apple iPhone you get what Apple wants you to have. The non-Apple choice is ... well, we all know the trade-offs there.
- oflannabhra 7y agoActually, lots of Android phones, including Nexus phones, have this problem, but none of them had a software fix shipped.
- davidgould 7y agoMy Android phone started crashing mysteriously under load. I was so fed up after a while I switched to iPhone. I now assume that the degraded battery without throttling was responsible for the crashes.
- manfredo 7y ago> Other phones don't have the issue because they didn't match a tiny battery with an over sized CPU. It's not a question of if it's a question of when. All battery powered devices are subject to the limits of battery chemistry. Some phones have a bigger safety margin than others, but use the battery for long enough and it will put out less voltage than the device requires. As other commenters pointed out, other phones do indeed hit this limit.
- chooseaname 7y ago> It's not a question of if it's a question of when. That's a good point and Apple's phones failed much, much sooner than any other phones. Thus the reason we don't hear of the others.
- manfredo 7y agoPlenty of cheap <$300 phones crap out after a year or two of use. You don't hear of them because they're not Apple.
- chooseaname 7y agoAnecdotally, I have several of those cheap ones that are still going great. (moto g 1st gen for example). They make great music/video/game players for the kids. Apple designed about a years worth of battery capacity into a phone most people expected to keep 2 or more years. And clearly they put too powerful CPUs into the phones because they "fix" is to throttle them!
- to11mtm 7y agoI've had Android and Windows phones in the past where replacing the battery fixed random app crashes/reboots.
- dilippkumar 7y ago> People like to say, all phones have this issue, but where are the examples? Are there any other phones out there that are supported with software updates as long as the iPhone? If there is an Android phone that's been used for 3+ years, it will be ba good data point. Afaik, Android phone OEMs don't try to make a device last as long.
- SenHeng 7y agoI had a 2nd gen Nexus 7 that after 1.5 years of use would intermittenly shut down even though battery capacity was around 60%. It's the same issue.