Got my iPhone 6s battery swapped over yesterday for free! They did the test and it came up borderline at 80.51%. It would have cost $35.45 AUD but because it was less than two years since I purchased it under consumer law in Australia they replaced it at no charge. Very pleased.
Note: I didn’t get a lot of slow down ( CPU throttling) issues. But I was needing to charge multiple times a day
Needing to charge many times of day is what's killing your battery. If truly there is a law that forces apple to replace batteries for someone who charges their phones many times a day... Well I find that a bit stupid since the batteries are consumables. Would Apple still be responsible if you could swap out the battery yourself? That would not be the case with any other battery powered device
At the end of the day isn’t the issue that Apple needs higher capacity batteries in their iPhones?
Yeah, and people need to accept phones 50% heavier and 2mm thicker, tell those people that's the choice they'll have to make. Yup's that's an easy one.
No, the choice is likely people will realize that they actually need to get their battery replaced if they want a very small phone that they use like crazy (500 full charges in one year are now very frequent which wasn't the case 5 years ago).
That's the choice that takes user preference into account AND actual technical limitations.
Do you really believe the battery literally needs to be doubled in size to overcome the voltage clipping issue? Just as likely is the choice the phone would be 0.7 mm thicker (same as the iPhone 5s) and weigh 15 grams more. That choice isn't quite so obvious.
Its more likely you are litteraly talking out of your ass and don't know wth your talking about.
I see people are already thinking that maybe come November/December they'll schedule a swap of their iPhone X battery. I wonder how many will actually do this?
Apple's current diagnostic testing for battery capacity won't identify all instances where a battery can't supply the proper voltage under load. In those circumstances phones will test good but will still be throttled up to 50%. I would look for the informal policy of replacing batteries at the customers request for $29 to go away once Apple releases its new Battery Health app and the user and the Genius Bar employees can see if the phone is throttled because of voltage insufficiency.
I'm also hoping Apple speced a better battery in the iPhone 8 and X as well as worked on their chipset power draw requirements in designing the A11 Bionic. No way Apple engineers think it is acceptable to throttle a phone that is just over a year old; that was a stopgap measure to cover for a design flaw in the 6, 6S, and 7.
Bla, bla, bla,bla. This is mass hysteria and Apple is letting those hysterical users replace their batteries if they want to. And as sure as death and taxes we’ll next start to see reports and articles claiming the battery swap didn’t speed up the phones and Apple is still throttling their devices to force upgrades. On Apple’s own discussion boards people are now claiming ALL their Apple devices are being slowed down, including the Mac Mini, the iMac, the Watch, everything. It’s a huge dirty snowball that gets bigger with each hysterical claim. And with each future update of iOS we’ll hear from the tinfoil hat crowd that Apple is doing something else to force people to buy new phones. And it all started years ago when people tried to prove their theories by counting subject hits on Google.
I can read it now in my mind. iOS 11.2.2 is released and the swarm says their iPhones are even slower now because Apple did it gain!
Call them the tinfoil hat crowd until you’re blue in the face. Condescend to them about hysteria. But remember one thing. Apple admitted to slowing phones without telling anyone. Think about that for a moment and consider the trust that was broken. Consider who’s perception was actually more accurate than your own.
I don't recall Apple admitted such thing. And no, implications and conclusions are both subjective depending on which side you are, so let's take it at word-by-word basis.
Apple statement:
Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices. Lithium-ion batteries become less capable of supplying peak current demands when in cold conditions, have a low battery charge or as they age over time, which can result in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components. Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions. We’ve now extended that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add support for other products in the future.
At the end of the day isn’t the issue that Apple needs higher capacity batteries in their iPhones?
Yeah, and people need to accept phones 50% heavier and 2mm thicker, tell those people that's the choice they'll have to make. Yup's that's an easy one.
No, the choice is likely people will realize that they actually need to get their battery replaced if they want a very small phone that they use like crazy (500 full charges in one year are now very frequent which wasn't the case 5 years ago).
That's the choice that takes user preference into account AND actual technical limitations.
My iPhone 10 is a bit heavier than my 7 was. I hardly notice it. Do Galaxy and Pixel owners complain that their phones are too heavy?
No, but they do praise iPhone for being lighter.
They do? Guess I missed that in all the reviews. Mind sharing some examples?
At the end of the day isn’t the issue that Apple needs higher capacity batteries in their iPhones?
Yeah, and people need to accept phones 50% heavier and 2mm thicker, tell those people that's the choice they'll have to make. Yup's that's an easy one.
No, the choice is likely people will realize that they actually need to get their battery replaced if they want a very small phone that they use like crazy (500 full charges in one year are now very frequent which wasn't the case 5 years ago).
That's the choice that takes user preference into account AND actual technical limitations.
My iPhone 10 is a bit heavier than my 7 was. I hardly notice it. Do Galaxy and Pixel owners complain that their phones are too heavy?
No, but they do praise iPhone for being lighter.
They do? Guess I missed that in all the reviews. Mind sharing some examples
Not exactly verbatim, but mostly praised my X as very light when they picked it up.
I see people are already thinking that maybe come November/December they'll schedule a swap of their iPhone X battery. I wonder how many will actually do this?
Apple's current diagnostic testing for battery capacity won't identify all instances where a battery can't supply the proper voltage under load. In those circumstances phones will test good but will still be throttled up to 50%. I would look for the informal policy of replacing batteries at the customers request for $29 to go away once Apple releases its new Battery Health app and the user and the Genius Bar employees can see if the phone is throttled because of voltage insufficiency.
I'm also hoping Apple speced a better battery in the iPhone 8 and X as well as worked on their chipset power draw requirements in designing the A11 Bionic. No way Apple engineers think it is acceptable to throttle a phone that is just over a year old; that was a stopgap measure to cover for a design flaw in the 6, 6S, and 7.
Bla, bla, bla,bla. This is mass hysteria and Apple is letting those hysterical users replace their batteries if they want to. And as sure as death and taxes we’ll next start to see reports and articles claiming the battery swap didn’t speed up the phones and Apple is still throttling their devices to force upgrades. On Apple’s own discussion boards people are now claiming ALL their Apple devices are being slowed down, including the Mac Mini, the iMac, the Watch, everything. It’s a huge dirty snowball that gets bigger with each hysterical claim. And with each future update of iOS we’ll hear from the tinfoil hat crowd that Apple is doing something else to force people to buy new phones. And it all started years ago when people tried to prove their theories by counting subject hits on Google.
I can read it now in my mind. iOS 11.2.2 is released and the swarm says their iPhones are even slower now because Apple did it gain!
Call them the tinfoil hat crowd until you’re blue in the face. Condescend to them about hysteria. But remember one thing. Apple admitted to slowing phones without telling anyone. Think about that for a moment and consider the trust that was broken. Consider who’s perception was actually more accurate than your own.
That's not what they said exactly and you know it, so you just created some strawman. Throttling and power management of all kind go hand in hand and have always occured in even new mobile device and that's exactly what the release notes were about. The battery's condition itself were already indicated that they degraded performance and needed replacing in settings.
The problem was not that they hid it, it is that they assumed the message was clear enough and that people could link their action in power management to the battery's performance and that people would be conscious that batteries degrade normally according to charging usage.
They made a few assumption about user's knowledge that turned out false (they should be assumed to know nothing at all time seemingly) and they also communicate more at the level of a power or technically proficient user than a most of their regular cients.
Even Rene Ritchie admitted that nobody really knew exactly what tweaks to the power management system meant. When Tech Crunch first reportedly on this last February they never used the word throttle. I don’t believe Rene Ritchie did either. So nothing in Apple’s statement or press briefs would lead one to believe/assume slow performance was due to the battery. I don’t think Apple was unclear because they wanted to deceive people. I’m sure they felt it was something deep in the engineering weeds that the average consumer didn’t need to know about.
I called my local Apple store to make sure I would be able to switch out the battery in my iPhone 6 for a new one for $29 at my Genius Bar appointment tomorrow, since I couldn’t find any confirmation of that on the Apple website. Before I could speak to anyone, I had to deal with an automated voice system that asked me a few seemingly irrelevant questions, including the the IMEI number of my phone. After about 15 minutes on hold, I was connected to a support person not at the store, who said yes to the $29, but didn’t know how long it would take, and said I needed to allow them to do diagnostics on the phone before they would replace the battery, although she couldn’t explain why, other than saying it was necessary (which seems to contradict the headline of this article). So I went into my privacy settings to enable her do the diagnostics remotely, then she contacted the store while I spent another ~10 minutes on hold, and eventually told me she had succeeded in reaching them and it would probably take no more than a few hours.
So after 31 minutes on the phone, she was able to confirm that I will get a new battery tomorrow for $29, and it will probably take an hour or two. Nice to know, but that phone call should have taken less than a minute. Good thing my aging battery didn’t die.
I see people are already thinking that maybe come November/December they'll schedule a swap of their iPhone X battery. I wonder how many will actually do this?
Apple's current diagnostic testing for battery capacity won't identify all instances where a battery can't supply the proper voltage under load. In those circumstances phones will test good but will still be throttled up to 50%. I would look for the informal policy of replacing batteries at the customers request for $29 to go away once Apple releases its new Battery Health app and the user and the Genius Bar employees can see if the phone is throttled because of voltage insufficiency.
I'm also hoping Apple speced a better battery in the iPhone 8 and X as well as worked on their chipset power draw requirements in designing the A11 Bionic. No way Apple engineers think it is acceptable to throttle a phone that is just over a year old; that was a stopgap measure to cover for a design flaw in the 6, 6S, and 7.
Bla, bla, bla,bla. This is mass hysteria and Apple is letting those hysterical users replace their batteries if they want to. And as sure as death and taxes we’ll next start to see reports and articles claiming the battery swap didn’t speed up the phones and Apple is still throttling their devices to force upgrades. On Apple’s own discussion boards people are now claiming ALL their Apple devices are being slowed down, including the Mac Mini, the iMac, the Watch, everything. It’s a huge dirty snowball that gets bigger with each hysterical claim. And with each future update of iOS we’ll hear from the tinfoil hat crowd that Apple is doing something else to force people to buy new phones. And it all started years ago when people tried to prove their theories by counting subject hits on Google.
I can read it now in my mind. iOS 11.2.2 is released and the swarm says their iPhones are even slower now because Apple did it gain!
Call them the tinfoil hat crowd until you’re blue in the face. Condescend to them about hysteria. But remember one thing. Apple admitted to slowing phones without telling anyone. Think about that for a moment and consider the trust that was broken. Consider who’s perception was actually more accurate than your own.
That's not what they said exactly and you know it, so you just created some strawman. Throttling and power management of all kind go hand in hand and have always occured in even new mobile device and that's exactly what the release notes were about. The battery's condition itself were already indicated that they degraded performance and needed replacing in settings.
The problem was not that they hid it, it is that they assumed the message was clear enough and that people could link their action in power management to the battery's performance and that people would be conscious that batteries degrade normally according to charging usage.
They made a few assumption about user's knowledge that turned out false (they should be assumed to know nothing at all time seemingly) and they also communicate more at the level of a power or technically proficient user than a most of their regular cients.
Even Rene Ritchie admitted that nobody really knew exactly what tweaks to the power management system meant. When Tech Crunch first reportedly on this last February they never used the word throttle. I don’t believe Rene Ritchie did either. So nothing in Apple’s statement or press briefs would lead one to believe/assume slow performance was due to the battery. I don’t think Apple was unclear because they wanted to deceive people. I’m sure they felt it was something deep in the engineering weeds that the average consumer didn’t need to know about.
Power management is about throttling performance, that's the whole definition of it,, and the tweeks mentioned were made specifically in response to shutdowns of the 6 and 6s in 10.2.1 that were linked to the battery. So, the link in them doing the correction is clear in the technical sense, it's just not clear in a broader communication sense. Apple usually keeps users in the dark about the nitty gritty of keeping their phone's working so not publicizing this made sense.
All those people you are mentioning are desingenuousness post-facto to create "drama" and getting more clicks: I don't believe any of this.
Myself, already assumed that Apple had always adjusted the phone's performance to the battery output; my only surprise here is realising they had NOT been doing it before then (probably because pre 5s and the bigger screens of the 6/6s, peak power performance of the SOC was much lower so batteries were much less under stress.
I called my local Apple store to make sure I would be able to switch out the battery in my iPhone 6 for a new one for $29 at my Genius Bar appointment tomorrow, since I couldn’t find any confirmation of that on the Apple website. Before I could speak to anyone, I had to deal with an automated voice system that asked me a few seemingly irrelevant questions, including the the IMEI number of my phone. After about 15 minutes on hold, I was connected to a support person not at the store, who said yes to the $29, but didn’t know how long it would take, and said I needed to allow them to do diagnostics on the phone before they would replace the battery, although she couldn’t explain why, other than saying it was necessary (which seems to contradict the headline of this article). So I went into my privacy settings to enable her do the diagnostics remotely, then she contacted the store while I spent another ~10 minutes on hold, and eventually told me she had succeeded in reaching them and it would probably take no more than a few hours.
So after 31 minutes on the phone, she was able to confirm that I will get a new battery tomorrow for $29, and it will probably take an hour or two. Nice to know, but that phone call should have taken less than a minute. Good thing my aging battery didn’t die.
Even though it doesn't require a bad battery to replace the battery, they probably want to collect the information anyway since they rarely would get this kind of wide sampling of user devices (usually they would only get devices were the battery is mostly dead).
I called my local Apple store to make sure I would be able to switch out the battery in my iPhone 6 for a new one for $29 at my Genius Bar appointment tomorrow, since I couldn’t find any confirmation of that on the Apple website. Before I could speak to anyone, I had to deal with an automated voice system that asked me a few seemingly irrelevant questions, including the the IMEI number of my phone. After about 15 minutes on hold, I was connected to a support person not at the store, who said yes to the $29, but didn’t know how long it would take, and said I needed to allow them to do diagnostics on the phone before they would replace the battery, although she couldn’t explain why, other than saying it was necessary (which seems to contradict the headline of this article). So I went into my privacy settings to enable her do the diagnostics remotely, then she contacted the store while I spent another ~10 minutes on hold, and eventually told me she had succeeded in reaching them and it would probably take no more than a few hours.
So after 31 minutes on the phone, she was able to confirm that I will get a new battery tomorrow for $29, and it will probably take an hour or two. Nice to know, but that phone call should have taken less than a minute. Good thing my aging battery didn’t die.
Even though it doesn't require a bad battery to replace the battery, they probably want to collect the information anyway since they rarely would get this kind of wide sampling of user devices (usually they would only get devices were the battery is mostly dead).
And Apple will still do a visual inspection of the phone. So if it has physical damage, it sounds like that phone is not eligible for the $29 battery replacement should that occur. Thats not Apple scamming someone, its just the fact that if something is broken such as the screen, the battery replacement may inadvertently break the screen further to the point where it no longer functions properly. So guess what the customer does...they complain and say Apple broke their screen and demand they replace the screen for free. If the phone has water damage I bet they may refuse the $29 replacement as well.
Update: I went in today to get my battery replaced, and contrary to what they told me on my 31-minute call with them yesterday, they don’t have batteries in stock, so they won’t be able to replace mine for at least a day or two. They said they will let me know when they get more batteries in, and I won’t have to make another appointment, I can just drop it off.
They also said said that in some cases they will just give customers a different phone, so I should be sure to backup anything I care about.
Update #2: I dropped it off, which took about 20 minutes, and they told me it would be ready 2 hours later. I went back 2 hours later (each trip is a 20-minute walk each way in freezing weather on sidewalks covered in ice and slush), checked in with various people, waited another 70 minutes, and was told that my water-damage sticker had changed color, so they would only do a replacement of the entire device, for $300. No $29 battery replacement was possible.
I’m livid—now it’s late, my friends and their three small children are waiting up past their bedtimes for me and I haven’t been able to call them to tell them why I’m so late, and I’ve wasted a few hours of my life (31 minutes on the phone, 120 minutes trudging through the crappy weather, 150 minutes at the store) for some seriously petty nonsense, and now I have to go buy a battery on ifixit.com and do the whole damn thing myself. Apple does some things well, but this was really not one of those things.
Comments
Apple statement:
So after 31 minutes on the phone, she was able to confirm that I will get a new battery tomorrow for $29, and it will probably take an hour or two. Nice to know, but that phone call should have taken less than a minute. Good thing my aging battery didn’t die.
So, the link in them doing the correction is clear in the technical sense, it's just not clear in a broader communication sense.
Apple usually keeps users in the dark about the nitty gritty of keeping their phone's working so not publicizing this made sense.
All those people you are mentioning are desingenuousness post-facto to create "drama" and getting more clicks: I don't believe any of this.
Myself, already assumed that Apple had always adjusted the phone's performance to the battery output; my only surprise here is realising they had NOT been doing it before then (probably because pre 5s and the bigger screens of the 6/6s, peak power performance of the SOC was much lower so batteries were much less under stress.
They also said said that in some cases they will just give customers a different phone, so I should be sure to backup anything I care about.
I’m livid—now it’s late, my friends and their three small children are waiting up past their bedtimes for me and I haven’t been able to call them to tell them why I’m so late, and I’ve wasted a few hours of my life (31 minutes on the phone, 120 minutes trudging through the crappy weather, 150 minutes at the store) for some seriously petty nonsense, and now I have to go buy a battery on ifixit.com and do the whole damn thing myself. Apple does some things well, but this was really not one of those things.