78Bandit

foggyhill said:

rogifan_new said:

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.

rogifan_new said:

At the end of the day isn’t the issue that Apple needs higher capacity batteries in their iPhones? 

Either that or lower peak power draw, which is essentially what Apple has done with the throttling fix in their software.

The phones are incapable of running at full stated performance for very long.  Apple claimed the A8 had 25% higher processing power and 50% higher GPU power while only needing half the battery power of the A7.  Apparently the power draw is quite a bit higher than expected to the point that the batteries can't supply the required power after only a year or so.  Apple's engineers didn't anticipate that happening or figure it out until they got the diagnostic data from iOS 10.2 after unexpected shutdowns became more and more frequent.

Some would suggest that Apple needs to (and in fact is obligated to) push their processors to the absolute limit when new even if it means throttling performance by half as the batteries age normally.  I am not one of those people.  I generally expect lower run time, not reduced performance, as batteries age.  Either will work from a design standpoint, but consumers will ultimately vote with their wallets as to which they want provided the choice is communicated transparently.

In this case Apple rolled the dice and lost.  Their engineers apparently initially thought the power supply from the batteries was sufficient to power the A8 (and A9 & A10 as well) without throttling.  They were wrong.  It remains to be seen if they figured out the problem and fixed it with the A11 in the iPhone 8 & X.  We'll know more in a year if benchmarks for those devices start showing performance declines too.  I'm hoping they don't.

macxpress said:

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.

macplusplus said:

Latko said:

macplusplus said:

Seeing an opportunity from Apple's public relations crisis, some competitors this week issued statements to say that they do not throttle the processing power of older devices.

That was not a publc relations “crisis” but an engineering and testing issue at first place. Slowness claims started with the release of iOS 11, and testing, locating and fixing the issue took until this date. Apple has identified the issue in adequate time and immediately communicated its findings and solutions. There is no “public relations crisis” at all, but some media outlets and trolls won’t stop and will continue to push to create an artificial crisis, even after that. As always, their efforts will be futile...

You'd better say intelligent collaboration to use of "natural" degradation as a proclaimed cause for "measures" and throttling too early (treshold set before 80%) This is planned obsolescense which they couldn't publicly reveal. It took fairly long to create their public letter that is neither lying nor telling the whole truth. There are lots of loopholes left here, so this is damage control in a rudimentary form. Class action lawsuits will continue.

The settlement is there: battery $79.00 -> $29.00

The "settlement" only covers consumers prospectively.  There are still groups that can continue their pursuit for damages.

1.  Those that took their in-warranty or AppleCare device for diagnostics and were told the battery was fine.  They didn't get the service to which they were entitled.  Why should they pay now for a repair that should have been covered by Apple at the time.
2.  Those that paid to have their out-of-warranty battery replaced after Apple employees told them the battery passed all tests but now would be covered by the $29 offer.
3.  Those that were told their battery was fine and their phone must have other problems and purchased a new device.  Based on Apple employee representations that may have been false or misleading they purchased a $700 device when a simple battery replacement would have fixed it.

nightwatch said:

I have an iPhone 6 Plus. Bought it when they first came out. Use it everyday a lot. The battery has been one of the longest lasting yet.  

However it wasn’t untIil a recent update, somewhere between iOS 11 and 11.1 that my phone instantly showed down. The response time for everything (home botton, app launching, interface response time, screen orientation is the worst part of it, etc..), just instantly slowed. That’s never happened before. 

(If you want to get to the reason for my post, just go to the last sentence).

Both of my iPhone 5 models quit holding charges after a year of use. My iPad Mini holds a 100% charge for a couple of days of no use, then goes to 0% and shuts down with all apps quit and just WiFI on. I’m a little bothered by the iPhone 5 batteries dying so quickly, but it’s my iPhone 6 Plus that was running beautifully even with iOS 11 installed that I’m wondering about. 

If this was a result of the 10.2.1 update, why did my 6 Plus run fine as it always had until the day I ran one of the 11.x updates? I wanted to use this phone for a couple more years. 

Im also a little concerned about my 1st gen 12”9 iPad Pro. That thing has a huge battery and a full charge used to lasted forever. Obviously iOS 11 has many more userland features (Files app), and I use the iPad Pro for pro audio content creation so with iOS 11 it’s not going to last as long (no problem, I bought the 32w charger and the USB C to Lightening cable (man it charges so fast now), I’d really rather not see it get affected by iOS 11 because now it’s really doing somebody serious work. 

Sorry for the long post. Anyone else experience an overnight slow down with their iPhone 6 Plus after running a 11.x update? 

The 10.2.1 update introduced throttling but it didn't actually affect phones unless their battery couldn't supply the required voltage under high load.  My guess with your phone is the battery hit that threshold while it was installing the 11.X update and your phone is now being throttled while it wasn't before.  Not entirely a coincidence, just the luck of the draw as to when your battery finally fell below acceptable performance.

Wait until the battery health monitor comes out next month and see what it says.  If your battery has degraded then take advantage of Apple's $29 replacement offer and you should be good for at least another year or maybe two depending on when Apple drops the 6 from iOS updates.  If the battery is fine then possibly something is corrupt and a phone restore is in order.  In any event the 6 should be perfectly serviceable now unless it is being throttled.