Slashdot Mirror
Apple Acknowledges iPhone 4S Battery Problems
bdking writes "After more than two weeks of complaints from frustrated iPhone 4S owners, Apple finally has admitted problems with fast-draining batteries in the new devices. The company blames it on bugs in iOS 5 and promises a fix 'in a few weeks.' But Apple should have spoken up sooner, if only to acknowledge the issue."
Other users and Apple disagree with you.
Can we keep the blatant opinions out of the articles, and save them for the comments?
My experience from working for completely different companies is that the standard approach to product flaws is to ignore them completely or at least stay quiet until your people in-house have verified the problem and are halfway done with a fix or workaround (or the lawyers have concluded that the company isn't liable in which case it is somehow not a problem anyway no matter what the customers claim).
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
From the summary:
"But Apple should have spoken up sooner, if only to acknowledge the issue."
What a load of shit. The device has been out for about three weeks at this point. How many other companies actually work this quickly to actually determine whether or not a problem exists, determine what the problem actually is, and then start working on a fix? I wish the companies that I regularly deal with were remotely as responsive to issues.
Apple has been asking users for assistance in narrowing down this issue. There is no "finally". They generally don't talk about things that they don't have information on. If they had spoken up sooner, they would have simply been able to say nothing other than, "hey, people, don't buy our phone, wait for some indeterminate amount of time until we can solve an issue that may or may not even exist, and my only affect a small fraction of our customers".
...for a replacement battery?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Just carry a second (or third) charged battery and switch it when the battery is drained.
Had this been an issues with a new blackberry, you know they would be crucified. The media loves to let apple getaway with stuff like this all the time, but any mistakemade by RIM and it means the end of the company. If this is a software bug, why are we waiting weeks for a fix? Because apple knows they can do as they please, and these devices will still fly off the shelves faster then they can build them.
Because it's nothing more than a minor inconvenience for a small number of users? Great, your battery drains before the day's over. So what? Charge your phone more frequently for a couple of weeks while Apple looks into the issue. Come back and make your RIM comparison when half the iPhones in the world stop working for three days straight.
Jesus wept.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There you go, proof that everyone else is just using wrong!
When should Apple acknowledge the issue? When some users are saying they have a problem, when others are saying they don't? (Many people, myself included, have not encountered this issue). Such problems can be very difficult to track down. How does Apple know if it is a real issue? Maybe the people who are complaining have unrealistic expectations, or are using their phones in a different way. After all, the iPhone 4s has new features, which might cause some people to place a heavier demand on the battery. How many people are encountering the problem? is it 10%? 1%? 0.001% (which would still be quite a few phones). Is it a manufacturing defect, or a software problem? Is there any point in acknowledging the issue if all that you are able to honestly say is something noncommittal like, "Well, we've had some reports, but we haven't yet been able to reproduce them, and we really have no idea at all what's going on or how many people are having this problem, but we're investigating the issue"? Or is it better to wait until there is something substantive to say?
I actually had the same problem with my first-generation iPhone. I didn't even bother reporting it to Apple until I had it figured out, because a bug report that just says "Sometimes my battery runs down really fast" is virtually useless. I eventually figured out that the battery died if I left the Clock application in the foreground while the phone was asleep. I filed a bug report with Apple, and after the next system update, I got an email message that said, "We believe that the bug that you reported has been fixed. Can you verify?"
So you think the antenna is a piece of crap, yet you didn't return the phone and you describe yourself in another comment as "a happy iPhone 4 owner" ? I don't get that, is it some weird love/hate thing ?
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
There you go, proof that everyone else is just using wrong!
Denial as a business model?!?
It's just crazy enough, it might work!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Well as long as I'm modded troll for that comment I might as well add that that fix, the 2.3.4 update for the Samsung Galaxy S2 which hasn't been released for belgian users for months now, includes a fix for poor battery life for a small number of users. Yet no uproar for that on Slashdot.
"Battery life: some users let us know that their batteries didn’t seem to be lasting as long; battery life should be improved for these folks."
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Have you disabled "raise to speak" in Siri settings? That was reported on day one (or two) and solved my problem immediately.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere