Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Consumer Group Has Asked Apple To Investigate 'a Considerable Number' of iPhone Shutdowns (businessinsider.com)
An anonymous reader writes:The China Consumers Association (CCA) has asked Apple to investigate "a considerable number" of reports by users of iPhone 6 and 6s phones that the devices have been shutting off and cannot be turned back on again, it said on Tuesday. The reported problems specifically involve users seeing their iPhones automatically shut off despite 50-60 percent battery levels, and the involuntary shutting off in room temperature or colder environments, as well as the inability to turn the cellphone back on despite continuous battery charging, the statement said. "In view that Apple iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s series cellphones in China have a considerable number of users, and the number of people who've reported this problem is rather many, China Consumer Association has already made a query with Apple," the association said in a statement on its website.
First question: Are they knockoffs?
Second question: If this is only happening in China, has the Chinese government asked Apple to modify their firmware in some way?
Third question: Are we hearing about this because someone is trying to FUD Apple out of the Chinese market?
What are they whining? Device works as designed, the consumers just need to walk into iStore and renew their yearly iPhone iSubscription.
"That $100 dollar brand new iPhone that I bought at the night market/store that sells electronics for a fraction of their cost stopped working. But I know it must be legit despite the low cost because the guy who sold it to me told me it was legit. Funny, neither he nor the store are there any more. What's wrong with your crap products, Apple?"
I've been to China. It's definitely that. Keep in mind that this is also a country where most of its citizens believe that you can't lose money on the stock market no matter what stock you buy - ever.
Chinese people are really behind in basic concepts of Capitalism. They'll never catch up to the rest of the developed world if they keep being so naive as to expect that things that worked before will keep working after a newer model is released.
Things just don't work that way. When "thing model n" comes out, it's time to throw away "thing model n-1" and buy the newer model.
This is basic stuff.
Yes, they did. The whole problem is that only the first step worked as expected.
Phone would randomly shutdown even though battery was 40%+ per the iOS UI. If I then tried to power it back up I would get the big charging icon, implying that the battery was completely drained. If I then charged the battery for just 5 minutes the phone would work fine and allow the battery to be discharged from its previously indicated 40%+ as expected. Based on my observations it appeared to be an intermittent problem with the power gauge firmware mistakenly detecting the battery as depleted and engaging the Li-Ion full-discharge protection logic as a result.
I brought mine to the Genius bar and of course all their battery diagnostics showed nothing wrong. Took three return attempts before they finally agreed to replace my phone even though it was still under warranty. This guy wasn't as persistent as me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XCBydkR6dI
As I read about this issue apparently being isolated to China, a thought comes to mind. On the one hand hand, Western consumers will happily flip the fuck out and practically beg Apple to take money they should be putting in a savings instead of wasting it on this years almost the same damn thing. In China there is an industry that has sprung up around the iPhone 6 where consumers are saying, "Why do we want this for anything but vanity? This is a waste of money under consideration of my perfectly fine 4 or 5..." The industry that has sprung up as a consequence of that reasonable thinking is an iPhone cosmetic makeover that takes an old iPhone and makes it look like the latest model. This allows for some vanity factor without having to feel like the classic fool parting with money.
As reasonable as that seems, perhaps what we are seeing is that backfiring.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
the great firewall got an upgrade. now bricks devices of 'problem' citizens. this is your first warning. and don't think about switching to samsung, because when the government turns those off, it might hurt.
Or possibly, Chinese intelligence service has been distributing some defective malware which bricks target iphones.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
A coworker of mine went to China on vacation and bought one of these knockoff phones and holy crap, I had a hard time telling it apart from the real thing.
The thing that really surprised me was the cut of Android on it that had been skinned to look just like iOS. There was some serious work put into the product.
Clearly there's a huge market for these knockoffs.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
When the battery dies the power chip gets confused.
My iPhone 6 needed a battery replacement just short of two years and had the same symptoms - the battery indicator would show plenty, but at some random point it just turned off. I was trying to limp along like that until the 7 came out but it continued to deteriorate. $65 and an hour at the Apple Store and all was great again, and now I'll wait for the iPhone 8. I use the phone heavily and often charge during the day, it was up over 700 load cycles when it failed, so I'm not too upset. I've had iPhones since day 1 and never had any trouble before.
I've had this happen, although not at the 40% like they claim. Mine frequently happened around 20%, and over time increasingly around 30%. By that time I swapped it out with Apple for a replacement due to that issue, plus two other unrelated defects. A friend had this happening to him too, he got a free replacement phone from Apple. To me, that suggests Apple is aware of the issue. It's a unfortunate bug to have. If you don't have a charging cord/device near by, and are stranded on a deserted road with a phone which has the power, but doesn't think it has the power, you could be SOL.
I had an iPhone6 that would do the same thing, die with a 30-40% charge, then show the charge again and work after plugging it into a charger for a minute. This problem has been known for a while. A quick search shows the following thread on the apple discussion boards. There is a fix posted on payetteforward. I used that fix and my iPhone6 never had that battery problem again. I'd forgotten how I fixed it but 5 secods of a Google search for "iphone 6 turns off at 40" turned it up again.
in anima Apparatus
but asians expect even shit electronics to last couple of years.
they expect premium electronics to work forever, basically, and the crappy one's to be able to be fixed for pennies.
you would too if iPhone cost 6000$ to you.
My girlfriends iPhone6 shuts off at randomly at anything under 50 percent now, it pretty much needs to be tethered with a charger all the time to use. without you can use it for maybe like 45 minutes. it's nearly 2 years old.
this is in Thailand though - but the point is that iPhone batteries degrade in 2-3 years and the power management doesn't seem to be able to handle the fluctation and degrading of the battery at all - resulting in phones shutting down when it shows to have 50%+ battery. the charge indicator circuitry doesn't learn and the power management circuitry doesn't limit speed or anything if the voltage dips - instead it just does a random shutdown - which might just as well make some phones unbootable if you run this scenario enough times.
in china though most of the apple looking chargers can't provide the 2.1 amps anyways, but the issue happens even with genuine chargers.
I think it's just about westerners not complaining about it or they change the phone after 2 years anyways - in Asia though they still sold new(unrefurbished) iphone5s' like couple of months ago at least - direct from operator. Point being, that status phones like iPhones have a much longer life in Asia - and where do you think all the trade-in iPhones from the west end up as well?
and about the organized complaints only happening in China.. well.. eh. this might surprise you but Consumer protection agencies practically don't exist in most of southeast Asia at least and in the West there is the 24month mandatory warranty anyways.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I used to work for apple and this is a known issue. They used to claim it was a software problem and to keep updating the iOS, although 1 major and more than 10 minor updates later the problem has not been fixed. According to apple engineets they have been invetigating this problem for almost 1 year now. For the phones that exhibit these symptoms most ( over 90% of the phones I have seen) pass the apple battery diagnostic test. Either: 1. Apple engineers do not know what is causing the problem 2. They know. As they have not offered ANY solution except updating the iOS, and I have not heard of any data regarding bad manufacturing batches they may genuinly not know what is causing the problem or how to fix it. They may end up issuing a recall for phones with this issues if China complain enough. Similair to the iPhone 5 home button problem. Almost all Asians are paranoid about home buttons now and use Assistive Touch or the rubber home button things.