Apple Is Seeing 'Strong Demand' For Replacement iPhone Batteries (reuters.com)

In a letter addressed to the U.S. lawmakers, Apple said earlier this month that it was seeing "strong demand" for replacement iPhone batteries. The company added that it may offer rebates for consumers who paid full price for new batteries. From a report: Apple confirmed in December that software to deal with aging batteries in iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE models could slow down performance. The company apologized and lowered the price of battery replacements for affected models from $79 to $29. In the letter released Tuesday, amid nagging allegations that it slowed down phones with older batteries as a way to push people into buying new phones, the company said it was considering issuing rebates to consumers who paid full price for replacement batteries.

Comments

That's not surprising really

[the_skywise]

How many people would take advantage of a sale to get new laptop batteries at 60% off?
I've got an iPhone 6 with a replaced battery a little under a year ago (woohoo rebate!) and I FULLY intend to purchase the replacement around the end of the year just to extend the life of my 6 by another 2 years or so.
It also ups the resale value.

Re:That's not surprising really

[the_skywise]

It's not just a nefarious conspiracy. Modular components (ram, network cards) require physical connections which are never as good as a soldered connection as well as layout space to replaceable. The whole move towards thinness and lighter phones and laptops was a great driver to the soldered components and to pack as much tech into as small a space as possible.
I'm sure some of that was also a drive to lock the customer into certain features and specs but this happened with PC laptops long before Apple jumped back into the game. I've gone through my share of gaming laptops and which at least allowed me to expand memory and hard drives. (and more recently WiFi - In THEORY I can change out the GPU but it's ridiculously expensive and a pain to do so and a typical customer probably wouldn't do that.) Can't do that AT ALL with my Surface Pro 4 but I see that as a move towards computers as an appliance. Same with cars these days. It used to be that you could do most of your own repairs on a car - not these days.

Re:That's not surprising really

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course this is why Apple and Samsung have moved to non user replaceable batteries.

You try to lay out a nice case, but this part is nothing but leaping to a speculative conclusion, then treating it as fact. All this rest of your post is the fruit of the tainted logic.

$29 for battery replacement is a good deal

[prasadsurve]

no wonder there is strong demand for it.

Because they got caught.

[Gravis Zero]

Apple doesn't do things out of the goodness of their heart. Apple execs realized they had been caught and it would have serious repercussions in the EU, so they decided to simply reduce their profit margin. They are still making a killing on replacing batteries but now they look charitable despite being anything but.

DON'T! YOU! SAY!

[grungeman]

Only Captain Obvious could have seen this coming.

Isolated incident

[ilsaloving]

The only reason they're even doing this is cause their image got a black eye.

I tried to get a couple of mac minis upgraded, replacing the HDD drive with a 256GB SSD. I was quoted at $1000 just for the drive . This doesn't even include the labour for taking the thing apart!

If I were to purchase a brand new Mac Mini, an upgrade to SSD is still $240. Still more expensive than just buying an SSD from the store, but that's 1/4 of the price I was quoted for the repair.

Apple sure loves their shenanigans.