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

Posted by msmash on from the next-up dept.

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.

13 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. That's not surprising really by the_skywise · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:That's not surprising really by Hal_Porter · · Score: 2

      User replaceable batteries or at cost battery replacement of non user replaceable batteries prolongs cell phone life. Which is good for consumers and bad for the manufacturer's profits.

      Same with user upgradeable Ram and storage.

      Of course this is why Apple and Samsung have moved to non user replaceable batteries. And Apple have moved to soldered Ram and SSD on laptops. Of course neither has been exactly open about the reasons for this and the effect it has on total cost of ownership for users.

      Presumably Windows laptop vendors would have moved to soldered everything if they had as much of a market share as Apple have with iOS (100%) and Samsung have with Android.

      The interesting thing is that Samsung isn't as dominant as you'd expect

      https://www.androidauthority.c...

      They used to have 65% of the market

      http://info.localytics.com/blo...

      Now it seems like they're more like one of many vendors than a near monopolist

      https://www.idc.com/promo/smar...

      Hopefully this will make them produce some phones I'll actually want to buy when my LG V20 wears out.

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      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    2. Re:That's not surprising really by the_skywise · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:That's not surprising really by Solandri · · Score: 2

      Not exactly sure I'd liken this to 60% off a laptop battery. Apple is still making a ton of money off these battery replacements. It's just that the amount they were making has dropped from obscene to huge.

      Laptop batteries are typically 30-50 Watt-hours. The iPhone 6 and earlier use about 1500 mAh batteries at 3.8 V, which is 5.7 Watt-hours. By comparison a Samsung Galaxy S5 battery is nearly twice the size - 2800 mAh (10.78 Wh) but costs just $9. I suppose you could say the extra $20 pays for the labor to do the battery swap, if you believe Apple Store workers make $600 an hour.

    4. Re:That's not surprising really by Hal_Porter · · Score: 2

      I'm not suggesting a conspiracy, nefarious or otherwise.

      Apple have a notoriously non technical and style conscious user base and I suppose a sealed phone is what they want.

      What's irritating is not so much that Apple do it but that other manufacturers see Apple doing it, know that Apple are the 'cool' brand and copy them. Even though they're actually operating in a competitive market and have a more diverse user base, some of whom won't buy their stuff unless it has a removable battery, headphone jack and so on.

      And frankly it's hardly surprising that people on 'news for nerds' complain about not being able to swap out batteries or upgrade laptops.

      Personally I think it's a shame that MXM never really took off on Windows laptops, but I can see the reasons it didn't. At least on Windows PCs you've got a vast choice of vendors and you can get almost any feature set you want - you could even build a luggable machines with expandable graphics in a micro ITX case. That's not really the case with Android though - the most recent phone I could find with a removable battery that I actually want to buy is the LG V20. People like Essential are launching phones with no removable battery and no headphone jack and wonder why it doesn't sell like an iPhone

      https://www.reddit.com/r/Andro...

      Dumbasses. iPhones sell despite their lack of headphone jack, not because of it. Even their user base objects, but they're locked into Apple's ecosystem.

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      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    5. Re:That's not surprising really by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

  2. $29 for battery replacement is a good deal by prasadsurve · · Score: 2, Insightful

    no wonder there is strong demand for it.

    1. Re:$29 for battery replacement is a good deal by ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What if there was a way to make this easier to do? A 'replaceable' battery, if you will?

      Standard Slashdot trope - but the market has spoken. IF there was a STRONG demand for quick replaceable batteries ala early Blackberries THEN we would see them in the market. And see them successful. Certainly there are (a couple dozen) people who find this useful but not enough to push manufactures to offer it routinely. It's pretty obvious that it CAN be done.

      I remember the extra BB batteries. With the expensive and non standard charger. Which was always at home when I really needed it. Or the tiny little battery was in my backpack when I didn't have it with me. Or something.

      Now you see the 'Zombie with the USB cord' stomping around airports and pretty much every public space with a wall power outlet. We've gone to placing generic USB chargers on the wall at each bay in the ER because patients kept trying to plug their chargers in while waiting. Which drove the biomed staff bezerk because you're not supposed to plug anything in that hasn't been blessed by Biomed (basically checking for leakage current so patients and staff don't get electrocuted - not such a bad thing to do).

      So we have the blessed chargers there for people to use. They're happy (until they get the bill) and Biomed is happy and nobody gets fried.

      That pointless story is just to illustrate that the ubiquity of the USB standard and a tiny little cable has pretty much negated the need for the pop in battery.

      Progress charges on.

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      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    2. Re:$29 for battery replacement is a good deal by Dixie_Flatline · · Score: 2

      You understand that there's a tradeoff here, right?

      Nobody—no market—has said, "all things being equal, I prefer that my battery is non-replaceable". What the market HAS said is, "all things are NOT equal, and non-replaceable batteries are lighter, make for less obtrusive phones, and are sufficiently good that I don't really care about the replaceability".

      We know this is the case because there ARE phones out there that still have user replaceable batteries, and people don't flock to those. That's not where the priority is.

      Your false equivalence is not persuasive.

  3. Because they got caught. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

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    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  4. DON'T! YOU! SAY! by grungeman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Only Captain Obvious could have seen this coming.

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    Signature deleted by lameness filter.
  5. If only.. by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 2

    If only all wireless phones had user-replaceable batteries.. nah, that's just crazy talk!

  6. Isolated incident by ilsaloving · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.