There already is a notification in iOS (and macOS) about degraded battery life. They just maybe need to change the thresholds on when that is displayed a bit...
If they did, the same people complaining now would whine that Apple forced people to replace a still working battery.
I must admit... I'm kind of puzzled as to why you think a $79 battery replacement is cheap and completely acceptable.
Your key argument, repeated all over the place here, is that Apple is being generous for such a cheap price-tag to replace a part that *everyone* knows needs regular replacement. I can replace the battery in my non-Apple phone, using *genuine* parts no less, for under $15.
Though your moniker guarantees you are incapable of doing so, you really ought to face the fact that Apple has (once again) put good looks ahead of good engineering, and the end result is their customers get fleeced by practices such as this. I wonder what people would do if they were told up front that this phone would cost them so much to maintain in working order, compared to non-Apple phones?
Of course, we are never favored with the make and model of your "non-Apple phone", so that your claim can be verified...
1. Apple adjusts the "100% point" on the charge display to be "100% of the charge we want to put in the battery". So effectively, it IS showing "100%" when the actual charge level is around 83%. If you think that's "deceptive", then I don't know what to suggest. LOTS of things with rechargeable batteries, like, for instance, my work Samsung laptop, do EXACTLY the same thing. They call it something like "Samsung Power" or similar.
2. Far from a bullshit scenario. More like "plausible conjecture" regarding how MOST people would react.
3. YOUR OPINION on "How Apple should have handled it." No more or less valid than how they DID handle it.
My Sony XZ1 Compact seems to have a whole series of battery saving features. Starts with smart charge so that the over ight charge is a trickle charge timed for 100% capacity just befote I wake up. Then there is the 100% charge is not actually 100% because chargi g to the real 100% capacity of the battery is not good for the battery. Time well tell how well this all works of course. Slowing the phone down when the battery is old would be a good idea too, but there should be a notification that you are now on that setting and should look to get your battery replaced.
Any responsible LiOn battery charging circuit/software doesn't charge LiOn cells to 100%. I think the agreed-upon best-practices is something like 83%, but I don't remember offhand.
The problem with showing the notification as soon as high-demand throttling starts happening is that it would likely lead to MORE complaints from people with JUST barely-marginal batteries, that Apple was "trying to make money off of battery replacements." (You KNOW that would happen!).
Battery-life is a bit of science, and a bit of black-magic, and just like it's really hard to get a "Progress Bar" to perfectly show how much longer something is going to take, it is really hard to predict exactly when a battery should be replaced. Notify too soon, and everyone just assumes you have crappy batteries or a profit motive in the replacements; notify too late, and you either have phones that crash unexpectedly, or drive deeper into performance limiting, risking the illogical-backlash and stupidity-fest that Apple is facing right now.
We need to start taxing devices into which batteries have been glued. If an end-user can't replace the battery themselves, the lifespan of electronic devices is cut significantly. This results in more waste, and should be taxed accordingly.
This practice needs to stop.
Apple has a flat-rate iPhone battery replacement service for $79.
Apple uses much smaller batteries than most other high end phones. Those small batteries can't deliver as much power, and are apparently marginal to begin with so when they age the phone needs to throttle.
For example, the iPhone 6 has an 1800mAh battery. Other high end phones of that era had at least 2500mAh, many over 3000.
Hey stupid!
Apple has smaller batteries because their SoCs USE LESS POWER on average than those current-hogging Snapdragon pieces of shit!
"There's clear reasons why someone would potentially want this feature"
What's retarded is you thinking this is a feature rather than utterly-shit design. Li-ion batteries at their worst state output ~3.6V. The processor in my Droid phone, desktop GPU, desktop CPU, etc. only needs ~1.2V to operate. Where did apple fuck up so badly that the voltage from the battery can sag so low that it forces a processor shutdown or throttling?
You don't understand the di/dt figure of merit, do you?
It's not about steady-state, AVERAGED current draw, it's about the SPIKES!
I have never bought a cellphone where I couldn't replace the battery. Funny enough, my current phone is 3 years old and the battery still lasts about as long as it did originally.
Makes you wonder whether they deliberately use crappy batteries when building them non-replaceable so after 2 years when the battery croaks you wouldn't want to spend half the price of a new phone for a replacement battery and instead get a new phone, while using better quality on batteries where they know they'd have to stock spares because people would actually buy them...
Apple charges a flat fee of $79, including the battery, for out of warranty iPhone battery replacement.
That's HARDLY "Half the price of a new phone". ANYONE's new phone.
Additionally, in laptop land they tend to issue a warning when battery performance is degraded compared to original condition. It wouldn't be such a terrible idea for mobile devices to do the same, so long as there were a reasonable way to service the battery (which often there is not).
Apple does have a degraded battery notification in iOS; but it probably needs the thresholds looked-at.
Apple offers out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement for $79, including the battery, which is QUITE reasonable.
the slowdown should go away as soon as the phone is plugged into the wall (And yes , using a 2.4A charger (5V) gives enough power to an iPhone to 1) work normally 2) charge).
But possibly not enough INSTANTANEOUS current to avoid dipping into the battery now and again.
This kind of thing merits a prompt on every reboot.
"The OS has detected that the battery has deteriorated to the point that it may affect device stability. Should battery saving mode be enabled to attempt to work around this issue? (Battery saving mode will slow down all phone operations.)"
If you click no, they can either prompt you where to get a battery replaced, if that is at all feasible, or rather give you a small coupon on the discount of a new phone. If the phone crashes after that point, well you were warned.
That would be the ethical way to handle it... I'd rather know the true state then wonder if the phone is infested with malware.
But the way Apple explained it, it is explicitly designed to NOT "slow down ALL operations"; but rather scoot the timing of some operations around under high-demand conditions ONLY, so that instantaneous current-demand SPIKES, which is what a degraded battery has trouble with, are "smoothed-out" somewhat, keeping the battery-voltage from temporarily (and instantaneously) "crashing" and causing an unintentional and unexpected shutdown or reboot.
Does the slow-down also happen when the phone is plugged into the wall?
If yes, then this lawsuit has a huge case here! Still, it should be noted in the manual at the minimum of this 'feature'.
Probably does; because the phone is still running off the battery. The battery is just being charged at a rate that is designed to charge it across AVERAGED use; the charger cannot deliver the same current-spikes as the battery. This is why many laptops actually run SLOWER (throttle back) if you take the batteries out and just run on the AC adapter's power.
From Steve Job's Corpse... It ought to be rolling over and over and over in his grave. Watching what these boobs did with his company.
WTF are you blathering-on about?
What Apple is doing is sound engineering practice, and in fact is designed to HELP the owner of an old phone eke significantly more life out of their battery. Good for the owner, good for the environment. BAD for Apple's bottom-line!
Perhaps you'd rather they just changed the threshold on their "your battery is degraded" notification (which IS there in iOS), so people with batteries that still performed at 60 or 70% capacity would be (often unnecessarily) replaced.
THEN you'd just bitch that Apple was trying to "trick" people into prematurely replacing their batteries for $79, right?
Totally wrong. Voltage remains the same, mAh is what gets reduced. But even that is irrelevant. Stop locking the battery away and making it user replaceable will solve this planned obsolescence bullshit. It's not as if the entire planet doesn't know batteries will fail.
Next up: electric cars. Same problem incoming.
Boy are YOU stupid!
Apple only charges $79 to replace an out-of-warranty iPhone's battery.
How much do you think you could buy that same battery for at retail?
Less than $50? I HIGHLY doubt it.
So, that means that Apple is likely only making about $20 for:
1. Logging-In the iPhone.
2. Evaluating that the Battery is the only problem.
3. Taking the phone apart and replacing the battery.
4. Reassembling the phone.
5. Testing the phone.
6. Logging the Repair complete.
7. Packaging and Return Shipping.
Personally, I think Apple is essentially GIVING AWAY the battery-replacement!
They wouldn't have to notify every time, just once in a while, perhaps with a short summary of what's happened since the last one. If they did that people would be able to decide if they want to replace the battery. If not they could also choose to disable the notification.
I'd hope folks on/. would know the CPU is absolutely not running at battery voltage, much less directly off the battery.
Lowering the CPU power prevents spikes in battery drain. Since batteries are less efficient at higher current draws, this still makes sense but not how you explain it.
Also, engaging 'limp mode' and notifying the user is likely a very bad idea. Limp mode is very likely a momentary (though frequent) throttling of the CPU - or more exactly, it DOESN'T throttle the CPU up and engage more cores when a higher load is presented. Modern CPUs bounce frequency and multiplier and cores around constantly...so you'd get as much as a few pop-ups a second. So much for improving battery life.
You are assuming those are the choices. Batteries that age put out less voltage throughout the discharge. If the voltage supplied to the CPU isn't sufficient to run it at full power, you get random reboots, corrupt data, etc.
Lower the CPU power, increase tolerance of lower voltage, increase stability of the whole device. So, how about this choice:
1. Accept performance degradation. 2. Have a phone that is unstable, rebooting when power draw is highest (phone calls) and possibly fucking over your data 3. Have a battery service.
I agree that Apple should have done some notification to the user when this "limp mode" was engaged, but a lot of people are preening about it being some kind of nefarious marketing scheme to get people to buy new phones, when it could just be an honest attempt to maintain stability on an aging device to keep existing customers happy. The proper move probably would have been to throw a notification that your iPhone is in need of a battery service, click here to schedule one, etc.
There IS a battery degraded notification in iOS; but the thresholds probably need to be adjusted. And of course, when if that happens BEFORE the consumer sees any performance issues (even IF the phone has been compensating for a while), THEN the intarwebs will be flooded with people whining about "Apple trying to push battery replacements!".
I would prefer to be notified so I can make an informed choice. Not have my iGadget mysteriously degrade performance in a time period when it would encourage me to buy a new unit. Perhaps it should prompt for three choices:
1. Accept performance degradation. 2. Accept reduced battery life. 3. Come in to replace battery.
So, if you don't know enough to do your own damned due diligence, and find out that your phone will work better after a battery replacement, then who REALLY is to blame?
You do know that Apple actually confirmed that they do throttle the speed, yes? Last time I checked I needn't proof guilt if the culprit confesses.
No "culprit" here, and not a "confession"; but rather an EXPLANATION, which just HAPPENS to comport with the laws of physics and the observed improved behavior after a $79 battery replacement.
If you bought a new phone because the old one got slow, when all you needed was a new batter costing 1/10th as much even at Apple's official service charges, you were tricked into wasting a lot of money.
Of course; because EVERYTHING is one big conspiracy against YOU, right?
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There already is a notification in iOS (and macOS) about degraded battery life. They just maybe need to change the thresholds on when that is displayed a bit...
If they did, the same people complaining now would whine that Apple forced people to replace a still working battery.
That's what I think, too.
I must admit... I'm kind of puzzled as to why you think a $79 battery replacement is cheap and completely acceptable.
Your key argument, repeated all over the place here, is that Apple is being generous for such a cheap price-tag to replace a part that *everyone* knows needs regular replacement. I can replace the battery in my non-Apple phone, using *genuine* parts no less, for under $15.
Though your moniker guarantees you are incapable of doing so, you really ought to face the fact that Apple has (once again) put good looks ahead of good engineering, and the end result is their customers get fleeced by practices such as this. I wonder what people would do if they were told up front that this phone would cost them so much to maintain in working order, compared to non-Apple phones?
Of course, we are never favored with the make and model of your "non-Apple phone", so that your claim can be verified...
They have conditions for replacing them for $79 and will refuse if they have unrelated cracks.
It's like you ignore all the complaints made right here on /.
Of COURSE there are conditions; name a company that wouldn't have the same?
FFS.
1. Apple adjusts the "100% point" on the charge display to be "100% of the charge we want to put in the battery". So effectively, it IS showing "100%" when the actual charge level is around 83%. If you think that's "deceptive", then I don't know what to suggest. LOTS of things with rechargeable batteries, like, for instance, my work Samsung laptop, do EXACTLY the same thing. They call it something like "Samsung Power" or similar.
2. Far from a bullshit scenario. More like "plausible conjecture" regarding how MOST people would react.
3. YOUR OPINION on "How Apple should have handled it." No more or less valid than how they DID handle it.
Actually, iFixit will sell you a replacement battery with the necessary tools for $25. Then you can user-replace the battery.
1. An aftermarket battery. No thanks.
2. My time and aggravation are worth the price difference. YMMV.
And the odds they'll attempt to hide those bugs in software releases that compromise the performance and usability of their phones.
Oh, FFS! Give it a REST, willya?!?
My Sony XZ1 Compact seems to have a whole series of battery saving features. Starts with smart charge so that the over ight charge is a trickle charge timed for 100% capacity just befote I wake up. Then there is the 100% charge is not actually 100% because chargi g to the real 100% capacity of the battery is not good for the battery. Time well tell how well this all works of course. Slowing the phone down when the battery is old would be a good idea too, but there should be a notification that you are now on that setting and should look to get your battery replaced.
Any responsible LiOn battery charging circuit/software doesn't charge LiOn cells to 100%. I think the agreed-upon best-practices is something like 83%, but I don't remember offhand.
The problem with showing the notification as soon as high-demand throttling starts happening is that it would likely lead to MORE complaints from people with JUST barely-marginal batteries, that Apple was "trying to make money off of battery replacements." (You KNOW that would happen!).
Battery-life is a bit of science, and a bit of black-magic, and just like it's really hard to get a "Progress Bar" to perfectly show how much longer something is going to take, it is really hard to predict exactly when a battery should be replaced. Notify too soon, and everyone just assumes you have crappy batteries or a profit motive in the replacements; notify too late, and you either have phones that crash unexpectedly, or drive deeper into performance limiting, risking the illogical-backlash and stupidity-fest that Apple is facing right now.
We need to start taxing devices into which batteries have been glued. If an end-user can't replace the battery themselves, the lifespan of electronic devices is cut significantly. This results in more waste, and should be taxed accordingly.
This practice needs to stop.
Apple has a flat-rate iPhone battery replacement service for $79.
Now what?
Apple uses much smaller batteries than most other high end phones. Those small batteries can't deliver as much power, and are apparently marginal to begin with so when they age the phone needs to throttle.
For example, the iPhone 6 has an 1800mAh battery. Other high end phones of that era had at least 2500mAh, many over 3000.
Hey stupid!
Apple has smaller batteries because their SoCs USE LESS POWER on average than those current-hogging Snapdragon pieces of shit!
"There's clear reasons why someone would potentially want this feature"
What's retarded is you thinking this is a feature rather than utterly-shit design. Li-ion batteries at their worst state output ~3.6V. The processor in my Droid phone, desktop GPU, desktop CPU, etc. only needs ~1.2V to operate. Where did apple fuck up so badly that the voltage from the battery can sag so low that it forces a processor shutdown or throttling?
You don't understand the di/dt figure of merit, do you?
It's not about steady-state, AVERAGED current draw, it's about the SPIKES!
I have never bought a cellphone where I couldn't replace the battery. Funny enough, my current phone is 3 years old and the battery still lasts about as long as it did originally.
Makes you wonder whether they deliberately use crappy batteries when building them non-replaceable so after 2 years when the battery croaks you wouldn't want to spend half the price of a new phone for a replacement battery and instead get a new phone, while using better quality on batteries where they know they'd have to stock spares because people would actually buy them...
Apple charges a flat fee of $79, including the battery, for out of warranty iPhone battery replacement.
That's HARDLY "Half the price of a new phone". ANYONE's new phone.
Additionally, in laptop land they tend to issue a warning when battery performance is degraded compared to original condition. It wouldn't be such a terrible idea for mobile devices to do the same, so long as there were a reasonable way to service the battery (which often there is not).
Apple does have a degraded battery notification in iOS; but it probably needs the thresholds looked-at.
Apple offers out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement for $79, including the battery, which is QUITE reasonable.
the slowdown should go away as soon as the phone is plugged into the wall (And yes , using a 2.4A charger (5V) gives enough power to an iPhone to 1) work normally 2) charge).
But possibly not enough INSTANTANEOUS current to avoid dipping into the battery now and again.
This kind of thing merits a prompt on every reboot.
"The OS has detected that the battery has deteriorated to the point that it may affect device stability. Should battery saving mode be enabled to attempt to work around this issue? (Battery saving mode will slow down all phone operations.)"
If you click no, they can either prompt you where to get a battery replaced, if that is at all feasible, or rather give you a small coupon on the discount of a new phone. If the phone crashes after that point, well you were warned.
That would be the ethical way to handle it... I'd rather know the true state then wonder if the phone is infested with malware.
But the way Apple explained it, it is explicitly designed to NOT "slow down ALL operations"; but rather scoot the timing of some operations around under high-demand conditions ONLY, so that instantaneous current-demand SPIKES, which is what a degraded battery has trouble with, are "smoothed-out" somewhat, keeping the battery-voltage from temporarily (and instantaneously) "crashing" and causing an unintentional and unexpected shutdown or reboot.
Does the slow-down also happen when the phone is plugged into the wall?
If yes, then this lawsuit has a huge case here! Still, it should be noted in the manual at the minimum of this 'feature'.
Probably does; because the phone is still running off the battery. The battery is just being charged at a rate that is designed to charge it across AVERAGED use; the charger cannot deliver the same current-spikes as the battery. This is why many laptops actually run SLOWER (throttle back) if you take the batteries out and just run on the AC adapter's power.
From Steve Job's Corpse... It ought to be rolling over and over and over in his grave. Watching what these boobs did with his company.
WTF are you blathering-on about?
What Apple is doing is sound engineering practice, and in fact is designed to HELP the owner of an old phone eke significantly more life out of their battery. Good for the owner, good for the environment. BAD for Apple's bottom-line!
Perhaps you'd rather they just changed the threshold on their "your battery is degraded" notification (which IS there in iOS), so people with batteries that still performed at 60 or 70% capacity would be (often unnecessarily) replaced.
THEN you'd just bitch that Apple was trying to "trick" people into prematurely replacing their batteries for $79, right?
Of COURSE you would.
Totally wrong. Voltage remains the same, mAh is what gets reduced. But even that is irrelevant. Stop locking the battery away and making it user replaceable will solve this planned obsolescence bullshit. It's not as if the entire planet doesn't know batteries will fail.
Next up: electric cars. Same problem incoming.
Boy are YOU stupid!
Apple only charges $79 to replace an out-of-warranty iPhone's battery.
How much do you think you could buy that same battery for at retail?
Less than $50? I HIGHLY doubt it.
So, that means that Apple is likely only making about $20 for:
1. Logging-In the iPhone.
2. Evaluating that the Battery is the only problem.
3. Taking the phone apart and replacing the battery.
4. Reassembling the phone.
5. Testing the phone.
6. Logging the Repair complete.
7. Packaging and Return Shipping.
Personally, I think Apple is essentially GIVING AWAY the battery-replacement!
They wouldn't have to notify every time, just once in a while, perhaps with a short summary of what's happened since the last one. If they did that people would be able to decide if they want to replace the battery. If not they could also choose to disable the notification.
Oh, PUH-LEASE!
I'd hope folks on /. would know the CPU is absolutely not running at battery voltage, much less directly off the battery.
Lowering the CPU power prevents spikes in battery drain. Since batteries are less efficient at higher current draws, this still makes sense but not how you explain it.
Also, engaging 'limp mode' and notifying the user is likely a very bad idea. Limp mode is very likely a momentary (though frequent) throttling of the CPU - or more exactly, it DOESN'T throttle the CPU up and engage more cores when a higher load is presented. Modern CPUs bounce frequency and multiplier and cores around constantly...so you'd get as much as a few pop-ups a second. So much for improving battery life.
EXACTLY!
You are assuming those are the choices. Batteries that age put out less voltage throughout the discharge. If the voltage supplied to the CPU isn't sufficient to run it at full power, you get random reboots, corrupt data, etc.
Lower the CPU power, increase tolerance of lower voltage, increase stability of the whole device. So, how about this choice:
1. Accept performance degradation.
2. Have a phone that is unstable, rebooting when power draw is highest (phone calls) and possibly fucking over your data
3. Have a battery service.
I agree that Apple should have done some notification to the user when this "limp mode" was engaged, but a lot of people are preening about it being some kind of nefarious marketing scheme to get people to buy new phones, when it could just be an honest attempt to maintain stability on an aging device to keep existing customers happy. The proper move probably would have been to throw a notification that your iPhone is in need of a battery service, click here to schedule one, etc.
There IS a battery degraded notification in iOS; but the thresholds probably need to be adjusted. And of course, when if that happens BEFORE the consumer sees any performance issues (even IF the phone has been compensating for a while), THEN the intarwebs will be flooded with people whining about "Apple trying to push battery replacements!".
You KNOW that's true.
I would prefer to be notified so I can make an informed choice. Not have my iGadget mysteriously degrade performance in a time period when it would encourage me to buy a new unit. Perhaps it should prompt for three choices:
1. Accept performance degradation.
2. Accept reduced battery life.
3. Come in to replace battery.
So, if you don't know enough to do your own damned due diligence, and find out that your phone will work better after a battery replacement, then who REALLY is to blame?
You do know that Apple actually confirmed that they do throttle the speed, yes? Last time I checked I needn't proof guilt if the culprit confesses.
No "culprit" here, and not a "confession"; but rather an EXPLANATION, which just HAPPENS to comport with the laws of physics and the observed improved behavior after a $79 battery replacement.
Go fuck yourself. You worthless shitstain of a human. Here's hoping your family is skinned alive while you're made to watch.
Isn't that just a BIT extreme of a response to a comment about a battery-life-extending policy?
Do you even READ what you WRITE?
If you bought a new phone because the old one got slow, when all you needed was a new batter costing 1/10th as much even at Apple's official service charges, you were tricked into wasting a lot of money.
Of course; because EVERYTHING is one big conspiracy against YOU, right?
perhaps they should have a button that allows you to make a binary choice between:
would you prefer:
maintain balanced quality of service as your battery degrades or accelerate the battery and possibly court a battery-swell fire?
EXACTLY! Well put, sir!