Apple Apologizes and Offers $29 Battery Changes

dj_spanmaster said:
I'm pretty sated by this move as well. Wish they'd offer it for old iPod Nanos, too.




I'd have to think that would reset upon installation of a new battery, or at least be dynamic enough to handle restoring performance (guessing that's what you intend?)
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I want a switch/slider in the General Settings giving us the option to run the battery in the optimize mode or at full power.
Per Apple, we will only be able to monitor the age of the battery. We need control.

I may want to run the battery in the optimized mode from day one, or never use it.
 
Dead Parrot said:
Talking head on CNBC just said he thought the cost to Apple for a battery was about $10. He is guessing only 25% or so will actually go for the replacement battery.

The way the tax code and corporate expenses are handled, Apple will probably write off the difference between $29 and their list price as a "promotional expense".

If you buy a new phone to fix the slow issue, they make money. If you replace the battery, they make money.
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If they make any money, it would be from some sort of "write off" as you mentioned. From the service itself, nah. $10 for the battery----and the rest goes to paying workers to set up the service, streamline it, and carry it out (And as far as we know, iphones aren't designed to be opened. It feasible to assume there will be some percentage of phones which are damaged from the service and then what?). and I'd like to think they will also send you a pre-paid label, for shipping. I guess we'll see about that.
 
jardows said:
$29 for a new battery - installed? That's a great deal. Considering most people didn't think this was a problem anyway, and most people buying new iPhones probably weren't doing it because the old was was "too slow" but because they need the newest, shiniest, I'll say we're fine. Hope lesson is learned.
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more like 29$ off the 200$ bill to change the battery, you still shell out the difference
 
apple just fucked themselves.

$29 is cheeeeeap.

$29 to make your phone new again = no reason to buy a new iphone.
 
TorryHolt81 said:
I get that this is an issue because they failed to disclose it but...

I don't get the hate for this. Apple wants you to be able to use the phone for as long as possible by extending the life of the phone battery by slowing other unnecessary processes down. People complained about poor battery life with the iphones in the past, this is one way they solved it, but now that it was disclosed that they achieved this by slowing down the phone to preserve battery life, people are up in arms, probably most android fanboys.

Yes, I do have an iphone 6 and noticed it slowed down but I care about how long it lasts than how long my apps load which isn't really that big of a deal..... It slowed down what? A millisecond? But at the same time its old and battery life hasn't really gone down much.
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People complain about dumb things. I see the logic behind it. Sucks for Apple, it's damned if you do or don't.
 
Letting the public believe a phone with a faulty battery needs to be replaced due to age by slowing it down to hide the symptoms is misleading and manipulative regardless.

What if your ev just started going slower so it could go the same distance.
Well at 30mph on the highway it might be apparent there is an issue.

I prefer to have either user replaceable batteries or notifications that there might be an issue with the battery.

Lot of Apple friends at my work and there's a reason why tim cook is being urged to take private jets and up his security detail.... You may be OK with this but some feel pretty betrayed.

IDGAF
 
To me, it would make sense - sort of - if the upgrades would slow down older phones. It's why software has requirements before running on them. If the software was built for all the hardware that it supports, instead of having individual updates for every major hardware change, it would make sense that the software meant to run on the fastest version of the hardware would be bogged down on older hardware.

But then again. I use my phone as a phone. I don't game on it or really push it to the limit. I never noticed the slow down and I'm running a launch 6+. A newer battery for pretty cheap and I don't have to risk breaking it (I've done ipad repairs before. It's a time I'd rather not have to deal with). It should let my phone last even longer than it would before.
 
$30 installed is great for a trust worthy 1st party battery. Never know what you will get from Amazon or eBay. I'll do it for my 6.

But the question is, has the throttling been turned off???
 
westrock2000 said:
$30 installed is great for a trust worthy 1st party battery. Never know what you will get from Amazon or eBay. I'll do it for my 6.

But the question is, has the throttling been turned off???
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From what I read the problem stemmed from having old batteries. As soon as they're replaced, the phone speeds up.
 
Kdawg said:
apple just fucked themselves.

$29 is cheeeeeap.

$29 to make your phone new again = no reason to buy a new iphone.
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According to all the Apple Doomsday articles here no one was upgrading anyway.
 
Apple should update the OS to give the user control over the throttling feature. I'd say have it enabled by default and bury it in settings. Most people don't use Settings - ever. (I'm not talking people on here - just regular Joe Blows).
I'm going to take them up on the $29 battery replacement for probably 3 devices. We have a 6, 6S Plus, and a 7. New battery = another 2-3 years of life. I don't want to pop these open and try to replace myself. I'll admit it - I'd probably break something in the process.
 
vegeta535 said:
The issue is people didn't know about and instead of getting the battery changed they went out and dropped money on a new phone. No Apple doesn't want people to keep their own phones. They want you to go out and buy a new one since they didn't disclose they were purposely slowing down phones. Apple knew what they were doing. Hope they get sue too hell and back. Even tho like all class action lawsuits the ones effect typically don't get much out of them.
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Be honest here. If you're that dumb then you probably couldn't tell if it was a battery problem, a virus, a placebo effect, or because "I have too many apps installed". Did you even consider what the problems are?

- Phones with worn out batteries have been throttled performance wise to enhance battery life

- Some of these old phones, even with the updates, are still shutting off early (~20% battery left) due to a worn out battery

Let us be clear, these are old phones with worn out batteries. Not a lot of people are interested in tinkering with their phone and I'm sure most will just spring for a new phone when their battery is old anyways. I can't imagine a lot of people will look at their four year old phone and think "I'll upgrade the battery!". I'm sure some will. And those that do would have done so anyways. I mean you'd have to be pretty fucking dumb to not tell the battery is worn out when your phone is shutting down at a reported ~20% charge. Or that it goes from 100% to 30% in an hour. It is clear as a sunny day what the problem is. If you couldn't figure it out that battery has degraded that much I doubt you'd notice a speed difference.

The only problem I have is the following:

- If we are on an older phone an upgrade the battery, will iOS detect this and remove the performance restrictions?

- Does iOS detect battery efficiency? I know people with phones of similar age to mine and their battery is in much better shape. No need to throttle their performance.

- If iOS is incapable of such a thing, it should be an option.

Personally I don't mind the throttled performance if it improves battery life. The phones are old, worn and likely need to be upgraded anyways (my phone is 4+ years old now?). Now if I were to upgrade my battery, I would like to get that performance back.

But at this point I'd rather get a new phone, and will soon. I can't imagine Apple will support it for another 2-3 years. I can't think of any brand that does support 7 year old phones?
 
I'm torn about getting the $29 battery replacement for my iPhone 6. Probably 6-8 months ago now, calls have been very flakey as well as wifi calling being very, very unreliable.

Then again, it might just be Verizon being Verizon as this tends to noticeably happen on older phones once they have been out for a certain amount of time.

What happens when you have perfectly good hardware but your carrier decides to kill call clarity and reliability on older devices?
 
I bought my iPhone 5S at the same time my wife bought her iPhone 6. Both our phones now run really slowly even though my battery was tested good at an apple store. Why does she get a cheaper battery and I don't? Not good enough Apple, simply not good enough. Lost a lot of faith and good will now that there's proof of intentional crippling of devices to force upgrade purchases.
 
CookieFactory said:
Funny that all the butt-hurt is from non iPhone users. Most of the people who actually own an iPhone (including me) sees this as a great olive branch for what was pretty much a non-issue. That said, it's too bad they removed the headphone jack and TouchID which means my next phone won't be from Apple.
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Nope, I'm a long-time iPhone user/owner and I'm pissed for a few reasons. First, my only reason to buy a new phone has been when I either flat-out break it, or when it gets too slow or when there is truly a new feature that I must have. Right now, both my wife's iPhone 6 and my iPhone 5S are in great shape except that they're running very slowly after the last "update". Turns out there's nothing wrong with the phones (my battery was tested at an apple store and it's in great condition), but both of our phones are slow enough to significantly degrade useability.

So no, it's not just non-apple users upset about this. Apple crippled a device that I own in order to force me to buy a new device that doesn't have a single new feature I want/need. Plus I like my headphone jack and don't want to have to buy and carry adapters for standard accessories like speakers and headphones. So no, I have no need to upgrade my phones except that apple crippled them intentionally. Suck it apple.
 
Kdawg said:
you're right. Everyone suddenly got some common sense and stuck with their ancient phones.
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I agree there, no idea why anyone upgrades so fast. On the old 2 year plans it made sense but now that you can save money by NOT upgrading why would you?
 
Flogger23m said:
Be honest here. If you're that dumb then you probably couldn't tell if it was a battery problem, a virus, a placebo effect, or because "I have too many apps installed". Did you even consider what the problems are?

- Phones with worn out batteries have been throttled performance wise to enhance battery life

- Some of these old phones, even with the updates, are still shutting off early (~20% battery left) due to a worn out battery

Let us be clear, these are old phones with worn out batteries. Not a lot of people are interested in tinkering with their phone and I'm sure most will just spring for a new phone when their battery is old anyways. I can't imagine a lot of people will look at their four year old phone and think "I'll upgrade the battery!". I'm sure some will. And those that do would have done so anyways. I mean you'd have to be pretty fucking dumb to not tell the battery is worn out when your phone is shutting down at a reported ~20% charge. Or that it goes from 100% to 30% in an hour. It is clear as a sunny day what the problem is. If you couldn't figure it out that battery has degraded that much I doubt you'd notice a speed difference.

The only problem I have is the following:

- If we are on an older phone an upgrade the battery, will iOS detect this and remove the performance restrictions?

- Does iOS detect battery efficiency? I know people with phones of similar age to mine and their battery is in much better shape. No need to throttle their performance.

- If iOS is incapable of such a thing, it should be an option.

Personally I don't mind the throttled performance if it improves battery life. The phones are old, worn and likely need to be upgraded anyways (my phone is 4+ years old now?). Now if I were to upgrade my battery, I would like to get that performance back.

But at this point I'd rather get a new phone, and will soon. I can't imagine Apple will support it for another 2-3 years. I can't think of any brand that does support 7 year old phones?
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The answer is yes - Performance is restored when you replace the battery. The entire reason this was all found out about was because some guy ran a benchmark before and after replacing his crapped out battery. iOS is only throttling performance when the appropriate voltage levels can't be sustained. This is why all of this is nothing but false outrage. If Apple were just blindly limiting older devices 'because' I would be on board with the Apple hate.

Between poorly written articles by 'tech journalists' and the outrage culture it's quite troubling that so many people have such a lack of understanding of the issue.

Look at your own post - You didn't even bother to read the original articles to understand that this was found out because some guy saw higher performance numbers after replacing the battery. This would have answered your questions.

I really hate how many folks just comment on things these days without doing any research. I hate Apple as much as anyone else does - But hate them for things that are justified, not stupid non-issues like this.
 
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Trimlock said:
I agree there, no idea why anyone upgrades so fast. On the old 2 year plans it made sense but now that you can save money by NOT upgrading why would you?
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I upgrade almost every year, but it's mostly because I can weigh the obvious benefit of the camera improvements. For me it's an important feature and so I can justify the upgrade.

Also, if you aren't an idiot and actually keep your phone in decent condition and sell the thing on eBay iPhones typically hold their value quite well. The upgrade is only costing $200-$300 at most, not the full amount as the resale value of a year old model iPhone is typically quite high.
 
Mchart said:
I upgrade almost every year, but it's mostly because I can weigh the obvious benefit of the camera improvements. For me it's an important feature and so I can justify the upgrade.

Also, if you aren't an idiot and actually keep your phone in decent condition and sell the thing on eBay iPhones typically hold their value quite well. The upgrade is only costing $200-$300 at most, not the full amount as the resale value of a year old model iPhone is typically quite high.
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There’s always the case of people who, like you, upgrade for benefits and not just to upgrade because of newness. I agree that people can upgrade cheaply by selling and buying but still, you are spending money to do it, although at minimal cost.
 
CookieFactory said:
Funny that all the butt-hurt is from non iPhone users. Most of the people who actually own an iPhone (including me) sees this as a great olive branch for what was pretty much a non-issue. That said, it's too bad they removed the headphone jack and TouchID which means my next phone won't be from Apple.
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You think a company purposely slowing down your phone is a non issue? You know the funny thing is that I am usually a person who doesn't go for conspiracies. I always just chalked up the claims that phones got slower with age as being a side effect caused by programs (lol apps) increasing in demand, as well as the OS increasing its demand with each update, and on older phones that was just harder on the SOC. But this story actually validated all the conspiracy theorists. Apple was in fact throttling the phone and no one will every be able to prove it but we all know that the reason was to push more people to upgrade more often.

So here comes the big defense all the mac fan bois have, This is a feature so you can use your phone longer right? No sorry that argument doesn't hold a sliver of truth or sense. If you want your battery to last longer almost every phone maker on the market has a power saving mode which will do exactly that, throttle your phone. And for many years now those power saving modes have even automatically prompted you to turn them on. So apple had a clear, honest way to take care of the problem, have a prompt tell their customers that their phones battery had degraded past a certain level and ask them if they would like to turn on a power saving mode. But instead they chose to hide it, and just cast it upon their customers. If it really was a feature they would have advertised it as such, believe me apple never ever misses and opportunity to advertise a mundane capability as the greatest revolutionary feature since sliced bread.
 
TorryHolt81 said:
I get that this is an issue because they failed to disclose it but...

I don't get the hate for this. Apple wants you to be able to use the phone for as long as possible by extending the life of the phone battery by slowing other unnecessary processes down. People complained about poor battery life with the iphones in the past, this is one way they solved it, but now that it was disclosed that they achieved this by slowing down the phone to preserve battery life, people are up in arms, probably most android fanboys.

Yes, I do have an iphone 6 and noticed it slowed down but I care about how long it lasts than how long my apps load which isn't really that big of a deal..... It slowed down what? A millisecond? But at the same time its old and battery life hasn't really gone down much.
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It should be your choice to have your phone operate at the speeds it is capable of operating at, if you prefer battery saving, enable battery saving mode. Imagine if your GPU maker said oh, your capacitors are wearing out so we throttled your GPU to increase their lifespan? Heck no I paid of a certain speed, if I want to throttle I do that myself or switch it to quiet mode etc....

The irony of this all is hilarious because apple absolutely duped their customers hard core. While everyone out there is arguing about if the $29 battery replacement is an appropriate response Tim Cook is laughing all the way to the bank because he just duped you all into allowing apple to KEEP automatically throttling old phones. In a year its going to be common place for apple users to be telling their less than savvy friends oh you should upgrade or pay $99 to replace your battery because its slowing your phone down. The cash keeps rolling in, both from new phone sales and from full priced battery replacements. And apple never admits fault, never makes it up, and never creates a correct solution for the problem which is simply to allow users to choose on their own how their phone performs, either full performance mode or battery savings. Heck even the battery wear level indication now is just going to be a new cash cow especially once the promotional battery replacement pricing is over.
 
To clear up confusion, the throttling is dynamic. iOS throttles the phone when it detects unfavorable conditions, it’s not that every old phone was slowed down across the board.

It is like your CPU cutting back when the heat sensor kicks in. Yes the CPU slows down from what it should be, but it’s to avoid total loss of usage (in this case the phone shutting down).

So this is like putting a better heatsink on your CPU. The capability to throttle is still there, but the chances of hitting that point are lowered.
 
I had an LG G2 for nearly 3 years. While sending a text with an indicated battery life of 60%, the phone shut off and would not accept a charge. It was a sealed phone so I had to pay someone to replace the battery just so I could get pictures off of it.

I can't say I approve of the way Apple implemented this, but I understand why they do it. The issue could have been avoided if they gave users an option to turn it off. At the very least, a message should have displayed that the battery is deteriorating and performance will scale down accordingly.
 
CookieFactory said:
Funny that all the butt-hurt is from non iPhone users. Most of the people who actually own an iPhone (including me) sees this as a great olive branch for what was pretty much a non-issue. That said, it's too bad they removed the headphone jack and TouchID which means my next phone won't be from Apple.
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lol, what I find funny about your comment is you should be butt-hurt, but Apple has supplied your anal region with so much astro glide, you don't feel it as much as you should.

I guess the lack of a headphone jack and TouchID finally got you to feel something and say "hey Apple, what are you doing to my bunghole back there", oh my, you've been fucking me ;)
 
RayderR6 said:
lol, what I find funny about your comment is you should be butt-hurt, but Apple has supplied your anal region with so much astro glide, you don't feel it as much as you should.

I guess the lack of a headphone jack and TouchID finally got you to feel something and say "hey Apple, what are you doing to my bunghole back there", oh my, you've been fucking me ;)
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Congratulations, that was the stupidest thing posted to these forums in a long time. If you're over the age of 18 you need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and evaluate why you're such a failure in life.
 
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