I bought my iPhone 2 years ago (iPhone 6, new) -- it's since been plagued by slowdowns that are incomprehensible to me as a software developer. How can something go from completely responsive to absolutely useless in 2 years with virtually no major changes to the OS?
Scaling the CPU down with battery capacity seems like a great way to hand-wave away planned obsolescence accusations.
I was curious about the results my phone would receive, so I bought the Geekbench app mentioned in the reddit post. Indeed, my phone scores max out at half of what it claims the iPhone 6 should benchmark at.
In the Reddit comments somebody claims this is actually a software fix for the 6s battery problem that was causing shutdowns when battery level fell below certain level.
There's a free battery replacement program for the models affected [1].
My phone was one of the affected, but never got around to take it to repair shop because I thought the few random shutdowns were the only problem.
The problem is, there are other people in the thread claiming their iPhone 6 or iPhone 7 were also performing poorly according to Geekbench. Surely iPhone 7 isn't / shouldn't be affected by this batch?
If this is true that apple throttle its performance due to battery Cycle, I will pissed too. Apple should have noted to me within iPhone that i should get a Battery replacement in the Apple Store, or I will be bringing my own Battery Pack when I am out.
I'm in the same situation. You can still replace the battery for free. I just got the battery replaced today for free. Geekbench CPU scores increased 2.5x. It's like I have a new phone.
Interesting if that's the reason - my 6s had a battery replacement last year because it was one of the affected devices. The device has notably slowed down since iOS 11.
Bought it in straight cash a couple years ago. Was completely content and extremely happy... until now. It feels D.O.A. Random pauses for almost every action. Answering the phone even takes a good 2-3 seconds. Music crashes randomly. Podcasts pauses like it's meant to be intentional behavior. Battery drains noticeably faster now. I used to get at least 2-3 or more days. Now I can barely make 1. Similar problems started with my Apple Watch (2.0 bought in April).
When the iPhone was first announced by Steve Jobs I seem to recall him exclaiming how everything was nearly instant, fast, responsive, and smooth. I feel like it must have been in a dream now.
Exact same here. I’m on 11.1.2 iOS, and after that forced upgrade without my consent I went into apple and complained and got nowhere.
The reason I complained is that after the upgrade the user experience was similar to that above where these problems persist; tapping on certain things don’t work, pauses in apps, crashing apps etc.. but also most notably for me is that my speaker volume is less than when it was new.
Ditto. Haven't complained or followed up with anyone yet, but seeing all of this info has me now thinking it's not just me.
Every action is noticeably slower (~1s response for everything) and now, as of last week anyways, need to recharge my phone midday where I've never had to do that.
So the phone would pompt and say that it would upgrade late at night, but it would ask you to confirm it to do so, then allow you to delay the upgrade - requiring your pin...
welp, I ALWAYS delayed that upgrade and told it NO, ask me later and entered my pin....
Yet, I woke up one morning and it reported to me it had successfully upgraded.
I was livid (this was right after the calc animation-deay-bug was made public)
So I went into apple store walnut creek, super pissed off.
I said to the "genius" "Do you know who Jonny Ive is?" he said "Yes", so I said "well if he were here in this store I ould punch him in the face"
I specifically did NOT want to upgrade the iOS on my phone because I use a lot of features that were reportedly buggy in the new release.
Apple told me there was "no way they could revert my iOS version whatsoever"
but the upgrade was done literally without my consent..
I was really angry...
Now, the farking thing is falling into the bug group of the 6S+ phones that have the faulty battery problem, yet my SN doesnt hit in their list of bad SNs that are suposedly affected:
Poor batt perf, touch screen taps stop working/delayed like mad, batt drains in less than a day, random shutdowns, random reboots, app crashes, etc...
so yeah, this isnt a conspiracy theory - the 11.1.2 iOS deserves someone at apple needs a shovel to the face.
I bought my 6 Plus on release. Plagued with problems from day one. Only one I ever had to bring in for service. Four times (half of that was me breaking the screen though).
I replaced it with an 8 and other than waking up if I hold my case with even the slightest amount of pressure, it's been great.
If the battery is so small that it can't last 2 years of normal wear without becoming "horrible", the design is bad. Papering over the bad design by making the phone run at less than 60% of rated speed, on purpose, is even worse. Battery wear is expected, but it is not reasonable to expect that the CPU will be affected too, and this has never been disclosed AFAIK. Also, replacing a non-user-replaceable battery is not a "simple" solution.
(1) All batteries degrade. Really not sure why you think Apple would be any different.
(2) Replacing the battery is simple. You take it to a phone shop or to Apple and in about an hour it is done. Most people aren't self servicing electronics or pretty much anything these days.
(1) All batteries degrade. This should be accounted for in the initial design, so that there is sufficient battery life at the end of product life, not just at the beginning.
(2) Replacing the battery should be simple. Pop open the back cover, pull out the battery, and push the new one in. Heck, I used to carry a spare battery just in case, because it took 15 seconds to swap. Taking it to a phone shop and waiting an hour isn't what I would call simple.
My LG V20 has a replaceable battery, and a head phone jack. It has the best sounding headphone jack ever available on a phone. It's a great phone and didn't sell well. The market is clear replaceable batteries and head phone jack just are not at the top of their wish list.
> The market is clear replaceable batteries and head phone jack just are not at the top of their wish list.
No, the problem is that Apple can do whatever the fuck they want and people still will literally rip the entire stock out of Apple Stores. The newest Macbook Pros still have 16GB RAM tops and not a single miniDP or USB connector, thus leaving people with a pile of useless junk when they upgrade (or have to replace, e.g. due to dead mobo) their older Macbooks. Not to mention the ultra ... "keyboard". People still keep buying them by the masses.
>No, the problem is that Apple can do whatever the fuck they want and people still will literally rip the entire stock out of Apple Stores.
Ie. "the world is idiots and I know better" as opposed "people have different priorities".
>The newest Macbook Pros still have 16GB RAM tops
And for a very good reason. Low-powered (suitable for laptop use) support for 32GB memory wasn't there in Intel chipsets. But not only you didn't bother to investigate, but you know better.
>and not a single miniDP or USB connector, thus leaving people with a pile of useless junk when they upgrade
Or, you know, they can buy a couple of $10 USB-C cables or a $50 hub and be done with it. I prefer the move towards USB-C only faster, than them releasing yet another laptop with 5 different types of ports that will drag on the migration.
People aren't idiots. But if you swapped Apple's high-level design choices with, say, the LG V20's high-level design choices, people would still buy the Apple phone over the LG V20.
They're buying the brand, and they're making the call that having something that has Apple-level quality is better than buying a design they would prefer with inferior quality.
But that doesn't preclude Apple's high-level design choices leading to objectively inferior quality (even if the objective inferiority is only to a hypothetical Apple that made better high-level design decisions.)
They're more buying the vendor lock-in. When I have invested 4-digit sums into Apple Music, Apple Movies and games, I can't port that all over to Android. Yes, I can port DRM-free music over, but no such luck with movies and games - there are games like Real Racing where you can sync progress across platforms but they're rare.
Add in that Apple will (as evidenced in the article!) artificially slow down phones to the point of being unusable, and you have the explanation why people keep throwing money at Apple. It's like gamblers throwing more and more money into the slot machine - it's the sunk cost fallacy.
When I have invested 4-digit sums into Apple Music, Apple Movies and games, I can't port that all over to Android. Yes, I can port DRM-free music over, but no such luck with movies and games
Yes you can port most movies over. Download Movies Anywhere (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/movies-anywhere/id1245330908...), link your iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, and/or Vudu account and any movies you bought from one service from a participating studio automatically shows up as a purchase in any of the other stores.
>They're more buying the vendor lock-in. When I have invested 4-digit sums into Apple Music, Apple Movies and games, I can't port that all over to Android
You very easily can, the lock-in argument is tired.
And even if it didn't, it's a subscription service. Nobody invests much in it, except your monthly subscription. One can cancel at anytime and go to Google Play, Amazon, Spotify, etc.
As for the music download (paid songs), from the major vendors it was Apple who famously spearheaded the "kill music DRM" thing, and has been offering DRM-free music for a decade or so. Which, one can easily play on Android, etc. No lock-in there either.
Games? As if mobile games or even computer games are not casual and replaced by new ones every so often? Plus, with Steam et al, aren't those transferable as well?
Same with movies. Who even buys those? It's the era of Netflix, subscriptions and at least renting.
>there are games like Real Racing where you can sync progress across platforms but they're rare.
As if that's what's holding people from moving away the Mac...
> Plus, with Steam et al, aren't those transferable as well?
No, they are not. The only thing to buy anything on iOS is the App Store, and it is not transferable - the only things transferable on the iOS Stores are, as both you and I mentioned, music (of course, excluding music bought prior to the no-DRM switch!) and stuff like newspaper subscriptions bought on iOS stores but bound to an account on the newspaper's platform.
Steam is for OS X only (not iOS) and there are no major games on OS X that are not available on Windows (but a huge number of games not available on OS X, thus creating a lock-in to Windows).
> Same with movies. Who even buys those?
It's about the collection you have. I personally have no stakes in that game as all I have is physical media, but I know people with four-digit-sums investments in digital movies and other purchases. For them, the vendor lock in is real (and it's not just Apple - I, for example, got my Amazon account blocked for unpaid bills back from a time where I was financially ... unstable, to say the least, and I literally have no way of ever getting that account reinstated and thus access to my three-digit-worth ebook collection!).
>No, they are not. The only thing to buy anything on iOS is the App Store, and it is not transferable - the only things transferable on the iOS Stores are, as both you and I mentioned, music (of course, excluding music bought prior to the no-DRM switch!)
I was speaking of the Mac. Who "invests" in iOS games, and would care to play them for years on end? For the huge majority, it's a casual thing.
Same with movies. Anybody who invested "four-digit-sums" in digital movies should just move on, like people did with VHS, DVD, and other early formats (and people had even more substantial collections there -- they had been burned enough times not to invest in digital movies). Besides, their "digital movies" already would look archaic in today's 4K screens (unless the service updates them).
>and it's not just Apple - I, for example, got my Amazon account blocked for unpaid bills back from a time where I was financially ... unstable, to say the least, and I literally have no way of ever getting that account reinstated and thus access to my three-digit-worth ebook collection!
That's a separate issue -- not being able to reinstate a rental account is crazy, especially if one doesn't only think of US, Japan, Western Europe and co, but the huge 70% of the world, where temporary issues with stability (in jobs, economy, etc) can often lead people to unpaid bills.
> Who "invests" in iOS games, and would care to play them for years on end?
I'm not talking about games only, there also is a vast amount of productivity software on the iOS platform.
> For the huge majority, it's a casual thing.
And for those who fall into the category of "whales" in F2P or pay-to-win games, it's sometimes six figures.
> like people did with VHS, DVD, and other early formats
For a DVD, I can grab an USB DVD drive - or my BD player. Which will play back anything down to a CD-ROM. The content is easily accessible, and if I want I can do a bit perfect backup even for copyrighted stuff with AnyDVD. For a VHS tape, I actually have a dual-head player - it can do recording on both tape and DVD, as well as transfer a VHS tape to DVD. (Yes, tapes are really oldschool)
I'm not talking about games only, there also is a vast amount of productivity software on the iOS platform.
How much productivity software exists on iOS that's available for Android that you don't pay for via a subscription that allows you to use the same software on any platform?
>Add in that Apple will (as evidenced in the article!) artificially slow down phones to the point of being unusable, and you have the explanation why people keep throwing money at Apple.
Also, the slowdown only occurs if and when the battery is at the end of its useful life. My iPhone 6 from 2014 still runs as fast as ever, and considering the OS update policy of Android phone makers, my iPhone is also a lot cheaper per year than any comparable Android phone.
That said, I find it completely idiotic on Apple's part to slow down the phone instead of letting users know when the battery is at its end of life.
No, instead you have two, with differing capabilities but the same form factor. And you have way more than 5 different cable types, each capable of different things, again, with the same form factor.
Just buy high-end USB-C cables from a reputable vendor and you are set. As long as some product (e.g. a printer or hard drive) comes with a specific USB-C cable, use it with that, and it will be good for it. End of story.
Offering it a cheaper price for one of the most common uses where people need > 1 cables (one for home/office etc)?
Or the fact that's very easy to just buy another one for data/video etc?
I guess the standard could do with some color coding, but it's not like its the end of the world. Or worth it to have N different connector technologies just so we can differentiate what does what.
>>The newest Macbook Pros still have 16GB RAM tops
>And for a very good reason. Low-powered (suitable for laptop use) support for 32GB memory wasn't there in Intel chipsets. But not only you didn't bother to investigate, but you know better.
You're actually proving his point for him. This excuse wouldn't work for anyone else but Apple.
Of course normal DDR4 is perfectly fine to use in laptops (compared to lpddr3) without severely damaging your battery life, other manufacturers manage to do it just fine.
And while I'd agree that ekeing out those extra standby (because there isn't even much difference in load efficiency between the two) minutes is great for the smaller devices, it becomes ridiculous when one consciously orders a device with a 45W TDP Quadcore CPU, 2TB SSD and dedicated GPU with 4GB GDDR5.
>Of course normal DDR4 is perfectly fine to use in laptops (compared to lpddr3) without severely damaging your battery life, other manufacturers manage to do it just fine.
Not according to Intel either, so the point is moot.
> Ie. "the world is idiots and I know better" as opposed "people have different priorities".
The point is, people who desperately need more resources on OS X for whatever reason - be it game development, video/photo editing or even using a web browser - are stuck since years on Apple. With nothing more than Chrome, Excel, Word, Slack, iTerm and Outlook running, I have all my 16GB RAM and 15GB swap usage. I actually work (as a web dev) exclusively in the terminal on a remote server via ssh, because phpStorm, Eclipse or any other IDE on the laptop plus a server environment makes it unbearably slow.
> Low-powered (suitable for laptop use) support for 32GB memory wasn't there in Intel chipsets. But not only you didn't bother to investigate, but you know better.
Laptops in the Windows area have had 32GB support since over 7 years with the release of the Dell M6500 (https://www.geek.com/chips/dell-ships-a-17-precision-m6500-l...). Apple has not even fucking tried supporting what their actual power users need, all in the name of "we have to build a laptop as thin as a feather". Yes, it would have eaten battery life - but why not do the same as the Windows manufacturers did and use a bigger battery?
Apple could have kept selling the MacBook line as low-powered/long-battery-lifed version for those who just want to look like hipsters by having a MacBook, and the MacBook Pro line as powerhorses for the mobile work force of 2017. But no, they screwed up both user groups - the hipsters get to carry a suitcase full of ugly dongles for even the most basic tasks, and the power users watch in awe at the Windows colleagues, who have a crappy OS but a machine that can literally do work.
> Or, you know, they can buy a couple of $10 USB-C cables or a $50 hub and be done with it.
I'd like to be able to plug in a USB thumb drive without a dongle that I'll lose, forget or having it loaned (aka stolen) by a coworker in less than a week. Or, Apple even removed the HDMI port, right after people started building HDMI sockets in conference rooms instead of VGA which was the norm for the latest 20 years. Thanks for having to buy yet ANOTHER dongle. Oh, and a new dongle for the keyboard, another one for the mouse, a new one for wired Ethernet... and no, docking stations are not a solution, not in a "flexible office" layout with different generations of Mac and Windows hardware.
The only thing that actually DID turn out well is that the power brick and the cable are now separate - but oh wait, the new cable can actually break instead of having it flap out elegantly... and because the plug is long instead of short and stubby like many Windows laptops have it, it's prone to cats trying to sit on it, and bending it in the process.
For all of the times that I've had to work from home and forgot my charger at work, I'm glad that Apple didn't decide to use the power vampire configuration in the MBP.
Intel dropped the ball here. There are battery life expectations in the prosumer market and Apple would not have come close to them withing sticking to the low power configuration.
It's also not even remotely the only laptop brand that made that same decision.
> There are battery life expectations in the prosumer market
That's what the MacBook line was supposed to cover, and MacBook Pro, like the name said, was the professional line.
> It's also not even remotely the only laptop brand that made that same decision.
But from those brands which cater to enterprises, there is always the ultra-high-power lineup that power users can choose from. HP has the EliteBook range, Dell the XPS range and Lenovo the ThinkPad P. Some of them I can even order with 64GB RAM.
Apple leaves me at a quarter of the RAM. Apple has left power users like me standing in the rain. The problem is that it's really hard to switch, because Windows 7 nears its end of business and I won't touch anything above it with a 10 feet pole due to privacy and UI problems, and Linux is way too buggy when it comes to energy efficiency, new hardware support or proper support for Optimus and friends. Of course Hackintosh would at least solve the UI problems but it's difficult enough on a desktop platform, and I would never dare to use a Hackintosh for work stuff due to the legal issues.
> That's what the MacBook line was supposed to cover, and MacBook Pro, like the name said, was the professional line.
That ship sailed away pretty much right around when Intel Macs started shipping. Stop clinging to the past, honestly.
That market is deader than dead in every brand. Even Thinkpads. Especially Thinkpads. The only strong market (read: at the scale that Apple sells products) that exists for performance (read: 17") laptops is in gaming. It's also _tiny_.
Not much to cling for, actually - I jumped ship from Windows only three years ago and back then, it was fine. The problem is that software seems to have evolved as if RAM is an infinite resource (hello, Electron apps, especially Slack). Windows ecosystem has kept up with the demand, Apple... not so much.
> That market is deader than dead in every brand.
But it nevertheless exists in every major brand, and big companies buy them en masse, or at least: enough of them to make the manufacturing of these models worth itself. Only exception is Apple, and that's part of why professionals are highly afraid that Apple has lost its track.
> The problem is that software seems to have evolved as if RAM is an infinite resource (hello, Electron apps, especially Slack)
This is a point I'm 100% in agreement with you on! :)
> But it nevertheless exists in every major brand, and big companies buy them en masse, or at least: enough of them to make the manufacturing of these models worth itself.
I used to be in a role where I had purchasing information for computers for a nationwide big-box retail chain. You would be surprised at how low the order quantity on some of those 17" laptops is. I'm not talking about for the stores but for the manufacturer. Often it's in the low thousands (per market, of which there's really only 4 and for those laptops really 2). Those big laptops are a price anchor to sell more mid-range laptops that have higher margins. Big laptops get the least amount of hardware design engineering effort/QA. Their volume is low enough that the support costs are minimal, even if many of them malfunction or fail. Toshiba in particular is notorious for this.
Apple sells north of 5 million Mac computers a quarter. A freakin' quarter! It is absolutely not profitable for them to divert attention to low volume products. The opportunity cost lost is enormous. They could spend their efforts making the existing inventory a fraction of a percent cheaper or more successful and it would dwarf any profits made from a 17" laptop.
Most of those other brands can afford to sell 'performance' laptops mainly because they have to: they aren't selling 20 million laptops a year. Keep in mind, PC sales have _cratered_ and Lenovo is bleeding money. So is HP, but this year they had an up year...mostly off of selling Chromebooks.
> Their volume is low enough that the support costs are minimal, even if many of them malfunction or fail. Toshiba in particular is notorious for this.
Toshiba isn't what I see in enterprise environments... there I see HP and Dell, but especially Lenovo/Thinkpad.
> It is absolutely not profitable for them to divert attention to low volume products. The opportunity cost lost is enormous.
I agree with you on the general point. The problem and danger for Apple is: their initial success and brand was built by artists (no matter if photo, video or audio) and designers where the performance of Apple equipment pretty much left Windows based systems dead in the water. When these professionals jump ship to Windows, the appeal of Apple as "hip" and "modern" gets lost.
Apple does not have much time left to prevent this - people doing heavy loads like 4K or 8K video work are already jumping ship left and right where possible (of course, anecdata rather than scientifically valid data, but the trend is alarming) because Apple equipment fails to deal with the requirements on every front... especially as more and more video production shifts to 4K.
Apple isn't that alarmed by it. The artists have been leaving for a long time. Creative Cloud and Office 365 were the final nail. Apple is still selling increasing numbers of laptops every year. Apple hardware has lagged for those kinds of workloads for like 6 years.
The only video production houses I know still using Apple only buy it because the people in charge of purchasing either are 10 years out of date or they want their clients to see all the slick, expensive hardware they have around the office as a truth signal.
The market has proved that Apple doesn't have to care.
>This should be accounted for in the initial design, so that there is sufficient battery life at the end of product life, not just at the beginning.
If this was the case, the title of this post would be "iPhones don't use all available battery power" instead of what it is. You can't please all the people all the time.
I'm really not sure how that follows at all. If the battery life of a new device is 3 days, and the battery life of a 2-year-old device is 1 day, at no point is there battery power that is unused.
People would be so upset that they didn't have to charge their phone so often and that the completely sealed in battery lasted longer before making their phone appear to become obsolete?
1) It is accounted for. Just not in the way you'd like, with your priorities.
2) No. It should not be simple, and there should not be a crappy "back cover" which "pops" open. If you do that, you've made a fragile piece of crap with no water resistance and much less durability and you've wasted a lot of space. Space which is in very short supply.
Who said anything about crappy? High quality is achievable.
> If you do that, you've made a fragile piece of crap with no water resistance
As opposed to a fragile piece of crap with (some) water resistance? I'm not an expert on water resistance but I'm guessing something can be both resealable and water resistant.
> much less durability
Providing a back cover that would pop off if you drop the phone probably improves durability, due to the ability for energy to escape.
> Space which is in very short supply.
Why is it in short supply, other than because Apple tells you that you need a thinner phone?
Who said anything about crappy? High quality is achievable.
Indeed, in their heydey Blackberry had a leather-covered removable back cover. It was a premium product designed to be familiar to fancy people who wore hand-made suits and shoes. Indeed it was far more "quality" than the blingiest gold iPhone, which is just tacky.
A back cover that pops off _appears_ more fragile to most people.
Similar thing with water resistance. They could make a resealable back cover. However, you now have support trying to determine if someone's phone has water damage due to manufacturing issues or because they didn't put the cover back on. This leads back to the phone appearing more fragile (or Apple seeming petty).
You also have the scenario where the phone is dropped hard enough for the cover to come off and then land in water.
> I'm not an expert on water resistance but I'm guessing something can be both resealable and water resistant.
I’m not either, but you’d have to figure out an extremely special way to create a water-resistant phone with battery contacts that would not corrode on contact with water.
My Nexus 7 has a pop out cover, yet when it fell in a stream of running water, it never even shut down. Opening it revealed only two small drops of water.
Plus, battery contacts don't corrode from a short exposition to water (otherwise, so would the headphone plug).
>My Nexus 7 has a pop out cover, yet when it fell in a stream of running water, it never even shut down. Opening it revealed only two small drops of water.
Plus, battery contacts don't corrode from a short exposition to water (otherwise, so would the headphone plug).
I have a Nexus 7 as well and I have no idea what this pop out cover means. Can you please help me understand? Thanks
Sorry, probably a wrong name, I mean the back cover just snaps together (and can be removed easily, even with one's nails) rather than having screws and such.
Uhhhh, not to rain on your parade but the device I've been using for the last 6½ years - a Motorola Defy - is waterproof (IP67) yet still has one of those 'crappy "back cover[s]" which "pops" open' (with a latch to prevent it from popping when popping is unwarranted). It is also supposed to be rugged and I guess this is confirmed by the fact that it still lives after those 6½ years in my care. Need I say I have a farm with quite a bit of forest, the which I regularly maintain using tractor, saw and axe? That phone has survived nevertheless. When it gets too disgusting to hold I clean it under running water. Just a week ago I happened to use the thing to provide some light when changing light bulbs in my wife's car. What do you know, it slipped down and landed on the plastic cover underneath the engine, there was no way to reach it without disassembling part of that cover. Since we were on our way home I just left it there, drove home (about 11 kilometres) and got out the tools required to rescue the phone. I found it wedged between the oil pan and the plastic cover. It was no worse for the wear other than possibly some extra scratches on that 'crappy "back cover"', I wouldn't know since the thing is scratched beyond recognition anyway. Yet... it still works.
I guess I don't need to elaborate on the survival chances of an iPhone - any iPhone - in these circumstances.
>there should not be a crappy "back cover" which "pops" open. If you do that, you've made a fragile piece of crap with no water resistance
I'm quite happy with my Samsung Galaxy S5 mini. It is fully waterproof, despite replaceable battery located behind a removable back cover. The cover also never came loose on accident.
> not sure why you think Apple would be any different.
I don't and my comment doesn't suggest that. What I suggest is that phones with non-user-replaceable batteries should be designed with capacity large enough so that life is still acceptable after two years of normal wear without throttling the CPU.
As for how "simple" replacing the battery is, I don't consider a $79 repair that requires an appointment and driving to an Apple Store and wasting an hour of my day "simple".
>I don't and my comment doesn't suggest that. What I suggest is that phones with non-user-replaceable batteries should be designed with capacity large enough so that life is still acceptable after two years of normal wear without throttling the CPU.
Whether user serviceable or not is irrelevant, as long as they have a support program to replace your battery.
> As for how "simple" replacing the battery is, I don't consider a $79 repair that requires an appointment and driving to an Apple Store and wasting an hour of my day "simple".
A support program is still far more trouble than user-replaceable batteries.
All batteries degrade. Not all batteries degrade into uselessness after a mere two years. My car is coming up on three years old and its battery capacity is still better than 99% of new.
Lithium-ion and lead-acid battery technologies are very different. A lead-acid battery performs extremely well so long as power keeps flowing through it - my first car was 12 years old when written off and had its original battery, because it was driven often and kept charged.
Lithium-based batteries suffer chemical degradation of their electrodes related to time as well as charge cycles. Even an unused lithium-ion battery can die before it's ever installed in a product. The electrode damage is what causes the capacity to decline.
For the record, lead-acid batteries can suffer similar degradation due to sulphur build-up on their internal plates, but regular use keeps this at bay and a well-maintained battery will just keep working. Part of the problem is that it's nearly impossible to maintain modern batteries as they're all sealed by design.
Your cars battery is cooled instead of being abused as a heat sink, is nearly never emptied, and uses a battery chemistry that doesn't degrade when fully charged.
Smartphone battery degradation is indeed a consequence of design choices, but I think those choices are reasonable. I prefer battery power and processor power now over long term battery life, as long as the battery is replaceable.
Except people tend to vote with their wallets for thinner lighter phones. Probably I’d prefer a slightly thicker phone myself but I’m probably not typical.
People's purchases aren't 'votes' in some context-less void.
Many folks (most in the last couple of years?) are firmly entrenched in the Apple ecosystem. Wanting a nicer camera and nicer screen, while not having to worry about migrating data and apps, forces the 'lighter/thinner' option on people. People moving from an iphone 5s to a 7 aren't necessarily "voting" for a thinner phone. They are more likely "voting" for a better camera or more storage, but are forced in to 'thinner' as a byproduct.
I've never met anyone in the last 5 years who's upgraded to a new phone based on their current device being 'too thick'. Camera, storage, speed and screen size are factors; thickness has never been a motivating factor I've heard from people.
Indeed. I really wish Apple would offer an option to have a phone that's twice as thick as their current offerings, with the extra space filled with extra battery. Keep the thin ones available for people who prefer those. But I'm not getting my hopes up for such a thing.
(And to preempt the typical responses to this: I know battery cases exist, but they're a substantially inferior solution.)
It's not just us geeks. My wife and kids (at least, the daughters who are full-time snapchat users) would definitely select the larger phone with bigger battery.
If you had both choices before you in the store, who wouldn't start to wonder if they'd regret the thinner/lower capacity choice?
I would love it if they came out with a real Pro version of their products. Call them the "Pro Black" edition or something.
Imagine a "Black Edition" of the iPhone that's thicker, has a headphone jack and an integral rubberized case. The aesthetic would be similar to military style watches.
Imagine a thicker MacBook Pro that doesn't require dongles. Don't announce them initially but show it in some hacker movies. Make them special order initially. I can dream...
I have somewhat mixed feelings myself. On the one hand I would like to have true all day battery life for those relatively rare days when I’m really hammering on the battery. OTOH maybe I really do prefer less thickness and weight for the 90% case and just top it off with an external battery on the other days.
Geeks (illustrated by those of us reading HN) tend to value function over form. Unfortunately this is not the market Apple appeals to. They have successfully managed to appeal to enough people that 'thin is good' at the expense of everything else, and here we are with laptops and phones you can practically shave with.
If the battery life becomes "horrible" within two years, I'd question if it was sufficient in the first place. I've had non-Apple phones in use for significantly longer than that without meaningful battery loss (i.e. I don't have to charge more frequently).
It also seems that you could throttle the CPU, but provide the user a way to override it. That'd be far more reasonable IMO.
In terms of user experience, having the option to override might confuse those who aren't power users, and some users may unintentionally experience something that isn't the "ideal path" chosen by Apple if they do choose to opt out of the throttling experience.
Of course, maybe iPhones could just tell the users to replace batteries if battery life starts to deteriorate below a certain threshold.
Failing is painful, though. I replaced an iPhone's charging plug (which means replacing a small network of cables), got everything working and charging, then crushed the screen when closing it up :|
Same experience and my camera literally will not focus anymore. No drops or water damage. I simply cannot explain the loss in function or drop in battery life.
What is better: for software writers to only be able to multiply two billion 64-bit numbers per second instead of four billion, or for you to have 5 hours instead of 10 hours of battery life?
It is absolutely, 100% the right choice that a low-powered mode is used, and entered into, in software.
I don't believe replacing a battery every 24 months is unrealistic if you want screaming-fast performance.
There are a handful of exceptions I can think of:
- There is no excuse not to give full power when plugged into a charger.
- The OS should not be slow: its UI should be developed against the slower core.
- The OS should allow a certain amount of high-power usage, if it is intermittant. In other words, apps should be able to request please, please be able to process something quickly, they promise not to use much power for a long time afterward.
This may improve user experience in some cases.
In general I would say Apple is making the right choice here.
Your point is fair. (I'm not the one who made that statement you quoted, though I'm further upthread.)
Your parent poster is a moderator here. Hacker News has one of the best places on the planet and it's amazing that it's been maintained, through the very hard work of the moderators. As you're a new user, the moderator pointed out the style conventions here.
I personally think that often the knee-jerk reaction is a fine starting point. We get exactly what you meant by:
> Hobbyists can always run their own custom mobile OS version.
HAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHA
Next this should be edited to this form:
> Hobbyists can always run their own custom mobile OS version.
Surely even you do not seriously believe this.
And suddenly we have a substantive discussion. (I assume this is what you meant.) Welcome to Hacker News.
Also bear in mind that app developers are also reactive to Apple's choices. (If they need to optimize their software, they will do so. On the other hand, if they can skip optimizing by just telling users to turn on a setting, many will do just that.)
I'd rather Apple make developers have to look up what an algorithm is, and spend hours - hours! - of their life turning an iterative exhaustive search into a binary search (for example), because they have to work on a slow core too, than for me to have to dig around in settings, turn on a "Force high-CPU usage" and let developers keep being lazy.
This goes for Apple's developers too, and I realize their own first-party software such as the OS is too slow on the low-power core. I mentioned this above.
I stand by my original comment.
Bear in mind that there might be applications that use state of the art algorithms, can run, but just barely, on the high-powered cores but not on the low-power cores, and are not intermittant. I am saying that it is acceptable to have to replace battery every 24 months, or plug in the phone, if you want to keep using them.
I can give you another analogy for why I don't agree with your take. Back in the day there was an "iPhone hand warmer" that drained the battery and spun the processors. These days that application would get throttled, it would not be able to warm up the phone by draining its battery.
Except, until today, no-one knew their phone was being throtlled, because Apple doesn't want to tell anyone about this. So no-one knew they could improve cpu performance with a new battery.
Scaling the CPU down with battery capacity seems like a great way to hand-wave away planned obsolescence accusations.
I was curious about the results my phone would receive, so I bought the Geekbench app mentioned in the reddit post. Indeed, my phone scores max out at half of what it claims the iPhone 6 should benchmark at.
I'm pissed.