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Apple Hardware

AppleCare+ Now Covers Batteries That Drop To 80% 152

Posted by timothy from the wish-this-applied-to-my-mac-book-air dept.
Mark Wilson writes with news that Apple's AppleCare+ plan has been updated to address one of the biggest worries that people have about products with non-removeable batteries, and that become very expensive paperweights when the juice runs out. From BetaNews: "Previously, the extended warranty only covered batteries that would hold 50 percent charge or less. Now this has been updated so that you can request a free replacement within the coverage period if your device's battery is only able to hold 80 percent of full charge. The new terms to no apply to everyone — it all depends on when you bought your Apple device. If you bought your iPhone, iPad, iPod or Apple Watch before April 10, 2015, you're stuck with the old terms. I wish this change applied to my MacBook Air, with which I'm lucky to get 90 minutes of battery power.
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AppleCare+ Now Covers Batteries That Drop To 80% More

AppleCare+ Now Covers Batteries That Drop To 80%

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  • Perhaps Apple could build usable phones that actually last a full day on their battery instead of competing for the biggest buzzword of the moment and be able to say: "Look, this is the thinnest phone on the market". It bends easily, it breaks easily, it's got an awful battery, but ei, they can state it's the thinnest phone on the market.

    • Because apple's customer base values sexiness over practicality and common sense.

      • Thinness and lightness are not some sort of exclusive point of marketability that only Apple users care about. These are guiding principles for technological development at almost every portable device manufacturer. You can look at the patent stream from Samsung and LG and see this quite easily, at least half of their portable device patents mention weight and thickness reduction. The manufacturers are not simply heading in this direction because they've decided that it's the cool thing to do, they perform

      • The funny thing is these people buy the device to be 'sexy' but then they don't mind dangling a battery pack off of it when the battery inevitably dies.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dog-Cow ( 21281 )

        That's still better than preferring utterly incomprehensible user interfaces that have 17 ways to perform the same action, but with no overlap so you have to know the specific way for each app you have installed.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You realise an iPhone 6+ lasts about 5 days of typical usage on a charge right?

      • Maybe how you use it, that's not true how I use it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by berj ( 754323 )

      *shrug*

      Most days I end up with 30-60% of my battery life left on my iPhone 6. The only time I have to plug my phone in during an average work day is if I forgot to charge it over night (maybe once or twice a month)

      I personally prefer thin and light (something which affects every usage of my phone) to longer battery life (something with affects a small percentage of my usage).

      When I want *really* long battery life (eg. when I spend 14 - 18 hours on a film set in the middle of nowhere and am using the radios

      • Re:Instead of building thin bendable phones... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Saturday June 27, 2015 @11:59AM (#50002343)
        I'm curious how people are finding that a battery pack is the solution, when:
        1) Usually the battery dies when you are using the phone, so you can't just put it aside at that point and charge it. I can use my phone while it is on a battery back but then it hardly charges and i'm stuck with the pack.
        2) A battery back is physically bigger than a phone battery and most require an extra cable. How is that ever going to be more convienent then just carrying another charged battery?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by berj ( 754323 )

          1) I keep track of the battery remaining percentage. When I get too low (say 20%) I plug the pack into my phone and put them both in my pocket.

          2) It's more convenient for a numer of reasons:

          a) I don't have to turn off my phone to charge up like I would with changing a battery. I keep runnign as if nothing has changed.
          b) I don't have to open my phone up and expose it to the elements. I had a friend on a really filthy, muddy film set in the middle of winter try to replace his battery. He ended up dropping

        • I'm curious how people are finding that a battery pack is the solution, when:

          1) Usually the battery dies when you are using the phone, so you can't just put it aside at that point and charge it. I can use my phone while it is on a battery back but then it hardly charges and i'm stuck with the pack.

          2) A battery back is physically bigger than a phone battery and most require an extra cable. How is that ever going to be more convienent then just carrying another charged battery?

          I use battery packs too so let me respond:

          1) I have no problem getting my phone to actually charge off a pack. It isn't even a good one. Some Schneider branded Chinese rubbish given away at an engineering conference, and it has no problem putting 1.6A into the phone when I plug it in so it charges phones rather quickly.

          2) Many battery packs are universal. I have the option of carrying an extra battery for my phone, my go pro, iPad, Kindle (yes after 2 months of battery life it went flat while camping), my U

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          2) A battery back is physically bigger than a phone battery and most require an extra cable. How is that ever going to be more convienent then just carrying another charged battery?

          How do you charge said battery? I know Samsung, for some models, make a "dock" so you can stuff your battery in that and charge it. But otherwise, you have to charge it in your phone. If you're using the second battery, you then have to swap out the batteries, then put your phone back on charge. If you're like me, you forget to d

    • Re:Instead of building thin bendable phones... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jbolden ( 176878 ) on Saturday June 27, 2015 @09:47AM (#50001793) Homepage

      Of the major phones sold:
      1st place: Huawei Ascend Mate 2 (14:43)
      2nd OnePlus One (13:16)
      3rd iPhone 6 Plus (10:00)

      I'd say it is pretty inaccurate to say Apple phones have terrible battery life.

      especially since
      4th Samsung Galaxy S5 (9:42)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        What were the phones doing during that test? I'm guessing screen at maximum brightness and always on, maybe with an auto-refreshing web page open. Such tests tend to be useless because most phones spend most of their time with the screen off, and maximum brightness varies a lot etc. Also, the iPhone 6 Plus has a much bigger battery than most iPhones (2900mAh vs just 1800mAh in a normal iPhone 6) so isn't representative of what most iPhone users experience.

        I have a OnePlus One and it will last three days on

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jbolden ( 176878 )

          The benchmark is continuous web surfing over LTE 4G, with screen at 100 nits of brightness. The iPhone 6 plus can do 537 at max. There are other benchmarks that measure how long the phone lasts in low power mode so one needs to use multiple benchmarks.
          The iPhone 6 does 7:40, which is about an hour below average.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nemyst ( 1383049 )
      I don't mind thin devices, but I do mind thin devices that can't withstand typical day-to-day usage and need a case to last. What in the hell is the point of a thin sleek device if I need to put a thick unsightly case around it?

    • There are plenty of legitimate complaints to make about Apple and their products. Why do you have to make shit up?

    • The iPhone 6+ is in fact less bendable than the Samsung phones, and the Samsung phones have screens that will shatter instead of bending slightly...

      But in fact the iPhone 6+ is easily good for more than a day of charge. So if you want an iPhone that you don't have to think about the battery, they already sell one.

  • Used to be everything got smaller and smaller. Then they realized... no, people don't really want or need small. So then everything gets bigger and bigger. No where else to go so they decide to make thinner. Why? Sorry, that's beyond me.
    But if they make it thinner they can't have a replaceable batt. And it seems more and more companies are pushing the thinner and not really stating you can't replace the batt.

    • Yeah I'm kind of miffed at this. I love macs. I have my PC for games and when I need to do windows or linux coding work, but my main tool is my macbook. I'm still on the 2011 macbook pro however, because I can service it, replace most of its parts, upgrade it and what not, and frankly she's still a pretty snappy laptop. If I get a newer macbook pro, I cant update the memory, I cant update the hard drive, I cant even replace the battery. If I get drunk and spill beer in it I cant repair it at all. As a resul

  • Hey Mark Wilson, quit whining and just replace your battery. If you can't work a screwdriver yourself, I'm sure someone around here still knows how. You can buy replacement batteries on eBay, Amazon, or ifixit.com even comes with detailed instructions. Most models take about 10 minutes.

    • I won't open the case on a newer device. I'm too afraid of voiding a warranty of some sort. Or of a recall coming up for a battery or something and having them say 'oh no you opened this, we don't have to replace your part'.

  • Apple fan (Score:3)

    by fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Saturday June 27, 2015 @10:02AM (#50001849)
    I know a guy who is a big Apple fan but he won't use certain functions/apps on his phone because he wants the battery to last all day. Mostly he will not use any app that turns on the GPS.

    I want to use everything on my phone and not worry about it, so unless I can have the GPS and Bluetooth on for a full day and still have a comfortable margin left to plug it in at night I'm looking for a phone with a removable battery.

    • I want to use everything on my phone and not worry about it, so unless I can have the GPS and Bluetooth on for a full day and still have a comfortable margin left to plug it in at night I'm looking for a phone with a removable battery.

      Do you really use the GPS and Bluetooth all day in a context in which you can't also use a power bank? That reminds me, I need to recharge mine... I've charged my phone with it like three times so far on this charge. I stuffed it with my own batteries, it was $6 and contains 6x18650 I pulled from laptop packs.

      • The point is, I want to use the GPS and Bluetooth freely without having to worry about modifying my phone with something like a power bank. With my current phone I know two batteries are enough, so I just through a charged battery in my bag and away I go. And I can't really use a power bank any because I am not sitting at a desk when I use the GPS (thus, the need to use the GPS). I don't want something else dangling off of my phone.

        • And I can't really use a power bank any because I am not sitting at a desk when I use the GPS (thus, the need to use the GPS). I don't want something else dangling off of my phone.

          Well, that's not really what I mean. You use the power bank to recharge your phone, which doesn't take that long; even my el cheapo model has a 2A socket (as well as a 1A socket.) So if you actually use it enough to run it down, then you just plug it into the power bank for a while. Perhaps in your pocket, or in a backpack if you're hiking or something. Many people keep one in the car. These days there are actually models capable of starting your car, so they're extra-useful when kept in there. And then if

          • And as I said, I don't want to do that. That is what quite simply what I mean.

            I would rather just carry an extra battery. A solution that seems so simple by comparison that it way more then makes up for the fact that you *gasp* have seams in your phone case. I have some of those recharge packs and I have been stuck using them in the past.. the thing is a phone starts dying when you use it. So when I attach the pack I have to keep using it. Then the phone doesn't charge quickly and the cycle continues.
            • Oh and the last time it happened I was sitting by the side of a pool looking up stats for a swimming competition that was going on. So, no, not a convienent time to use a charge pack.

    • I have an app (Human) that uses the GPS to track me a little more precisely to see how much I'm moving. My phone regularly gets 11+ hours of usage time per day before I'm down to about 10%. I've seen it as high as 13.5 hours. The real battery killer, for whatever reason, was Facebook. Even with background updates disabled, it was still killing me. But that was the only app that I've seen fit to remove for the sake of my battery.

    • I'm not sure what your friend is doing wrong, but any iPhone can have its Bluetooth on all day. I can tell you this from experience as a Pebble Watch user. As for the GPS, that will eat up the battery if you're using it for turn-by-turn directions, but if you're just looking up where the coffee shop a few blocks away is your battery will easily last past bed-time.

      Frankly I'm not sure where all this battery-hate against Apple came from, usually those complaints only turn up at new iOS releases.

      • The specific conversation was that my friend wanted to track a hike he was going on with his son. I asked him why he doesn't just use a GPS tracking app on his phone and he said he worried that the phone battery wouldn't last all day. Being an Apple fan, he likes his phone to be thin and lean so he would never consider attaching a battery pack.

        • He's right about that, you can kill an IPhone fairly quickly in that scenario. I'm not really sure what smartphone you would use for that, though.

          He wouldn't need to thicken his phone, just bring a USB battery pack with him. If he's opposed to that he isn't a typical Apple fan. Then again I don't know any Apple fans that behave like him.

          • This is why I'm saying.. removable battery, just bring as many charged ones as you need, problem solved. For my use I only need one extra.
            • Let me add, a USB power pack doesn't work on a hike either. I wouldn't even use a USB power pack and I am considerably more tolerant than my friend. Say you are walking along a trail and you want to check your phone, or take a picture. Now you have a cord dangling off your phone so you are not just grabbing it out of your pocket, it is in your bag with a cord attached. So you have to use both hands now and either pull out phone with power pack or go into your bag and disconnect the pack, hoping you have

            • Or you can bring a usb battery pack that solves your problem with the additional benefit of not having to reboot your phone. Plus you get more battery, removable batteries have less area to store a charge. Oh and don't forget that you can charge other stuff with that pack and not just your phone.

              Heck, my battery pack has a solar panel on it, of course I'd take that hiking!

              • Doesn't work. Now you are dealing with two devices and a cable. Too cumbersome on a trail. Personally I spend a lot of time sitting at the side of a swimming pool these days for swim meets and I don't want to deal with two devices there either.

                I'll reboot my phone. No worries there.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by Smurf ( 7981 )

                  Doesn't work. Now you are dealing with two devices and a cable. Too cumbersome on a trail.

                  Some power packs connect directly to the phone, no need for a cable. Some are integrated to a case, so in practice it's like a single device. (Yes, I know your friend doesn't like the extra thickness, but this is something that he would use in those rare occasions when he really needs the extra power, like when goes on a long hiking trip with his son.)

                  Personally I spend a lot of time sitting at the side of a swimming pool these days for swim meets and I don't want to deal with two devices there either.

                  And yet you are willing to carry around "in your pocket" "as many rechargeable batteries as you need". Carrying and dealing with removable batteries is just a

                • Too cumbersome for a trail? You'd prefer to take your phone apart out in the middle of nowhere? Somehow I doubt you've actually tried it. Anyway, you can always do what I did and get a case with a built-in battery. I like mine because it works as a stand but some include a built-in LED flashlight, certainly useful on a hike.

                  And why would you need a battery pack at the pool? How much trouble do you have getting there?

                  Anyway, I haven't used a phone with a removable battery in years, you can clearly see

          • Re:Apple fan (Score:4, Informative)

            by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Saturday June 27, 2015 @04:12PM (#50003483)

            That's actually a situation where you *wouldn't* use a smartphone at all.

            Wilderness applications like backpacking, camping, climbing, hiking, or whatever, (Not just jogging in the park.) really call for a dedicated GPS unit. Smartphone GPS chipsets have severe limitations that limit their utility when they have no data connection. Specifically, they use aGPS (Assisted GPS) to "cheat" in order to get and maintain their fix quickly and with less power consumption. And they tend to be utterly terrible at getting a "pure" GPS fix. I've also never seen a app that's really full-featured enough to use outside civilization. There could be one I've missed, of course, but that still wouldn't correct the deficiencies of the hardware.

            On the other hand, my second-from-their-lowest-end Garmin (Etrex 20) uses GPS, GLONASS, and WaaS with no data connection required to cheat the fix. It's rugged and waterproof to 2 meters. The software is specifically designed for real outdoors applications and not just driving directions. It's lightweight and designed to be both held and operated in a one hand... no mucking about with a touchscreen. There's a huge variety of maps, both free and paid, I can load on it either vis USB or MicroSD card. And it will run continuously for better than 24 hours on a pair of AAs.

            (Also, if you're smart, you'll still bring a paper map and compass as a backup.)

            • I agree with you on all counts. The conversation he and I are having is largely academic, personally I think he's embelleshing a bit about his friend.

            • Not true at all. I've used the GPS on my iPhone for multi day backcountry trips with no service. Works perfectly fine and gets a fix in seconds while my old dedicated GPS would take a minute.

    • In most cases, I get a full day out of my iPhone with GPS and Bluetooth on, email set to push, and all the other battery-hungry settings enabled. About the only time I adjust the settings is when I know I'm going to be out and about all day somewhere with very poor, or no, cell coverage. That, in my experience, is the worst energy-vampire of all for any phone; as they all ramp up their own transmission power to max in a desperate attempt to reach and maintain contact with a cell.

      Occasionally though there

      • , I get a full day out of my iPhone with GPS and Bluetooth on

        GPS on and actively using GPS are not the same thing. I don't think I've seen ANY phone last more than half a day when actively using GPS. Though GPS is unlikely to the root cause since any program requiring continuous use of GPS among other things will also prevent the CPU from sleeping.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Dr. Evil ( 3501 )

          Does geofencing count?

          • Depends on the way the app is written.

            I can't speak for your phone but in a commercial GPS application I deployed there was a tradeoff between accuracy of the geofence (how many times it wakes up to get its current location) and battery life. If you want notification the second someone steps out of an area down to the meter then I imagine the resulting program would destroy your battery life. If on the other hand the nearest minute is good enough, or the target is slow enough that a slow update rate is stil

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          GPS really shouldn't kill your battery that badly. A typical GPS module uses around 35mA in "active" mode, giving position updates once a second. So running for 10 hours needs 350mAh of your battery. IIRC iPhones have fairly small batteries, something like 1800mAh. My phone (OnePlus One) is 3100mAh, so running GPS all day should not be a huge problem.

          That's assuming a fairly dumb phone and dumb module. With proper management much lower power consumption is possible. Better antennas mean less gain needed to

          • It's not the GPS its the screen plus active routing plus GPS plus voice that drains battery. In other words GPS navigation. Just running the GPS in the background and logging it isn't that bad

            • Wrong again. What kills batteries is what the phone does with the GPS. Active routing is barely done unless you're completely ignoring your GPS and even then routing on the most common apps is offloaded to Google or Apple and not done on the phone itself. Also the phones will flatten while the screen is off too only at a slightly lower rate.

              GPS on implies it is doing something with the data. Processing takes effort and it is the apps preventing the CPU from sleeping that is what ultimately kills the battery

          • What do you do with GPS data?

            The module itself is inconsequential compared to an app that keeps the CPU awake to process a continuous stream of GPS data. The module is only a very small part of the equation.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dr. Evil ( 3501 )

      I'm no Apple fan, but I leave Bluetooth and GPS on all day, every day, and I still get 18-24 hour battery life on my iPhone 4s.

      I don't get the hate.

  • I find battery stats to be quite wrong in most cases. For one thing it is a known fact that smartphones drain the battery faster just when you are in an area with a weak or slow connection. So many variables involved it's a bit rediculous for any phone maker to make a claim on their battery life. Therefore I cannot rely on that number when dumping close to $1K on a handheld device.
  • I'm guessing you live in the US? If so, erhaps you should petition your local person of power (senator? congressman? whatever) to address the pitiful consumer laws in your country. In Europe such things are legally bound, in terms of products being fit for purpose for their intended lifetime. In the UK this is implemented in (amongst other things) the Sale of Goods Act which gives you significant ammunition in terms of demanding it be fixed for a period of (I believe) up to 5 years.

    Genuinely not trying to
  • My laptop's battery lasts about 4.5 hours with regular usage. However, it is about 6 years old. I will readily admit that I'm on my second battery. It was pretty obvious when my first battery died. It would quickly go from 80% to 0% within only a few minutes. I then went onto Amazon, bought a replacement for 15 dollars, and changed it out in about 30 seconds. Anything less than this is frankly unacceptable to me. Others may feel differently, but it's 2015. Let's not pretend this is a problem that hasn't bee

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