Chinese Consumer Group Has Asked Apple To Investigate 'a Considerable Number' of iPhone Shutdowns (businessinsider.com) 73
An anonymous reader writes:The China Consumers Association (CCA) has asked Apple to investigate "a considerable number" of reports by users of iPhone 6 and 6s phones that the devices have been shutting off and cannot be turned back on again, it said on Tuesday. The reported problems specifically involve users seeing their iPhones automatically shut off despite 50-60 percent battery levels, and the involuntary shutting off in room temperature or colder environments, as well as the inability to turn the cellphone back on despite continuous battery charging, the statement said. "In view that Apple iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s series cellphones in China have a considerable number of users, and the number of people who've reported this problem is rather many, China Consumer Association has already made a query with Apple," the association said in a statement on its website.
Questions. (Score:5, Insightful)
First question: Are they knockoffs?
Second question: If this is only happening in China, has the Chinese government asked Apple to modify their firmware in some way?
Third question: Are we hearing about this because someone is trying to FUD Apple out of the Chinese market?
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Macs4all, quit posting AC. We all know its you anyways.
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iPhone 7 had several catch on fire, but all were in China. Hmmm.
Now, we see iPhone 6 having issues, but again, ONLY IN CHINA.
China's cold war with the west is being stepped up.
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Only in China?
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http://www.news.com.au/technol... [news.com.au] Only in China?
Still skeptical. There are no pictures of the phone, only of her burns. I feel like her phone would have to have taken damage to burn her like that. Unless she's claiming that the charger cable also got hot enough to burn her? I know that anyone's Li-Ion batteries can burn quite vigorously, but every example I have seen results in the phone at least bulging.
Re:Questions. (Score:5, Insightful)
From the link:
“Apple took my phone and details, but said it couldn’t have been the phone because it didn’t have a distinct smell,”
It doesn't tell us how often it happens but it does tell us it happens with iphones too
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From the link:
“Apple took my phone and details, but said it couldn’t have been the phone because it didn’t have a distinct smell,”
It doesn't tell us how often it happens but it does tell us it happens with iphones too
Yes I read the article. Clearly her arm was burned but everyone who was burned by a Note 7 took pictures of the phone because the phone was obviously damaged. She took pictures of her arm and nothing else. Why did she not take any other pictures? If I were Apple, I would want the phone too, just to validate the claim. They offered her a new phone, but I wouldn't expect any less after they took the first. The fact that it happens to iPhones does not surprise me in the least. I just don't trust that par
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Agreed.
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Apple has it. They are trying to control the spin now.
And she didn't think to take a picture of it before they took it? I would not be surprised if any brand phone caught on fire, I just don't understand why she would document the burn with so many pictures of her burned arm but not one of the phone.
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The timeline is well explained in some of the stories. If you don't understand, that's a personal fault of yours, and in no way affects the well documented incident (with medical reports, and confirmation/denials from Apple) all consistent and well explained.
Medical records which don't indicate anything other than the patient reporting the burns to have come from an iPhone7. Let's review the time as reported by the patient:
pushed updates & crap batteries. (Score:5, Informative)
but asians expect even shit electronics to last couple of years.
they expect premium electronics to work forever, basically, and the crappy one's to be able to be fixed for pennies.
you would too if iPhone cost 6000$ to you.
My girlfriends iPhone6 shuts off at randomly at anything under 50 percent now, it pretty much needs to be tethered with a charger all the time to use. without you can use it for maybe like 45 minutes. it's nearly 2 years old.
this is in Thailand though - but the point is that iPhone batteries degrade in 2-3 years and the power management doesn't seem to be able to handle the fluctation and degrading of the battery at all - resulting in phones shutting down when it shows to have 50%+ battery. the charge indicator circuitry doesn't learn and the power management circuitry doesn't limit speed or anything if the voltage dips - instead it just does a random shutdown - which might just as well make some phones unbootable if you run this scenario enough times.
in china though most of the apple looking chargers can't provide the 2.1 amps anyways, but the issue happens even with genuine chargers.
I think it's just about westerners not complaining about it or they change the phone after 2 years anyways - in Asia though they still sold new(unrefurbished) iphone5s' like couple of months ago at least - direct from operator. Point being, that status phones like iPhones have a much longer life in Asia - and where do you think all the trade-in iPhones from the west end up as well?
and about the organized complaints only happening in China.. well.. eh. this might surprise you but Consumer protection agencies practically don't exist in most of southeast Asia at least and in the West there is the 24month mandatory warranty anyways.
Re:Questions. (Score:5, Insightful)
If China wants to take some spare change out of the pockets of the 1%-ers who sent our fucking jobs to China in the first place, FUCKING GREAT.
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Planned obsolescence (Score:2, Funny)
What are they whining? Device works as designed, the consumers just need to walk into iStore and renew their yearly iPhone iSubscription.
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What this really means (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been to China. It's definitely that. Keep in mind that this is also a country where most of its citizens believe that you can't lose money on the stock market no matter what stock you buy - ever.
Re:What this really means (Score:4, Informative)
They were all bought from the fake Apple Store.
http://www.forbes.com/pictures... [forbes.com]
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Likely the complaints are occuring because these are actual Apple products and the tiny percentage of middle class workers in China are being impacted. So far more likely quality control is not being as honest as it should be and production runs that have failed, instead of being broken down and being dumped onto the Chinese market because the negative impact will not affect the global market and also because of the post I am replying to (yep, uh huh sure, not their product a forgery, nope bad production ru
China (Score:2, Insightful)
Chinese people are really behind in basic concepts of Capitalism. They'll never catch up to the rest of the developed world if they keep being so naive as to expect that things that worked before will keep working after a newer model is released.
Things just don't work that way. When "thing model n" comes out, it's time to throw away "thing model n-1" and buy the newer model.
This is basic stuff.
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the great firewall got an upgrade. now bricks devices of 'problem' citizens. this is your first warning. and don't think about switching to samsung, because when the government turns those off, it might hurt.
Or possibly, Chinese intelligence service has been distributing some defective malware which bricks target iphones.
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Yes, they did. The whole problem is that only the first step worked as expected.
Had this same issue with my 6s in the USA (Score:5, Interesting)
I brought mine to the Genius bar and of course all their battery diagnostics showed nothing wrong. Took three return attempts before they finally agreed to replace my phone even though it was still under warranty. This guy wasn't as persistent as me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XCBydkR6dI [youtube.com]
Re:Had this same issue with my 6s in the USA (Score:5, Interesting)
This happened to me once -- after a 40 minute drive with a 6+ connected to a decent (ie, brand name) USB car charger. I got out, used the phone to take a dozen pictures and when I got back into the car to email them my phone gave me a low power warning and indicated it was nearly dead. I connected it back to the charger and within minutes it was back to the correct charge level.
I've also had a couple of situations where the phone wouldn't go into charging mode at all, acting as if it was not connected to a charge source (and I tried 3-4 different adapters, including two Apple adapters). I finally figured out that powering it off completely and then restarting it resolved it.
Fortunately these have been unusual occurrences.
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Firmware engineer who deals with batteries here. It sounds like they are having trouble coping with fluctuating battery voltages. Battery voltage varies with the load on the battery, so for example if you take photos with the flash and screen on it is going to cause the voltage to drop. That's not a problem if you calculate your battery life percentage based on both voltage and current measurement.
If the current measurement sensor broke, or if they underestimated the amount of voltage drop these symptoms wo
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Happens to my wife's iPhone 6, too. It happens just randomly enough to be noticeable but not enough to reach the "I must do something about it". I may have to escalate this beyond Level 1 Help Desk (me) and to someone who may be able to actually do something about it.
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Phone would randomly shutdown even though battery was 40%+ per the iOS UI. If I then tried to power it back up I would get the big charging icon, implying that the battery was completely drained.
well, hell, if it's a battery problem, why not just replace the b-
oh, right. sorry.. i use a Samsung.
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Phone would randomly shutdown even though battery was 40%+ per the iOS UI. If I then tried to power it back up I would get the big charging icon, implying that the battery was completely drained.
A different, but I suppose possibly-related, issue that I've seen a lot is that recent iPhone models really don't like to operate in the cold. When temperatures are low, they frequently shut themselves down reporting low battery states. To some extent this is normal Li-ion chemistry; batteries do provide lower voltage at low temperatures, but Android phones seem to be a lot less aggressive about shutting themselves down.
I see a lot of this in the winter, at the ski resort I frequent. Most iPhone users end
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If the indicated battery percentage jumps wildly between charging and discharging, it may simply be that the battery gauge needs to be recalibrated. Especially if battery diagnostics don't show anything wrong.
http://batteryuniversity.com/l... [batteryuniversity.com]
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Pretty much the same issue with my 6. The phone battery bottoms out at anywhere between 10% and 50%, depending on the day. Plug it in to a charger and 10 minutes later it's back at 65% and will run for a few more hours. I've been putting this down to a prematurely aged battery, but it's not something that has happened with my previous iPhones.
Could it be because they are "not" as gullible? (Score:2)
Regarding the knockoff jokes (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing that really surprised me was the cut of Android on it that had been skinned to look just like iOS. There was some serious work put into the product.
Clearly there's a huge market for these knockoffs.
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Wouldn't the easiest way to tell the difference be to just plug it into a computer and try and move music tracks to it from iTunes? Or try and download a previously purchased app from the App Store?
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I'm not sure what I should expect from the results.
If it works, does that mean that it is an Android phone or an Apple phone?
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I'm not sure what I should expect from the results.
If it works, does that mean that it is an Android phone or an Apple phone?
Are you trying to be obtuse on purpose?
An Android phone can't link with iTunes at all.
And obviously if you're prompted to buy the app you already own on the iOS platform, you're not really on the Apple App Store, but a skinned third-party store.
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Probably battery issues (Score:2)
When the battery dies the power chip gets confused.
My iPhone 6 needed a battery replacement just short of two years and had the same symptoms - the battery indicator would show plenty, but at some random point it just turned off. I was trying to limp along like that until the 7 came out but it continued to deteriorate. $65 and an hour at the Apple Store and all was great again, and now I'll wait for the iPhone 8. I use the phone heavily and often charge during the day, it was up over 700 load cycles when it
Seems to be a common occurance (Score:1)
Battery problem has been known, and is fixable (Score:4, Informative)
I had an iPhone6 that would do the same thing, die with a 30-40% charge, then show the charge again and work after plugging it into a charger for a minute. This problem has been known for a while. A quick search shows the following thread [apple.com] on the apple discussion boards. There is a fix posted on payetteforward [payetteforward.com]. I used that fix and my iPhone6 never had that battery problem again. I'd forgotten how I fixed it but 5 secods of a Google search for "iphone 6 turns off at 40" turned it up again.
Known issue is under investigation (Score:1)