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Bug Iphone Apple Hardware

New iOS Update Fixes Unexpected Shutdown Issue On iPhone 6, iPhone 6s (techcrunch.com) 49

Matthew Panzarino, writing for TechCrunch: Over the past couple of iPhone versions users have complained of "unexpected" shutdowns of their devices. Some iPhone 6, 6S, 6 Plus and 6S Plus devices could basically go dark unexpectedly, forcing a user to have to plug them into an outlet to get them to power back on. Apple has been working on this very annoying bug and it says it has come up with a fix of sorts that should mitigate the problem on a majority of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s devices. The fix is actually already on your iPhone if you have installed iOS 10.2.1 -- something that around 50 percent of iOS users have already done. After letting the fix simmer on customer devices, Apple now has statistics to share on how it has improved the issue, citing 80 percent reduction on iPhone 6s and 70 percent reduction on iPhone 6 devices.
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New iOS Update Fixes Unexpected Shutdown Issue On iPhone 6, iPhone 6s

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  • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Friday February 24, 2017 @10:08AM (#53923475) Journal

    As far as I’m able to understand what happened here, Apple found that sudden spikes of activity to the maximum power draw could cause older batteries, which had some mileage on them, to deliver power in an uneven manner, which would cause an emergency shutdown of the devices

    So some older batteries are not able to support higher draw. They might have tweaked the scheduler not to launch too many jobs at the same time or throttle some jobs or even slow down the clock at high loads.

    • Thinking about it, it is a very good way to nudge the user to stay on the upgrade treadmill!

      Create a special circuit to detect the battery's surge current delivery capacity. This is a good indicator of how old the battery is, and good indicator of how old the phone is. Internally throttle the clock based on the current delivery capacity. Thus as the battery ages, the phone slows down. Slowly, over time, imperceptably to the user. Then two years later, when they see a new phone, it is zippy by comparison.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Battery voltage falls as current draw goes up. It's worse on older batteries. Chances are they just made the code that checks for low battery voltage wait for it to fall consistently for say 30 seconds rather than momentarily, or maybe account for the current load on it.

      Actually there might be other factors at work, like failing capacitors due to them being flexed or badly made.

  • by luvirini ( 753157 ) on Friday February 24, 2017 @10:11AM (#53923485)

    For something that still happens 20% to 30% of the time it did before.

    Mitigation is more appropriate until they can do much better,

  • "fixes" :Apple now has statistics to share on how it has improved the issue, citing 80 percent reduction on iPhone 6s and 70 percent reduction on iPhone 6 devices.

    Well, that's not a "fix".

    That's a quick patch to reduce the instances.

    And suggestive that they have no idea what the issue really is.

    • "fixes" :Apple now has statistics to share on how it has improved the issue, citing 80 percent reduction on iPhone 6s and 70 percent reduction on iPhone 6 devices.

      Well, that's not a "fix".

      That's a quick patch to reduce the instances.

      And suggestive that they have no idea what the issue really is.

      Or that there is something out of their control that is causing some batteries to have more problems than others.

  • My iPhone 6 Plus came with iOS 8.0 factory installed. I kept up with the updates until 10 came out, at which point I've refused every update. So my phone sits at 9.35, likely forever.

    Reason (aside from avoiding bugs like in this thread topic) is to avoid a bloated OS that eats your battery life and overtaxes the processor/gpu. On a previous Apple device, I noticed that as soon as you got to two OS revisions above what it came with originally, it gets painfully slow. On that particular device it was origina

  • I have this problem on my 6s (1 year old phone). We went to the "Genius Bar" at the Apple store and were told "Sorry, bud." [Can't help you] That's an exact quote. It was then I realized that Apple products aren't for me. With an Apple product, if something is wrong, they will tell you what they're going to do about it, and that's the end of it. No consumer repairable or upgradable anything on them. As a long-time tinkerer and nerd, this sort of arrangement is not for me. Even to replace the battery

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