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Bug Cellphones Iphone Apple

The iPhone X Becomes Unresponsive When It Gets Cold (zdnet.com) 196

sqorbit writes: Apple is working on a fix for the newly release iPhone X. It appears that the touch screen can become unresponsive when the iPhone is subjected to cold weather. Users are reporting that locking and unlocking the phone resolves the issue. Apple stated that it is aware of the issue and it will be addressed in a future update.
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The iPhone X Becomes Unresponsive When It Gets Cold

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  • by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Sunday November 12, 2017 @04:16PM (#55536603)

    Let the war of words begin. I guess those in the Great White North (Canada) are out of luck!

    And BTW, is this the same company so many praise for its unparalleled attention to detail?

    • Let the war of words begin. I guess those in the Great White North (Canada) are out of luck!

      And BTW, is this the same company so many praise for its unparalleled attention to detail?

      Yes indeed, how does this fit into Apple's evil plan achieve world domination and enslave humanity?

      • by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 ) on Sunday November 12, 2017 @05:56PM (#55537071) Journal
        It is quite simple. First, make a phone that does not work below a certain temperature. Thus you force everyone into a smaller geographic region, say +/- 35 degrees off the equator. Next, make the display take on green lines, and you force people to avoid wilderness areas (since they may lose their now-green phone, because it is effectively camouflaged) so they all end up in urban areas. Once Apple has you constrained to those areas - control is greatly simplified!
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        Yes indeed, how does this fit into Apple's evil plan achieve world domination and enslave humanity?

        You're kidding, right? They can't even do a full environmental evaluation on a major product launch. Take over the world? That's preposterous.

        Environmental chambers are not a big expense, it's established testing protocol to do that sort of evaluation. What else have they skipped testing?

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Q-Hack! ( 37846 )

          Expectations a bit high maybe? Most rugged laptops fail to boot at about that same temp.

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Monday November 13, 2017 @04:39AM (#55538947) Homepage Journal

            What kind of craptacular "rugged" laptops are you using? I've been using Thinkpads and Toughbooks in -18C conditions without issue. Well, my fingers not being able to type my password was an issue, but the keyboard was fine.

            • by afidel ( 530433 )

              Um, I've only had one but my Toughbook refused to boot below about 36F. It came up and told you that it was too cold and to try again in a few minutes. If I had left it out in the car in single digit temps it would take 20-30 minutes in a 70 degree room before it was warm enough to boot. Apparently the fully ruggadized ones come with a HDD heater but the semi-rugged ones just have the sensor and won't allow it to boot until the drive comes up to operating temp (newer ones I'm sure just use an SSD to avoid t

    • by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Sunday November 12, 2017 @04:33PM (#55536703)

      The guy who had unparalleled attention to detail quit the company a few years ago, because he died. The new guy in charge seems afraid to tell people that their ideas suck.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        To be fair, someone with unparalleled attention to detail would be able to spot the difference between effective cancer treatment and widely acknkowledged woo.

        Jobs paid unparalleled attention to hipster marketing.

      • by Luthair ( 847766 )
        Nah, he's too busy micromanaging moving parts between warehouses.
      • by antdude ( 79039 )

        Yeah, need to resurrect that guy. :P Too bad Steve Woz won't do it.

    • by TWX ( 665546 )

      We're seeing yet another example of Apple post-Jobs.

      Jobs didn't bat a thousand, but he was very good at figuring out what people would want even if they themselves didn't know it, and under him the company generally did a decent job of quality assurance testing.

      Post-Jobs, they are messing up the designs and they're failing to do good quality control.

      Except this time they can't bring him back except via Ouija Board.

      • by dreamchaser ( 49529 ) on Sunday November 12, 2017 @04:55PM (#55536809) Homepage Journal

        You mean the iQuija Board, now with SpritSense(tm) technology to authenticate the souls of those who respond. Available in classic white and graveyard black!

        • Is that the one where you use your iPhone as the planchette? That never works for my friends and I, I guess we're holding it wrong.

          (WTF, Mozilla. Planchette ain't in the dictionary, but Fanchette (which is a name!) is? Pla-thetic.)

      • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Sunday November 12, 2017 @05:50PM (#55537061) Homepage Journal

        Well, a lot of what you're talking about is neither here nor there with respect to this situation. It's a truism by this point that customers don't really know what you want until you show it to them -- although this doesn't mean that you as a product developer know any better.

        But one of the things that people forget that Jobs did when he came back is that he drastically simplified Apple's product line. Since a single product can't satisfy everyone, companies tend toward having many products through a kind of incrementalism, trying to capture as much of the market as possible. But there are downsides to having too many products and versions of products. Selling is harder, because you have to walk prospective customers through all the choices you offer, and they're often never quite satisfied that they made the right choice. Production, delivery and support become harder too; you can't hit one out of the park when you're trying to swing at as many balls as you physically can.

        Jobs also made a virtue of the drawbacks of a more limited product offering by turning the new product offerings into an event -- something much harder to do when sexy new features are spread across a large number of products. Putting all your eggs in fewer baskets turns a complicated basket selection decision into a simple go/no go for consumers.

        There are currently eight iPhone models in production, four introduced over an eighteen month period. I wonder whether this is a move back to the product-for-everyone incrementalism that Jobs product discipline replaced. Mobile phones are possibly the single most challenging consumer product to engineer and produce; it's quite possible we're looking at an Apple with too many balls in the air.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by MoaDweeb ( 858263 )
      You're holding it wrong?
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Possibly, they had issues with people living in cold places taking their phones in and out of buildings and finding that water had condensed inside the phone. Warranty repair refused because the moisture detection strips had been triggered.

        Eventually Apple relented and said they would give case-by-case consideration, but for a while there their solution was to live somewhere with less humidity.

        • they had issues with people living in cold places taking their phones in and out of buildings and finding that water had condensed inside the phone

          So - iPhones aren't remotely waterproof - or for that matter dust proof? Which has been a characteristic of my last 3 or 4 phones.

          A fuck does not need to be given about water condensing on the outside of a waterproof phone. If the phone is waterproof then the moisture-laden air doesn't get inside it to do any damage if it condenses.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It's obvious that some people are colding it wrong.

      • by cstacy ( 534252 )

        It's obvious that some people are colding it wrong.

        I should not have spent all my mod points

    • As long as Apple is profitable, no one from the board of directors is gonna say a word.
    • by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

      Apple has a lot of attention to detail but they also have the most users of a single model, and most of them pay a lot of attention to detail.
      It means that small issues get a lot more publicity.
      Also posting a story about Apple sells much more than something about LG, HTC or Motorola and their issues rarely make headlines.

      Samsung is also victim of its popularity, though not as much as Apple. There was the Note7 fiasco obviously but I remember the Note5 making the news because some people had their styluses s

  • So (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    At this point, I really have no sympathy for those who rushed out and paid $1000 to be a glorified beta tester.

    • There seems to be no evidence that Tim Cook [wikipedia.org] is able to lead Apple.
      • Anyone with an informed opinion on whether or not Tim Cook can lead Apple does not need a link to his Wikipedia page. Just sayin'...
      • by TimHunter ( 174406 ) on Sunday November 12, 2017 @08:21PM (#55537685)

        AAPL closed at $54.04 on Oct 5, 2011, the day Steve Jobs died. On June 9, 2014 it closed at $645.57, up 1095%. That day it split 7 for 1. This past Friday AAPL closed at $174.67. If the stock had not split the share price today would be $1222.69. So, if you had bought a share of stock in Apple on 10/5/2011 then you would've made 2162% on your investment.

        Apple sold 78.29 million iPhones in 1Q17.

        It seems to me that this is evidence that Tim Cook is able to lead Apple.

        • by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Monday November 13, 2017 @05:37AM (#55539079) Homepage
          Good point. This is an example of a common problem of understanding management. Who is responsible for Apple's success? What part of Apple's success is due to Tim Cook being CEO?

          An extremely important contribution of Steve Jobs was making sure nothing flawed was released. The iPhone 4 was released with antenna problems [lifewire.com] on June 24, 2010. It was a mistake someone with experience with radio frequency transmission would easily have understood. Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011, and was not managing long before that. Tim Cook officially became CEO of Apple on August 24, 2011.

          Since then, management of Apple has apparently become far more sloppy, For example: iPhone X Is Everything Wrong With Tim Cook's Apple [forbes.com]

          Here are problems mentioned in that article:

          1) Announced before being ready.

          2) "Stop and ask what real world problems the iPhone X answers. There are a lot of cute answers but on a practical sense the iPhone X offers very little on top of the iPhone 8 or iPhone 8 Plus, which in turn are only incremental bumps over last year's models."

          3) Product confusion: "Now it takes a ridiculous amount of research and comparison to find the iPhone that may suit your needs, and there is not a single device that offers all of features in a single package - every iPhone has some form of limitation and restriction designed into it."

          To me, that looks like poor overall management. There is sloppiness that didn't exist when Steve Jobs was in control. Steve Jobs was far from perfect; he had wacky ideas about health care, for example: Steve Jobs 'regretted trying to beat cancer with alternative medicine for so long' [telegraph.co.uk].

          Jobs was known for delivering an excellent customer experience. That's what made Apple different from competitors.
        • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Monday November 13, 2017 @05:44AM (#55539093)

          Your argument includes no null hypothesis. What would the stock price have been of Jobs was still around?

          While we're at it a CEO change takes real time to materialise. A good portion of that meteoric rise in stocks between 2011 and 2014 were due to both market forces and the recent legacy and momentum of what Jobs had built.

          It's quite telling that pussy Jobs the stock price seems to either say "meh" or spike down every time Tim Cook gets on a stage. The only time that happened to Jobs in modern Apple was when he got on stage looking thin and frail.

          Driving a great company into the ground take time. Let's see how Apple is doing in another 10 years.

          By the way other stocks at record highs include MS and also Yahoo. Remember them?

          • Driving a great company into the ground take time. Let's see how Apple is doing in another 10 years.

            So Apple will fail in 10 years therefore Cook is a bad CEO today? That dog won't hunt.

            By the way other stocks at record highs include MS and also Yahoo. Remember them?

            So because MS and Yahoo failed, therefore Apple will fail? Another non-hunting dog. Apple will almost certainly decline over time. It's the nature of the tech business. You could point to IBM, Honeywell, Dell, Digital Equipment, DEC, etc., as we

            • So Apple will fail in 10 years therefore Cook is a bad CEO today? That dog won't hunt. ..snip...
              So because MS and Yahoo failed, therefore Apple will fail? Another non-hunting dog.

              No. Not at all. I made no hypothesis or prediction what so ever. I said that based on what you wrote you can't prove he's a good CEO. Now you've gone right into the next logical fallacy and not only put words in my mouth but in doing so yet again attempted to prove a negative.

              Right now Apple is making money for its investors and suppliers and employing a lot of people.

              Yep just like Yahoo did right until it ceased existing. A company making money for its investors is dependent on a wide array of variables, none of which directly point to how "good" a CEO is. The job of a CEO is to drive long term fut

              • Let's recap. OP said

                There seems to be no evidence that Tim Cook is able to lead Apple.

                You said

                based on what you wrote you can't prove he's a good CEO.

                I offer two objective measurements, stock price and number of iPhones sold, that demonstrate that Tim Cook is an good CEO. I could've added other ways to evaluate him, such as the increase in the number of employees, Cook's support for privacy rights, LGBT rights, and renewable energy.

                Your response is that

                Driving a great company into the ground take time.

        • You don't seem to realize that those stick tickers already back factor in stock splits.
          https://www.cbsnews.com/news/a... [cbsnews.com]
          Apple's stock remained resilient as traders came to terms with the death of Steve Jobs, the company's iconic co-founder and chairman. After see-sawing through much of Thursday's session, shares in Apple (AAPL) slipped 0.2 percent, or 88 cents, to close at $377.37.
          Your calculation is WAY off. Apple's stock has done good but it hasn't done THAT good.
          • Urp. You're right. Thanks for the lesson.

            Let's do the numbers again. On the day Jobs died AAPL closed at the adjusted-for-split price of $54.04. Today it closed at $173.80. That's a 221% increase. By comparison, on 10/5/2011 the Dow-Jones index closed at 10939.95. Today it closed at 23439.70, for an increase of 114%. Clearly AAPL has outperformed the market.

            My point still stands. Stock price is a valid measurement of CEO effectiveness, and by that measure Tim Cook is very effective.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Everybody who matters lives there.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 12, 2017 @04:23PM (#55536637)

    Apple users kept their phones up their ass

  • Isn't this (/.) supposed to be a nerd site where nerd news is up to the minute? This came out a few days ago already. I shouldn't be reading old nerd news on this site. I think Apple has already released a patch and 83% of iPhone users have installed it already.
    • This is on apple.slashdot.org, not the main site. Anything on the Apple subdomain has to go through focus groups in Cupertino first. They're pretty busy there at the moment.

  • by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Sunday November 12, 2017 @04:35PM (#55536707)

    George Costanza would have had one.

  • This so SO not news, my current and previous two iPhones couldn't stand temps in the 40s for more than a few minute, before they started complaining it was "Too Cold" and stopped working. Took at least 10 minutes at 60-70 degrees to get it back to a working warm temp.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    These articles are a good test of how many juvenile assholes are on here.

  • Apparently Steve's last words were 'I'll give you my phone when you pry it from my cold, dead hands" also you are holding it wrong!

  • Early adopters (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zifn4b ( 1040588 ) on Sunday November 12, 2017 @05:00PM (#55536839)

    Apple is working on a fix for the newly release iPhone X. It appears that the touch screen can become unresponsive when the iPhone is subjected to cold weather.

    Thank you to everyone who paid $1,000 to get the new iPhone X. What you don't know is you joined an exclusive club. You joined Apple's Early Adopter Quality Assurance Team. Thank you for helping discover all the problems their QA couldn't so that if the rest of us ever decide to upgrade we will get a better product.

    • Re:Early adopters (Score:5, Interesting)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday November 12, 2017 @05:24PM (#55536941)

      Yeah, it especially sucks given this product that’s just getting into people’s hands in late autumn. And of course their in-house early adopters won’t catch this because they live in Cupertino and think 55F is “chilly”.

      I learned the downside of being an early adopter of Apple kit back in 2003, when I bought the brand new FW 800 Aluminum G4 PowerBook. I loved that computer... but didn’t love the fact that Apple had to replace the display three different times due to the “white spot” issue. Apple has always been great for me with regards to service... but I don’t personally want a great warranty that I have to use repeatedly.

      So thank you, beta testers for giving Apple your $1200 so the rest of us can have a better product in 2020!

      • by Megane ( 129182 )

        The worst part about those Aluminum PowerBooks (both G4 and Intel) was the completely crappy case. The optical drive would inevitably get out of alignment with the slot in the case and the disk would jam when it tried to eject. I had three Aluminum models over the years. The Unibody were a lot better, but the keyboards do go bad after a while, and the trackpad stops clicking properly when enough gunk slips under the edge. Oh yeah, and that little situation with Nvidia making fucked-up chips.

        One of my Intel

    • I thought that was obvious.

      That's why I chose the iPhone 8. TouchID is fantastically responsive now. Hope they keep the button in future spins.

  • by Coisiche ( 2000870 ) on Sunday November 12, 2017 @05:12PM (#55536893)

    Much like some were apparently wrongly holding an earlier version of the iPhone, clearly some customers of the latest version are living in the wrong climate and they should relocate in order to get a better Apple experience.

  • That's what you get for not living in San Francisco.
    • That's what you get for not living in San Francisco.

      Clearly you do not. If you did (like I do), you would know that one typically has to go out wearing a jacket and hat -- in July.

      BTW: Apple is in Cupertino, about 40 miles south of San Francisco, where it is about 10 degrees (F) warmer.

  • So does my.... (Insert

    girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband/japanese sex doll,
    depending on your proclivities. )

    • by dissy ( 172727 )

      You should of opted for the industrial japanese sex robot. Those things are rated to remain functional down to -30C

  • by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Sunday November 12, 2017 @05:56PM (#55537073) Homepage Journal

    No "your mom" jokes? This place isn't what it used to be.

    • I swear to you I was thinking along those lines, but none of the comments really deserved it.

      Something like, "If your iToy gets too cold, just tell your Mom you need it smuggled into prison and give her five minutes alone with it.

  • The fix (Score:4, Funny)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Sunday November 12, 2017 @06:18PM (#55537175) Homepage

    if(temperature 10)
          run_background_task(bitcoin_miner);

    • by ledow ( 319597 )

      Fucking Slashdot, nearly 2018 and it still can't do characters properly, when even several-year-old-already competitors using the same codebase can.

      There was a < "less than" in there somewhere.

  • That's my guess.... Apple testers didn't take cold weather into account since they don't really have it there.

    • I think they don't even know there's such things as "cold weather", "no ocean view" or "too expensive". They're all rich assholes full of themselves.

  • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Sunday November 12, 2017 @06:49PM (#55537323) Journal
    Apple just announced, it has fixed the problem. It is a sleek white heater case, iMitten sold separately for 79$. It will keep the phone at the recommended operating temperature. After market replacement heater jackets are not recommended, it would void the warranty.
  • by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Sunday November 12, 2017 @07:00PM (#55537379)
    Right up there with an antenna that short-circuited when held wrong (remember that?).

    I remember when the extra 50% plus you paid for an Apple device over anyone else bought you quality of construction and good design. That was over a decade ago. These days? Keyboards on laptops with missing keys, phone screens that break or just plain don't work. But the fanboys will keep on fanboying, that I'm sure of.
  • by creschke ( 4921663 ) on Sunday November 12, 2017 @07:29PM (#55537495)
    I used to ski with an iPhone 6s in my the breast pocket of a synthetic puffy jacket worn under a GoreTex shell and over at least two other layers. When temps dropped below -30F, I regularly experienced problems with the phone claiming to me overheating before shutting itself down when I pulled it out for a photo. No good idea of the temp inside that pocket, but it seems likely it was well above -30F. Expose to the ambient air was 1 minute before the "overheating" message appeared. Take home? Don't rely on an iPhone for back country navigation in the winter!
    • by Megane ( 129182 )
      Numeric underflow on a temperature sensor? It never goes below 0F in Cupertino, so that can't possibly happen.
    • by cyn1c77 ( 928549 )

      I have also had this problem. It was completely useless in any cold outdoor environment.

  • The headline on Slashdot is misleading - as the snippet says, locking and unlocking the device will restore the touchscreen. My guess (having worked on capacitive touch systems) is that the touchscreen doesn't properly recalibrate on a sudden temperature change, resulting in loss of touch detection until the touchscreen recalibrates (which happens every time you unlock the phone). This is easily fixed by a software or firmware change, and has a fairly simple workaround in the meantime.

    Unlike what most comme

  • I've had two separate iPhone 6 plus phones where the screen just goes unresponsive to touch, and the fix is just to lock and unlock it again.

    This is at room temperature, no need for cold weather.

  • by sad_ ( 7868 ) on Monday November 13, 2017 @08:03AM (#55539455) Homepage

    none of the 24 hour reviewers noticed this problem? how is this possible?! They had their hands on the phone for a full 24 hours!

  • Good thing global warming will fix this issue eventually. Maybe that is the "future update" they are referring to.

    Apple stated that it is aware of the issue and it will be addressed in a future update.

  • Apparently it doesn't get cold either LOL.

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