Apple's iPhone Throttling Will Reinvigorate the Push for Right To Repair Laws (vice.com) 158
Jason Koebler, writing for Motherboard: The news that Apple throttles iPhones that have old batteries will reinvigorate the right to repair debate as the movement enters a crucial year. Third party repair shops say they've already seen an uptick in customers asking for battery replacements to speed up their slow phones, and right to repair activists who are pushing for state legislation that will make third party and self repair more accessible say Apple's secrecy about this behavior will give them a powerful rallying message. "If Apple were serious about battery life, they'd market battery replacements," Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of Repair.org, told me in an email. "Apple clearly has a big financial benefit when people decide their phones are too slow and head to the Apple Store for a new phone." Repair.org is a right to repair advocacy group that is made up largely of small, third party repair shops, which is spearheading the effort to get states to consider legislation that will make it easier to repair electronic devices.
Plugged in (Score:1, Insightful)
I noticed they still throttle old iphones even when plugged in and 100% battery. There goes that excuse.
Re:Plugged in (Score:5, Informative)
Do a little reading. They are doing it for three year old phones because even though it may be charged to 100% the old battery can't deliver enough current and has been observed causing the phone to glitch.
This all seems to be a bit of a made up issue to me. All of the high-end, WATER RESISTANT smartphones have internal batteries. Apple offers free battery replacement to those under warranty or having AppleCare+. They offer battery replacement to everyone for $79 otherwise. No is being forced to buy a new phone because of the battery. If you can afford a $700 phone you probably won't blink at $80 for a battery replacement.
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And what if you can't afford a $700 iPhone? Why, you buy a USED one at a significant savings. AppleCare won't cover a used phone that you bought from anyone other than Apple. A new battery in a used phone will give it so much life, it will feel like new. If apple doesn't like that, then there are plenty of Android phones for which we would be happy to replace the batteries...
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You can get the battery replaced for $80 from Apple, which is not a serious expense every three or four years. You can find third parties who will do it for significantly less money.
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My original iPhone (no suffix) pooped out with a screen problem after two years, so I bought an iPhone 4. I retired mine after two years, but my wife gave hers to her sister, who kept it for another three years, no replacement battery, no problems. My wife and I got 5Ss when they came out, so they're a little over four years old. No replacement batteries, no problems. My anecdotal evidence is more impressive than yours.
What Apple Won't Tell You (Score:2)
What Apple won't tell you is that they now have plans to make all of their new products become obsolete for work poorly unless you buy their latest and most expensive upgrade. Take that consumers. Under Trump, you have no right to fight back.
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Why won't Apple tell you that? My guess is that it isn't true, and you're pulling the story out of your ass. Got a better source?
Re: Plugged in (Score:2)
Re: Plugged in (Score:1)
Tim, is that you?
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You mean if the CPU needs more than the combined power provided by its old battery and the 10 watts provided by the charger.
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A battery that can deliver 1W for 2.28hr would, as you correctly stated, lat 137 minutes (136.8, but I digress). At 10x the power draw, the battery life would actually be 1/10th as long, or 13.7 minutes.
I shouldn't do math with a head cold... and I dare say you were closer to right the first time (3.7min under) than I was (9.1min over). In actual
Remember who we're talking about here (Score:1, Insightful)
The company that professes sustainable living, equality, environmentalism and then...
Gave birth to the touchbar MBP.
QED.
The devil himself probably golf-clapped and wiped a tear away when witnessing the birth of this product for how it almost exists as a Manichean opposite of Apple's professed values.
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Or it was just a design mistake that will be short-lived, like many other mistakes Apple made along the way. But your obnoxious post will surely be the one that fits most people's confirmation bias around here.
Haha "short lived" (Score:2)
That must be why Apple is soooo butthurt about right to repair legislation.
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We're glued and screwed - we can no longer unscrew (Score:4, Insightful)
Most modern super-thin phones and other devices are glued together in such a way that it's difficult or impossible for even a fairly careful, experienced person with small nimble fingers to get them apart without destroying some expensive component, usually, the screen/digitizer/glass assembly.
This isn't just a problem for phones, but tablets and many modern computers (Surface, cough, cough), too.
Checkout the reviews on sites like teardown.com, and you can see that most (thin) modern electronic devices are held together with glues that are clearly selected with no concern for the device ever coming apart again.
There is no punishment too severe for Apple for deliberately degrading the performance of devices after they have been sold. (This is argualbly far worse than the hardware/software tying & lying that got IBM put under antitrust consent decree back in the 1960's!)
I've uncomfortably used Apple phones for the last several years, but I'm done with that - replaceable batteries and expandable storage are on the required list for my next phone!
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Not a problem. Simply legislate that any device over say $250 be designed, actively designed to be repairable ie easy example, user replaceable batteries, no ifs not buts, don't give a crap, user replaceable batteries and screens at minimum. This asking and begging for stuff from greedy corporations are you nucking futs, no asking, no begging, grind on politicians until they legislate and fines, a fine per device that is not essentially consumer repairable. Want super thin (bullshit I know) glued together p
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Except all the non-portable devices you've named are generally all repairable.
TVs and monitors are not economical to repair if you break the screen though, since all they are is a power supply, control board and case for the panel. Replacing power supplies in them is pretty straight forward though
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So you're saying the washing machine I got rapaired under warrenty simply doesn't exist? I've been piling my clothes on the utility room floor for 2 hours and then throwing them in the dryer all these years?
It shouldn't have taken as much effort as it did to find the repair manual for future reference, and the spare parts should be a lot easier for end users to order.
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You're adding 100s of dollars in overall cost to manufacture a "repairable" machine while 99% of us don't really care. You're talking access hatches, extra electronics and larger/heavier plastic stuff, more screws just so 1 in 100 people can tinker with it, and half of those actually screw it up during "repairs" making the repair irrelevant or more expensive.
When I was young, I loved to repair stuff, nowadays, I just want it to work, I actually pay extra for on-site replacement on the server hardware. Sure,
Re:We're glued and screwed - we can no longer unsc (Score:4, Insightful)
sounds like you own stock in LANDFILLS.
why do you hate the earth so much?
(repairing is GOOD FOR EVERYONE. its fucking evil that companies have convinced idiots like yourself that we should live in a throw-away world.)
designing things to be repairable is NOT hard. NOT HARD. but the reason they don't do is is JUST for the cash gab.
sorry, but that's just too selfish a reason; and it hurts everyone but the company. really sucky attitude and I find it very common with younger people. sucks!
Re: We're glued and screwed - we can no longer uns (Score:2)
100s of dollars? By that light then phones should be way cheaper now that they don't have those hugely expensive small screws. Except they're actually more expensive.
I don't see it as unreasonable to allow the user of a phone to change their own battery rather than having to pay someone else to do it. It wasn't that long ago that we could, this glued together bullshit is about ripping consumers off pure and simple.
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Looks like I can spend $20-$25 to replace my iPhone 5S battery at iFixit [ifixit.com]. The extra $5 is if I want a complete replacement kit as opposed to just the battery. I don't know why you're complaining about not being able to change your own battery when it's fairly inexpensive to do so.
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I have a thin, modern phone which, coincidentally I just ordered a replacement battery for from ebay for eleven Washingtons. The back comes off easily and I can swap out the battery in about 30 seconds.
The push towards non-replaceable batteries has excuses given by the companies, but it's really designed to extract more $ from your pocketbook. And since most shee^h^h^h^hpeople will put up with it, there's no reason not to.
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Good luck finding your next phone. LG G5 user here, but my next phone?
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I've uncomfortably used Apple phones for the last several years, but I'm done with that - replaceable batteries and expandable storage are on the required list for my next phone!
This is what you want [fairphone.com] because you won't get it from the big corps.
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You can't buy one.
They don't sell the old one anymore and they haven't released the new one.
Yet to be seen if they still sell the spare parts for the old one once the new one is available.
The Fairphone 2 is going to come with Android 6... that's a bit shit for something not yet available.
Powered by a SoC from 2014, one that Qualcomm doesn't provide support for Android 7, so good luck with any updates. It's the same one used in my Moto X 2014, which is why that's also stuck on Android 6.
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and to top it all off, at 529 euros it's going to cost more than my Moto X did 3 years ago.
The only real differences are it has a crappier screen, FM radio, dual sim, an SD slot and no NFC so it won't even work with Android Pay.
And they don't sell the Fairphone 1 battery in their online shop anymore, only the Fairphone 2 one.
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(Note: I have no love for Apple.) The performance degradation is actually a service to the customers. Lithium-ion batteries can't deliver as many amps as they get older. Not only does their capacity drop, but their voltage under load drops a
Re: We're glued and screwed - we can no longer uns (Score:2)
Degrading the handset performance in an attempt to promote a sale - I.e. failing to detect a new battery and instead keeping performance degrad
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Have you any evidence that it would fail to detect a new battery and go back to top performance?
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replaceable batteries and expandable storage are on the required list for my next phone!
You'll be pretty lucky to find one - especially one that actually integrates the expandable storage with the phone's storage, so that you just magically have more space for everything. I'm not sure these even exist.
If you wanted to make a law around device performance, which I think might be a fairly sensible idea, then it should be that OS upgrades do not degrade performance of your device, and the OS upgrades must be available for some period of time after purchase (say, I don't know, five years - looking
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How do you measure performance degradation? Is this going to evolve into accusations and selected benchmarks? What if a function becomes slightly slower because it does more?
If you legislate
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Agreed. You certainly can't come up with technical mandates in law that will make any sense. (And we should all be opposed to further government intrusion into our lives anyway - we've gone far too far down that road already...)
That said, it does seem to me that what Apple has done here clearly and flagrantly violates several significant Federal laws around antitrust and warranty issues. The sad thing is that, like Hillary, they will almost certainly get away with it because they are the darlings of the
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Would you like to tell me what these laws are? What should Apple have done to stay legal? Allowed phones to crash? Shipped unicorn-ion batteries that don't degrade? Put a "crash your phone when it's busy" option in the Settings?
I haven't heard of Apple doing anything to stop iFixit from selling battery replacement kits, so I have no idea why
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Most modern super-thin phones and other devices are glued together in such a way that it's difficult or impossible for even a fairly careful, experienced person with small nimble fingers to get them apart without destroying some expensive component, usually, the screen/digitizer/glass assembly.
Sorry but that's just flat out wrong. The vast majority of modern phones are easy enough to disassemble for even a first timer with the right tools (which are often delivered in a kit with replacement batteries).
IFixIt has a good rundown on repairability: https://www.ifixit.com/smartph... [ifixit.com]
Of note is that the only popular high-end smartphones that are an issue are those with fancy curved edges on the display or glass all over front and back. iPhone generally rank quite well, and even many of the devices that
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I stand by my comment. While the glue problem isn't as bad with the phones, it's bad enough to cause a great many screens to break in the process of trying to open the phones. (The only reason this isn't seen as a bigger problem is that screen replacement is a more common reason than battery replacement for taking the phone apart in the first place.)
I'm well familiar with iFixit, and have used their guides. And yes, tablets and 2-in-1s are a true nightmare.
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Good thing they aren't doing that, then. What they are doing is making the device run more smoothly with a degrading battery, avoiding possibly worse glitches. If you get the battery replaced, you'll get that performance back.
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No, as someone who's designed battery charging systems for mobile devices, I can tell you that there are FAR better ways of dealing with this problem than what Apple did. Don't let any tech handwaving fool you - the PRIMARY purpose of this code in iOS is to make old phones so annoyingly slow that users are more or less forced into buying a new one. This only confirms what's been widely suspected for years - that Apple's updates continually slow down their phones and iPads, and the only way to avoid that i
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Ah, you have some real knowledge about this? Great! What would be a better technological way for Apple to handle battery degradation? You appear to have left that out of your posting, in favor of speculation about Apple's motives.
They do market battery replacement... (Score:5, Informative)
Apple offers battery replacement as part of their services. Cost is $79 which is not cheap but certainly much cheaper than a new phone.
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or 25 bucks if you want to do it yourself...
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Re: They do market battery replacement... (Score:2)
Your definition of super easy must be different to mine. My old Note 2 was super easy. Unclip the back, replace the battery and reattach the back. No special tools, heat guns or gaskets involved. I don't see having to pay £79 to do the same 5 years on as a good thing. What's wrong with having a screw at each corner you can undo to remove the back?
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The iFixit kit is $25 including tools (at least for my phone), although I don't know that it's available in Australia. If you want an easily openable phone, buy one. Don't complain that another manufacturer's phone is a little more difficult.
Re: They do market battery replacement... (Score:2)
Why should anyone have to pay any money and risk damaging their phone to replace the battery. You fanbois are pathetic.
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Because batteries grow on trees, and the tree for your particular phone grows near your house? Because it's all done by little battery fairies who live on sunshine and rainbows? No, I don't know why you'd have to pay anything.
Re: They do market battery replacement... (Score:2)
Let me spell this out for you because appear to be a little simple. The battery is a separate component to the rest of the device. It should not require spending any money on special tools and risking damage to the device to replace. This applies to devices by any manufacturer where battery replacement has been made unnecessarily difficult for purely commercial reasons, not just the one you so pathetically worship and defend.
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I think the point is that they were hiding the fact that slowness could be cured with a battery replacement. I would guess they hoped users would buy a new model phone after seeing how much faster it was compared to their purposely impaired old one, which is a lot more profitable than a battery replacement.
Anyway, soon Apple will probably tell us that their battery-impaired phones aren't slow, they are just differently throttled.
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Note a couple of substantial caveats: 1) Like everything else, Apple charges super-premium prices for their replacement batteries, and 2) I happen to live 10 minutes away from an Apple store here in Austin, but there are lots of folks just in other parts of the state, who are *several hours* away from one. Lubbock or Midland/Odessa, for instance, get to choose between Fort Worth or El Paso: about 4-1/2 to 5-1/2 hours!
And most of the time you can't just walk in - you have to have an appointment, which no
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Replacing the battery is not something that will be necessary every year. Convenience isn't really necessary. If you don't like the Apple facilities, get your own battery replacement kit and do it yourself.
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So tired of fanbois...
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Yeah, the anti-Apple fanbois are some of the worst.
Law suit?? (Score:5, Interesting)
The only reason I upgraded to iPhone 8 from 6s was the slowness. The 6s more than met my needs with both iOS 10 and 9. 11 killed it. Can I sue?
Re: Law suit?? (Score:1)
Sure, you can sue. Just hire a lawyer. Winning is a different question.
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Sounds like you have a case, since had you known about this flaw you would have spent 1/10th as much on a new battery.
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So, instead, you can spend thousands of dollars on a lawsuit that might get you several hundred dollars back.
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You should have learned the lesson with iPhone 4s and last-gen iPads; the fuckers did exactly the same thing then...NEVER take the "last" upgrade for your device from Apple - it is ALWAYS designed to nerf the device.
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It isn't always going to nerf the device. Wait a bit after the OS version is released, and you can easily find reviews on what the upgrade does for your device. Then, make up your own mind.
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Given that iOS 10 (specifically 10.2.1) introduced this feature to your phone and you admit it ran fine under iOS 10, you'd have a tough time making a case against Apple (iOS 11 only added the feature for models after yours). Moreover, you'd have a tough time arguing that you suffered any sort of wrong, given that the alternative behavior (which you ostensibly would have to claim was preferable) was that your phone would randomly shut off when the battery was incapable of supplying the necessary current.
But
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Last I checked you can't revert iOS updates on the iPhones anymore.
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No, but you can jailbreak them, then do what you like...
http://iphonejailbreakguide.co... [iphonejailbreakguide.com]
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Revert back to the older iOS version, and it'll perform just like it did when it was new.
Absent the battery-age-based throttling being discussed here, perhaps...
Apple offers battery replacement (Score:2)
If the phone is under warranty Apple will replace the battery for free.
If it's out of warranty, Apple charges $79 to replace it. Granted, it should be $39 or $49, but it's not like people have no choice but to buy a new phone.
There are also plenty of third party batteries and iPhone repair kits so you replace your own, or offer the service at your shop. Granted, this would void the warranty, but devices under warranty would get free replacements from Apple anyway.
I'm 100% in favor of the right-to-repair law
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Many hardware failures could be fixed with a $0.50 component and a soldering iron instead of a $800 replacement logic board. But iPhone batteries seem an odd rallying cry for the movement.
I call BS - there is virtually nothing that can be fixed with even nice home soldering equipment on a modern smartphone logic board - everything is super fine pitch SMA components, which have moved to mostly BGA-like packages and contacts over the past few years. I became an expert at super-fine high-temp soldering as a k
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Because Apple started this glued together difficult to replace battery crap, way back with the original iPod. In fact the "iPod's dirty little secret" site is still up, and you can hear the service rep telling the customer to just buy a new iPod because the repair is $250.
In other words Apple wouldn't even offer the overpriced replacement service if they hadn't been shamed into doing it.
Other companies do it too now, but Apple was the first and worst, so is the focus of criticism.
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You're not going to fix modern high density logic boards with a "home iron" or equipment, but if you pick up stuff like this...
$180~$300 Microscope ... then yes, they're fixable with a good dose of learning/experience/practice.
$200 Soldering station (Hakko FX951 and JS02 tip to start)
$250 Hotair station (Quick 951DW or even a $65 analogue)
$100 assorted hand tools
So sure, it's about a $1k investment in tools but it's still quite doable. Places like UnionRepair are making it cheaper every day, coupled with Y
Re: Apple offers battery replacement (Score:2)
The OS throttling follows the battery chip so replacing the battery correctly should reset that back. So if the chip says the battery is degraded, it slows down to keep the phone going longer.
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It's a portable device, using it while plugged in would be using it wrong.
I wouldn't be surprised if they also throttled while it was charging. Charging a battery heats it up. High CPU/GPU usage heats up things sitting right next to it too.
Hot batteries don't like being charged and will degrade much quicker if you do.
Corporate lobby group (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, a corporate lobby group.
Just remember that the next time you see a lobby group you disagree with that happens to be funded by other corporations. Who funds the lobby group does not inherently change the value of the lobbying. Debate the issue on its merits.
In this case, as a right-winger, I agree with this lobby group, at least on the issue presented here in the way that it is presented. The right to purchase a good, and thereby own it, is a fundamental aspect of a fair, open and free market. If I cannot repair that which I own, then I don't really own it. Now, granted, as we shrink our circuits to the point of ICs, we may not be able to replace individual resistors or diodes or anything, but there does need to be some level of repair available, especially for parts that can wear out. Batteries, even rechargeables, definitely fall under that category. Screen glass probably as well, based on the number of cracked phone screens I've seen over the years.
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Sooo... you as a consumer have the right to repair the things you buy.. gotcha, i'm with you on that. Encryption, or other means to explicitly defeat your repairing of the device seems like a really dick move -- but legislating that will absolutely lead to unforeseen consequences.
(as a right winger, you're okay with the government stepping in and telling businesses how to design their products? how do you reconcile that?)
The sane option here is don't support apple by continuing to buy their products. It su
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Probably with the It's Different For Me exception that right-wingers have always used.
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That's a given, unless it's regulation passed at the behest of crony capitalist campaign donors.
Except the liberals you speak of are just another variety of conservat
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There are a few government interventions I'm in favour of. But they are mostly to do with the purist view of minimal government.
I am in favour of government interventions that:
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I'm not an electronics engineer specializing in smartphones, so I wouldn't make that bet. In particular, starting from a state of ignorance, I wouldn't want the government enforcing a bet like that.
It's a free market with lots of competition. Buy what you want. I'm about as leftist as they come here, and even I know that much.
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he right to purchase a good, and thereby own it, is a fundamental aspect of a fair, open and free market.
It's too bad most right wingers are ignorant that the free market doesn't exist and is a myth preached to the stupid masses. The rich have never subscribed to the ideology they preach, your society has never worked how you believe it does.
Testing theories of representative government - shows the rich get whatever policies they want, the rest have no impact. AKA no rule of law for the average person.
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_am [princeton.edu]
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As a left-winger, I strongly disagree. It's not like there's no competition in the smartphone market, so, if a company produces something with a feature you don't like, you can buy something else. You nanny-state right-wingers can just go ahead and ask for government meddling where it doesn't belong, I guess.
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And if no one offers you what you want, you should embrace the free market to encourage someone to build that device.
Apple buys legislation to permit them to do what they do, which is predicated upon dodging taxes. There is no free market involved here.
We voted against such things (Score:2, Insightful)
We want to get rid of job killing regulations
We don't want a bunch of unelected Washington bureaucrats telling us what to do and what not to do
On second thoughts, it is a good idea to pass such laws. The right thing to do is to cut funding and cut the balls of the regulatory agencies. We get the credit for passing the laws and photo ops and all the great campaign sound bites. Then we get to blame the dysfunctional government
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Come on, we want the government to be small enough to be drowned in the bathtub.
Who's this "we"? I'm certainly not in that group, nor is at least half of the nation.
Re: We voted against such things (Score:2)
Who's this "we"?
That would be a small group of people who've studied history and actually understand some of it.
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As opposed to a larger group of people who've studied history and actually understand some of it, and disagree with you.
Not a repair (Score:5, Insightful)
Replacing the damned battery shouldn't be something considered a "repair". It's only the greed and asshole nature of phone manufacturers than make it that way.
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You mean more like a service [apple.com] than a repair?
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This is a good point - until relatively recently, replacing a battery (even in pre-iPhone smartphones like my old Treo) was easily accomplished with just fingers...
BTW, the Treo 755P is still better as a phone, contact manager, and calendar than ANY modern IOS or Android phone. It totally sucks as a browser, though...
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I don't need to figure it out. They already exist. They're just getting fewer over time. Manufacturers aren't omitting replaceable batteries because there's a technical need to do so, they're omitting them because it reduces manufacturing costs and encourages replacing perfectly good phones.
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The issue of replaceable batteries has nothing to do with manufacturing costs or wanting people to replace phones. Lithium polymer batteries are the only way to offer decent battery life in current phone designs.
All the things that make the last few iterations of smart phones worth owning all suck power. Bright high density displays? Lots of power. High bandwidth LTE? Lots of power. High density storage? Lots of power. For all the power saving tricks used on phones they are very power hungry yet.
Traditional
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The issue of replaceable batteries has nothing to do with manufacturing costs or wanting people to replace phones.
The technical argument makes no sense to me. It's all about cost and marketing. My current phone has a replaceable battery, has all the whiz-bang features, and is about a millimeter thicker than the thinnest phone on the market. If it were impossible to do, then my phone would not exist.
The only argument that seems to hold water is manufacturing costs and planned obsolescence.
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Then read AD's excellent comment again and again until it does make sense.
Believe it or not, that millimeter affects marketability. Besides, if it wasn't a replaceable battery, that millimeter could go towards more battery.
Apple offers rep
Well, actually ... (Score:5, Informative)
"If Apple were serious about battery life, they'd market battery replacements," Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of Repair.org, told me in an email.
They do. [apple.com]
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They do [market battery replacement].
Paying to replace a battery (aside from a reasonable price [emphasized because this is Apple] for the battery) is ridiculously stupid. The battery needs to be end-user serviceable: remove an easily removable cover, easily remove the battery, easily insert a new battery, easily replace the cover.
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The battery needs to be end-user serviceable: remove an easily removable cover, easily remove the battery, easily insert a new battery, easily replace the cover.
No, it doesn't, as literally every flagship phone has shown us. You replace a battery every year or two and it takes a few minutes. It's not the big deal people make it out to be and it's the reason all the major manufacturers have adopted Apples model. Having a very thin form factor was more important than the extremely irregular battery replacements.
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Why?
If you want to buy a phone with an easily replaceable battery, go ahead. I'm sure they're out there. You're saying that everyone should want what you want, and that manufacturers should only make and sell things you approve of.
Brick phones (Score:3)
Apple is also known for bricking phones with non-apple batteries. So right to repair should prohibit any means of restricting the right to do so.
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Really? Sure that, whenever that occurred, it wasn't because the battery was out of spec? Sure they were bricked, and not recoverable by putting a real battery in? If you've got examples of this, please share.
Or you could... (Score:2)
...just not buy proprietary garbage the manufacturer won't let you actually own, modify and/or repair. Geeze, not rocket science folks. And a pointless battle. You think after what, 30+ years of doing business in this fashioned, the manufacturers are gunna change? Vote with your wallet.
Feel free to replace 'The Manufacturer" with whatever you see fit.
Huh? (Score:2)
Slow Down Software Probably Buggy (Score:2)
Twice now since the upgrade, my iPhone6 has gone into a mode where it got warmer and chewed up the available battery in about an hour or two (when I wasn't doing anything with it, except and occasional e-mail check). Usually, I can go two or three days without recharging if I have to. After a recharge, it worked fine.
This makes me think that there is a bug in the slow down mechanism which causes it to occasionally eat power instead of saving it...