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Businesses Iphone Apple

Apple Replaced 11 Million iPhone Batteries in Its $29 Program (cnet.com) 130

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Apple's $29 battery replacement program may have seriously dinged sales of its 2018 iPhone models. From a report: The company replaced 11 million iPhone batteries under the program, John Gruber of tech-focused blog DaringFireball reported Monday, citing Apple CEO Tim Cook at an all-hands meeting. Typically, the company replaces 1 million to 2 million batteries each year, DaringFireball noted. Cook cited the program's negative impact on Apple's revenue in a Jan. 2 sales warning to investors but didn't offer specific numbers.
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Apple Replaced 11 Million iPhone Batteries in Its $29 Program More

Apple Replaced 11 Million iPhone Batteries in Its $29 Program

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  • Why not just chuck it in a landfill and get the next $1000+ model? The "green" tech companies would love you to do that.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      What this demonstrates is how much Apple's sales are propped up by the lack of removable batteries and presence of their battery-saving, performance-crippling software.

      To be fair the first few iterations of the iPhone were significant and worth the upgrade but really ever since the iPhone 6 there hasn't really been any reason to upgrade aside from the battery/performance issues, now that you can get a replacement battery and turn off the sneaky software "features" there's really no reason to spend money on

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by guruevi ( 827432 )

        I think it demonstrates more that $29 is a fair price for an OEM battery replacement. You can go to various outlets in local shopping malls to get your cell phone batteries replaced, they'll also end up costing close to $30-50 and people are happy to pay for it so people that really care about it, have it done.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Revek ( 133289 )

        Least we forget the extra complication caused by ditching the headphone jack and the shitty alternatives they offer. They won't learn from their mistakes they will just stop updating the older phones and try to force the issue with their customers.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sd4f ( 1891894 )
          They won't learn from their mistakes, because doing something like bringing back the headphone jack would mean admitting they were wrong. A prerequisite for an MBA is to never admit you are wrong. It's better to bankrupt a company than to make a reversal and in the process admit you are wrong. Reversing your position shows weak leadership, whilst bankrupting the company shows strong leadership.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by rtb61 ( 674572 )

            Lateral thinking says, do not bring back the headphone jack, instead add another firewire port to the top of the phone. Obviously now that pretty much everyone else has dropped the user replaceable battery and Apple makes little money on it now, bring back the user replaceable phone. They should have already brought out the Apple Big Screen all in one 65inches or even 85inches of thousands in profit, and of course branding identity. The web stack would also help, modem on the bottom, then stack on top with

          • Never admit you're wrong, even when your next decision is to reverse the previous one. Take away the headphone jack, bring in the audio port.

  • Good (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sexconker ( 1179573 ) on Tuesday January 15, 2019 @05:25PM (#57968426)

    Batteries should always be replaceable (ideally, by the end user).

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Maybe negative in the short-term, but hugely positive in the long-term. They kept these users around, happy, and willing to spend money through apple's portals and products and when they do finally get a replacement, very likely, it will be another apple product.

  • It's clear the iPhone 6-series has a hardware design defect that caused shutdowns when its CPU hit heavy loads when running on batteries with reduced capacity. The right thing to do would have been a recall, of both the logic board and a replacement battery. But considering the millions of iPhone 6's sold that recall would have likely cost billions of dollars. So instead Apple attempted to hide the issue by releasing a software update that quietly and severely throttled the CPU to avoid peak power usage. Th

    • Re: Cheaper than the alternative (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dnaumov ( 453672 ) on Tuesday January 15, 2019 @05:45PM (#57968608)

      A standard battery management procedure used by almost everybody when implemented by Apple suddenly becomes a new item because REASONS

      • A standard battery management procedure used by almost everybody when implemented by Apple suddenly becomes a new item because REASONS

        /. hates Apple. At least this week. Next week Apple is our friend and (insert manufacturer) is the enemy.

        Oh and 2019 is the year of Linux on the desktop.

      • A standard battery management procedure used by almost everybody when implemented by Apple suddenly becomes a new item because REASONS

        Can you provide a reference to any other phone vendor that ever throttled the performance of their phones by 50% to avoid shutdowns when running on degraded batteries?
        • Nexus 6 (Motorola) The CPU is very power hungry and the phone throttles heavily below 50% battery and disables cores. Aftermarket ROMS often remove this restriction, which causes unexpected random poweroff events at below 30-40% if your battery is old. Replacing the battery resolves the random shutoff events. The only difference is the Nexus 6 did this from day one, whereas Apple introduced it later after release. As a very happy owner of a Nexus 6 (purchased on launch date), I don't consider this a de

    • What? No, this is what happens to everything when you try to draw more current than the battery can provide. This same mechanism has been rolled out to EVERY iPhone running iOS 11 and 12 afaik, not just the 6. My iPhone XR has the same battery health screen that my partner's iPhone SE has.

      This is a perfectly good way to handle the issue of degrading battery performance. I'd rather have a slow phone than a phone that shuts off randomly.

      • No, it only happens on devices whose logic boards weren't properly designed to not exceed the power budget of their battery circuit designs. And throttling the CPU by 50% to avoid shutdowns is not what I consider a "perfectly good way to handle the issue".

    • Re:Cheaper than the alternative (Score:4, Informative)

      by edwdig ( 47888 ) on Tuesday January 15, 2019 @06:09PM (#57968792)

      It's not a hardware design defect, it's a basic fact of how electronics work. It wasn't an issue of *just* CPU usage. As phones got more complex, the difference in power draw between "idle" and "everything in use" became bigger over time. The other big factor is batteries don't work as well in cold weather. The big problem people were seeing was if they used their phones outdoors in winter weather with a bunch of things going at once, the battery couldn't keep up. Stress the phone hard in conditions when the battery won't work well and you get problems.

      And they didn't lie about it, they've had a note about it on their support site ever since they launched the fix.

      And the fix wasn't a big deal. My 6S used to shut down often in the winter months, even when it was brand new. I haven't had it happen since they issued the fix, and there's been no noticeable impact on performance.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's a design defect. Most manufacturers design (and test!) their devices not to exceed the maximum current that the battery can supply through it's entire lifetime. Apple apparently didn't check that their battery choice would work when the battery aged.

        Google actually had a similar problem. They replaced all the phones and switched to batteries that could meet the demands places on it.

    • Totally false, here's the real deal (Score:5, Informative)

      by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday January 15, 2019 @06:09PM (#57968794)

      It's clear the iPhone 6-series has a hardware design defect that caused shutdowns when its CPU hit heavy loads when running on batteries with reduced capacity.

      Hey buddy - ALL PHONES have this issue. Just try searching for "Android sudden shutdown battery" [google.com].

      What Apple did was say, hey lets make it so the phone only shuts down when it's truly out of power, by throttling back performance a little bit, rather than just suddenly die at 10 or 20% left just because you played a game or something, or the battery was getting old.

      Instead of being lauded for helping phone users get the thing they treasure most above all else - battery life - Apple was pummeled for helping out users, and even though this criticism was utterly unfair, Apple took the high road and said "well how about cheap replacement batteries all around that restore full performance!".

      Now you can choose which path you want phone to take battery wise -but of course because people are not utter morons they 99% choose to use the method Apple added that got them in such trouble, and which Android phone makers have added over time hoping you wouldn't notice and also ask for cheap replacement batteries.

      • Hey buddy - ALL PHONES have this issue.

        Hey buddy - can you point me to an iPhone model before the iPhone 6 series that suffered battery shutdowns on a mass scale like the iPhone 6 series did?

        • Since you are too fucking stupid to use Google, here you go retard [google.com].

          I guess the "Rox" in your name stands for what is in your head.

          • Sorry, but random reports of shutdowns on phones produced in quantities of millions does not represent a wide-spread issue like what occurred on the iPhone 6. All types of QC issues can result in one-off reports of shutdown events. The shutdowns on the iPhone 6 were on a mass scale, and by Apples own [late] admission, were due to battery issues, issues which Apple never released a statement about on previous models, nor tried to "fix" with a software update before the iPhone 6. In other words, it was a desi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sims 2 ( 994794 )

        Instead of being lauded for helping phone users get the thing they treasure most above all else - battery life - Apple was pummeled for helping out users, and even though this criticism was utterly unfair, Apple took the high road and said "well how about cheap replacement batteries all around that restore full performance!".

        They would have been lauded if they had only did one very important thing; Told their customers they were doing it and maybe also given the option to opt out.

        The omission is what got them in hot water because it made phones slower with age (battery degradation) without any indication to their users what the cause was.

        Which would push people to get a new phone rather than replace the battery because why would a new battery improve performance?

        So yes the criticism of their handling of that was entirely fair.

        • They would have been lauded if they had only did one very important thing; Told their customers they were doing it and maybe also given the option to opt out.

          Apple did both eventually. They didn't do that at first I think because it seemed (from a technical standpoint) to make no sense to even mention it - Apple does a million things to make phone use and life better without telling you about each one. I think they also thought of it as a competitive advantage that the phones would not have the same crashi

      • No. Apple was pummeled for not giving users a choice in the matter.

        Also no not every phone shuts down with high CPU usage on old batteries. Only ones that were designed up near the current limit of a good battery in the first place. Apple is wonderfully over represented here primarily because it produces high performance phones.

        By the way your argument sounds familiar. The iPhone 4 also didn't have a problem because a blackberry was also able to drop calls when Steve Jobs held it wrong on stage.

      • Just to clarify, Apple wasn't castigated for what they did. They were castigated for *not communicating* what they did, which caused people to think that Apple was intentionally nurfing older phones to make their new ones look better.

        If Apple had pulled their head out and not acted in their usual "We know better than everyone else, just trust us" way, then the situation would never have blown up as it had.

        In addition, the price of the battery repair was much higher prior to the outcry. They only dropped t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jsepeta ( 412566 )

      the change is probably in software, not hardware, designed to prevent your phone from crashing if the cpu requests more power than your battery can provide. it's a little bit of speed reduction traded for not crashing.

  • Interesting item not considered -future sales bump (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday January 15, 2019 @05:52PM (#57968646)

    The much larger than normal number of batteries sold, seemed to have led somewhat to a decline in new purchases that led to Apple's earnings warning.

    That sent the stock down. But what I do not see anyone mulling over, are implications for the future... given the high degree of measured customer satisfaction from iPhone owners (90% +), this simply means that future sales have been deferred - not lost.

    So at some point in the future, probably 1-2 years hence, there's going to be a bump in sales from all these people who got new batteries as they finally do upgrade...

    Now an alternative to this scenario is: What if this gets more people accustomed to buying batteries to extend the life of phones? Even then it would just mean a longer delay, but it could lead to a deeper change in consumer behavior and generally longer ownership cycles, long term.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      How many batteries did they refuse to replace, pissing off and losing customers?

      They wouldn't do my wife's iPhone. Before the recall she had the battery replaced by a third party, and they would only replace the original cell. Fortunately I have managed to get her onto Android now.

      • How many batteries did they refuse to replace, pissing off and losing customers?

        They didn't have any criteria other than model of phone, and as other comments have noted some models not technically included also had batteries replaced... I had my wife's iPhone 6 battery replaced, and not only was there no question of replacement, but I first went in earlier in the year to have it checked out and the Apple support person said "well it's doing OK, we can replace it now if you like but you should probably wai

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I can only tell you what they told me. They refused to do the replacement at the lower price, only offering us the full rip-off price because they said to get the discounted rate you had to swap a genuine battery for another genuine battery. It was an Apple shop, Apple employees.

  • They shouldn't have released that number (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Voyager529 ( 1363959 ) <.voyager529. .at. .yahoo.com.> on Tuesday January 15, 2019 @06:01PM (#57968720)

    That number only works if it assumes all 11 million people would have bought a new $1,000 iPhone instead - $11 billion makes up for the earnings expectations nicely.

    However, that only works at the most superficial of levels. There's a whole cottage industry of mall kiosks and small-time repair shops that specialize in replacing spent batteries and cracked screens. Apple managed to massively undercut them at $29 (which is why the numbers are so high). Let's say that half of those 11 million people would have done any of the following:
    -Gotten a $749 XR. 5.5 milion of those meets their projected earnings, but only barely. Make it a $599 iPhone 8, and now you're off by over a billion - not "oh f'k" money, but still enough to make investors plenty nervous.
    -Gotten an Android phone.
    -Had a third party change the battery.
    -Gotten a secondhand iPhone 7.
    -Stuck it out with their existing iPhone.

    That also would have put them in a position where class action lawyers were tripping over themselves to get some iBucks. If that lawsuit was as large as the tenth largest payout in history - not impossible since it would likely include virtually every iPhone in the past decade - that's $3.2 billion just in the payout. That payout would make them miss their earnings by billions even if every battery replacement would have otherwise been a $1,000 XS.

    The number indicates that even the slightest scrutiny prevents Apple from making their earnings numbers. In turn, this starts to indicate that Apple can't expect to make the fortunes off the Annual iPhone crowd they once did. IoT doesn't seem to be helping them; it's rare to find a description of a HomePod as a great-sounding also-ran and there's no indication that releasing the iRing or the iHue will push them into those markets. The Apple Car is vaporware, Apple being the new cable company could go either way (especially without a first party television to generate the hype for it), Tim doesn't seem to want to revisit the server room, and while I can't entirely dismiss a surprise-success like the iPod, Tim's had nearly a decade to do that and doesn't seem to have been able to figure out the next big thing just yet.

    Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not an Apple hater, and I don't think they're going to die overnight. The iOS ecosystem is incredibly strong and will continue to be Apple's cash cow for quite some time to come. However, I think that investors are starting to get nervous. Maybe it'll be a good thing, and we'll see Apple revisit their creative design loyalists. Maybe Apple will shock everyone by finding a niche and owning it. Or maybe, Apple will finally prove to itself, to Microsoft, to Google, to Facebook, and ultimately to Wall Street, that Big Tech has settled in with Big Oil and Big Pharma as being boring, stable, and iterative.

  • Took my 6s in to take advantage of the $29 replacement, turns out my battery qualified for free replacement. No idea why.

    I'm happy though, cuz now my phone lasts the day instead of two hours to dead. It's, what, 5 PM now, I would have unplugged my phone at about 8 AM, and it's at 57%. Much better.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I just had Apple "genius" refuse to replace my battery due to it not being an original Apple one so I had to go out and spend a whole £13 & 15 mins replacing my own iPhone 6S battery, now it lasts 2 days again and is as fast as the old 7 I gave to my daughter. 8, 10, xs xr x? I really am not surprised by the lack of sales, phones have just hit the same ceiling as gmers PC's did 5-6 years ago. "Good enough" As an avid gamer and less avid phone fan I can say the pressure on us to upgrade our PC's an
  • The non removable battery, then SEALING it in, to "promote" the waterproof idea, along with the crippling of the software for a 2-3 year old battery, got people in the habit of just chucking them and buying a new one every couple years. Althought I'm not an iphone user, but around the SD80x chips, phone got pretty much "fast enough" for about 99% of users. I'm mean get real..people run a couple apps at a time, aren't trying to solve quantum physics. But now that the CHEAP iPhone/Samsung phones are in the 8

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