> Or Apple could make it easier and cheaper to replace the iPhone's battery
Apple charges $79 to replace a battery. Seems cheap to me. And, btw I have been running my SE for a couple of years and the battery is only reduced by 8%. Seems pretty good to me. I think peoples expectations are just absurd.
Anecdotal sample of wear ratios as reported via coconut battery:
- my iPhone 6S, barely one year in: down to 87%, 282 cycles.
- a friend's 6S+, one and a half year in: down to 74%, 398 cycles
- another friend's 6S+, two and a half years in: down to 54%, slightly less than 600 cycles
Those LiPo are supposed to last 800-1000 cycles before dipping below the 80% mark and it's a far cry from that.
Even before I checked the values for mine I noticed a cliff effect when charge goes below 40%, at which point it takes only a dozen of minutes of light use to drain.
This is not OK. I can readily accept a non-replaceable battery on a 800-1000€ phone but it has to keep giving good performance (WRT both battery life and throttling) for three years (it was so for my iPhone 3G and 4). Changing the battery on my dime each year is not an acceptable solution.
This is poor engineering that minmaxes thinness vs battery, and I see the same trend on the MacBook line, which currently makes me very unlikely to upgrade my 2013 rMBP.
I've read somewhere, that I can't find at the moment, that Apple expects/promises that Mac batteries will retain 80% capacity after 1000 cycles, and iOS devices will retain 80% after 500 cycles.
The lower cycle number for iOS devices is presumably due to them being exposed to higher temperatures (in pockets e.g.) and not having any active cooling to counter this.
My brand new Note 4 battery costs all of $13 and took 30 seconds to change.
The last couple of revisions of phones aren't that much better than previous generations. This seems mainly due to Moore's law slowing down. Heck, Intel hasn't released a process shrink in 4 years. Apple and other vendors are going to have to start pulling even more of these planned obsolescence tricks if technology doesn't pick up soon.
Battery degradation in iPhones starts after one year. Why would you buy a new battery each year? Even if you were a power user, it would make sense to only change the battery every other year, at most.
Plus $79 for a new battery PLUS expert, warrantied installation is a good value. You're paying for a lot more than just a battery.
(FWIW, I've replaced the batteries in my iPhone 4 and 5 in the last year. It was much easier than I thought it would be. I still have an original launch-day iPhone. Maybe I'll see if I can still find a replacement battery for it.)
A replacement iPhone battery can be bought on eBay for around 10 bucks shipped. I’ve replaced a few iPhone 6 batteries.
Support a small business and have someone else install it for you if you need a new battery. It won’t cost that much. If Samsung had stores they would charge you something near Apples price without question.
I can't help but find it amusing that you ask if the no-brand batteries are worth your trust. You already paid a premium for a premium device, with a battery that has now shown to have significant limitations over time.
Why wouldn't your first thought be "Hey, maybe Apple doesn't make the best battery for the iphone"? You already know they make a flawed one, maybe someone else makes one that isn't flawed?
That's the thing, with lithium ion batteries, spontaneously combustion is a real worry.
I'll be more than willing to take my chances with a lot of parts on computers/phones/electronics/etc
But the power supply systems are one area I will not buy anything other than OEM or "top of the line" for.
I've fallen asleep with my phone in bed, I have it on a nightstand a foot away from my head most nights, it sits in my pocket for most of the day. That's not something I want to have even a 1% chance of failing when the failure mode is "burst into flames".
Not really, it is a worry in model planes or vaping devices which draw significant current.
Phone it has a temperature sensor and only other risk you have is it being bent or punctured.
I always wonder how people use those vaping devices (especially cheap ones from ebay) without fear of them blowing up, energy density is crazy there.
There's only so much the actual phone can do to prevent a problem with a battery though. To put it bluntly, a temperature sensor in the phone isn't going to do shit if one of the battery's internal walls fails due to a manufacturing defect and the thermal runaway starts.
Every month or so I hear of another person who's phone caught fire on their bed, or the whole galaxy note fiasco. While I agree with you that for the most part it's not a worry in devices from reputable manufacturers (like OEMs), but it is and will continue to be a problem for cheaper manufacturers, and suppliers who aren't afraid to lie about what's inside the package.
From the perspective of environmentalism, I think all phones should have mandatory replaceable batteries. Is that really so absurd? Why are companies allowed to design devices with such disregard for the environment.
I get that the goal of this design is to ensure that the battery does not move once it's fixed into the case. And I understand why that's necessary. What I don't understand is why it can't practicably be achieved by a combination of closer dimensional tolerances and the application of some thin elastomer to the parts of the case that contact the battery. Given the complexity of the assembly process, I can't imagine that such a design would be more difficult to assemble than the one that shipped, and it would provide a considerably more approachable battery replacement process - I'm not shy about performing my own device repairs, and I'm good enough at it that I haven't ruined anything yet, but this is one where I'd rather pay the $79 to have it done in an Apple store, and the adhesive is about 95% of why.
The expressed concern around environmentalism suggests we're discussing this in a context of replacing batteries rather than throwing phones away, instead of hot-swapping batteries to keep using a device while away from a charger.
You're right, they technically do. I guess I was imagining something more akin to it being designed to be user-servicable, instead of it just being a technicality that it is possible, subject to having the right tools and nerve to attempt it.
I'm right with you there; it's just that I think we probably have different definitions of "user-serviceable". I'm happy to accept the need for a detailed guide, a set of small screwdrivers, and a pair of steady hands to replace a phone battery - in exchange for having that phone be rock solid before I take it apart and after I put it back together. Maybe it's possible to make a phone with a back that pops off to a fingernail and yet manages not to feel flimsy, but if so, I've never yet met one...
I successfully replaced the battery in an iPhone 3GS once because the battery had inflated like a bag of microwave popcorn. A few months later the replacement battery also did the same.
Close dimensional tolerances sounds like a bad idea for batteries that are likely to expand as they age (which causes home buttons and force touch to stop working)
This is not a cost-free shift: additional components are required to make an easily replaceable battery. So you're adding in environmental cost to every phone and in return you get environmental savings from the phones that would be used longer if the battery were more easily replaceable.
It's easy to only think about one side of this issue. To put it another way, think about the additional layer of plastic needed under the battery compartment to protect the device internals while the battery compartment is open. There are additional component changes and efficiencies lost to make this move.
Then there's the battery itself -- the replaceable ones are much more robust in design and shielding -- additional plastic. They also have to have bigger contact points to ensure a good connection.
It might still be a net positive, but it's not a no-brainer call.
Yes, batteries should be replaceable and all those things you mention - '... the additional layer of plastic needed under the battery compartment ...', '... replaceable ones are much more robust in design and shielding -- additional plastic ...' don't make any sense at all. Any 'need for any additional plastic' in devices with replaceable batteries is easily offset with the messy sticky tape Apple deems necessary to hold their batteries in place. In practice the battery usually just lies atop the circuit board with a thin sheet of some insulating material in between. That sheet of material is part of the device and does not need to be replaced when the battery is swapped, this in contrast to the double-sided tape Apple uses which needs to be replaced whenever the battery is removed. Replaceable batteries are no more robust than non-replaceable ones, both consist of a Li-polymer pouch with a bit of circuitry attached somewhere, the combination wrapped in heavy tape or shrink foil.
Batteries should be replaceable without the need for special tools (a simple standard screwdriver (Torx or Phillips) is OK, pentalobe screwdrivers are not) OR they should last the life of the device without significant degradation.
That's true for iPhones before the 5 series. After that, it just goes completely bonkers. See my sibling comment to yours, and the two iFixit guides linked from there - as I mention there, I don't regard the idea of doing my own device repairs as especially trepidatory in general, but current Apple hardware is an extremely special case.
...he said, before checking the iFixit teardown for the used iPod Touch bought to serve as a stereo headend. It's not precisely a phone, but that's not much excuse.
It's not cheap for me, as it is nearly half the amount I paid for my iPhone SE. At that point, I'd be much better off buying a newer phone.
As for the battery only being reduced by 8%, I think that's a huge positive point for the SE and its internals. This phone just lasts so long that you charge it less than the other phones Apple sells.
Yeah IMHO, the $79 is fine and so is the turnaround time. In fact I had mine replaced for free (6s) through a recall program they had.
IMO, the problem is Apple either tricks you into upgrading your OS or constantly nags you if you don't. When you find out that the new iOS has slowed down your phone, you're forced to keep using it instead of being able to revert your phone back to the factory state - something every user expects out of a consumer device.
I also had mine replaced for free (6s) on the same recall program ~11months ago.
The battery still has 95.7% of the capacity, with 400 cycles, yet my device is throttling the cpu between 30% and 50%.
It was how slow it was running that made me upgrade this year instead of the next which was my original plan.
If I had known that replacing the battery fixed the speed problems I would have saved the money.
They really need to communicate this reduced power state to the user.
I don't know much about the older versions (last time I have played with iOS was iOS 7 I think), but I have recently got an iPhone 5S for development with iOS 11.2 and it's definitely one of the most glitchy mobile OSes I have ever used - and I've used plenty of community managed AOSP "ROMs", Replicant with missing drivers and some Openmoko distributions. I didn't expect much, but I honestly didn't expect it to be so bad. And I'm not even using it as a phone.
Samsung charges $25 for a Note 4 battery, and the user can easily replace it. If they had kept the battery as easily replaceable, Samsung wouldn't have had to recall all the Note 7s, instead they could offer to take the phone or ship a safer, lower capacity battery and a consolation prize for lower capacity.
Making battery non-user replaceable we're engineering a time sink + cost sink on the side of the user. This isn't progress, it's rentseeking. $79 per year x 1 billion phones.
Apple profit on the transaction is smaller than my loss. It takes me 15sec to replace battery compared to driving to/from the store & involving 5 people in the process (sales, technicians, accounting). It's a clear win- lose with a negative total transaction.
Given that you can buy these batteries for under $10 on ebay, I do think that $80 is expensive.
Also, Apple‘s service is atrocious. Mail it in, and you‘ll be without a phone for up to two weeks (!). I tried bringing mine to an authorised service provider in Austria, and they told me it would take 24h to get a quote, and the actual repair would take up to two weeks.
I went to a 3rd party shop, it took them about 15minutes to do the swap, and it cost a fraction.
The battery itself is a $10 part. If I value my time at say $100 an hour then the $79 isn't the issue if I have to waste my time going to the Apple Store. $79 is not the issue. My time is.
Apple charges $79 to replace a battery. Seems cheap to me. And, btw I have been running my SE for a couple of years and the battery is only reduced by 8%. Seems pretty good to me. I think peoples expectations are just absurd.