I won’t buy an iPad: ten years later

Re:I won’t buy an iPad: ten years later by wlesieutre on Monday January 27, 2020 @01:38PM (#22162364)

I think they're largely fine with carrying a USB charger, the complaint is that the built-in battery is known to degrade over time. If your device has a removable battery, you can get a new one and pop it in. But when everything is sealed together that becomes a much riskier job.

A lot of people replace their phones on a 2-3 year cycle. If you could get a new battery for $30 and install it yourself in 30 seconds, would people be throwing less phones out?

You'll note that Apple's warranty language (and probably everyone else's) specifically defines batteries as a "consumable part." Given that, it's a bit of a dick move to make them so difficult to replace.

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Re:I won’t buy an iPad: ten years later by reaperducer on Monday January 27, 2020 @01:49PM (#22162480)

If you could get a new battery for $30 and install it yourself in 30 seconds, would people be throwing less phones out?

Having had cell phones starting in 1994, when replaceable batteries were just how it was done, I can say people did replace their phones just as often as now.

My memory is that people replaced them every year back then, in part, because the batteries were so awful and new phones kept coming out with better battery life.

Today, many (most?) people keep their cell phones for at least two years, and on HN it seems to be even longer. I have an iPhone 5 from 2013 that I use for traveling, and it just keeps going. Using a seven-year-old phone would have been unheard of back in the days of replaceable batteries.

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Re:I won’t buy an iPad: ten years later by j-c-hewitt on Monday January 27, 2020 @01:45PM (#22162432)

The battery is the fastest-degrading component. It is also one of the most easily replaceable components, speaking in general and not specifically to the way Apple designs it to be non-removable. The desire to replace the fastest degrading component to extend the life of the device makes perfect sense from the consumer's perspective.

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Re:I won’t buy an iPad: ten years later by angry_octet on Monday January 27, 2020 @02:05PM (#22162628)

Additionally, most phones have a 2nd and 3rd owner (a child, or exported to another market). A 3 year old Pixel still has another 3 years of useful life at least.

Frankly it is ecological cancer to operate the way Apple does.

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Re:I won’t buy an iPad: ten years later by lazerpants on Monday January 27, 2020 @02:31PM (#22162859)

Pixel's don't have batteries that are intended to be user serviceable either. Plus, they don't get 6 years of updates...

At least it's easy to drop by an Apple store to take advantage of the trade-in/recycle program.

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Re:I won’t buy an iPad: ten years later by snowwrestler on Monday January 27, 2020 @04:01PM (#22163729)

You can pay Apple to put a new battery in an old iPhone.

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Re:I won’t buy an iPad: ten years later by erik_seaberg on Monday January 27, 2020 @08:26PM (#22165617)

Only if you have a spare, or you use it so little that you can do without it—no mobile email, no GPS, no AAA, and no 2FA for up to a week.

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Re:I won’t buy an iPad: ten years later by scarface74 on Monday January 27, 2020 @11:48PM (#22166551)

Up to a week? They can do it in the store the same day if you make an appointment.

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Re:I won’t buy an iPad: ten years later by erik_seaberg on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @01:39AM (#22166998)

https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/service/battery-powe... warned that they'll try.

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Re:I won’t buy an iPad: ten years later by scarface74 on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @07:45AM (#22168835)

“In more complex cases, we might need to send it to an Apple Repair Center.”

There are no “complex cases” of battery repair. They are referring to cases where there is other damage they have to fix first (which they stated).

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Re:I won’t buy an iPad: ten years later by wlesieutre on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @09:16AM (#22169534)

Not everyone lives near an Apple Store either.

Thankfully Apple has recently made genuine iPhone batteries more available to repair shops, but that was just 4 months ago. They spent 13 years not doing that first.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/29/20838307/apple-iphone-rep...

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Re:I won’t buy an iPad: ten years later by scarface74 on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @09:41AM (#22169749)

People have been able to go to a shop and get batteries replaced (whether they were genuine or not) for a decade. It’s only been within the past two or three years where it made the slightest difference between whether it was genuine or not.

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Re:I won’t buy an iPad: ten years later by craftinator on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @01:14AM (#22177946)

How inane is the comment you just wrote. Please just, reread that to yourself a couple times. It's MaDnEsS

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Re:I won’t buy an iPad: ten years later by rstupek on Monday January 27, 2020 @01:45PM (#22162433)

A replacement battery installed by Apple is $49-$69. I don't know if I would trust a third party battery in my phone

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Re:I won’t buy an iPad: ten years later by gnicholas on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @02:07PM (#22172923)

I have an iPad Pro that had battery issues, and Apple replaced it toward the end of the 1-year warranty. They also said that if it happened again (outside the 90-day warranty that comes with all replacements), they would swap the entire device for me for the price of a battery replacement ($100). While this seems inconvenient, it actually makes it very easy to swap batteries. The price is not great, but considering the cost of an iPad Pro (closing in on $1,000, depending on size/storage), it's not a bad deal. Plus, you're not just getting a new battery — everything is new, and there's a 90-day warranty on everything.

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Re:I won’t buy an iPad: ten years later by javagram on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @01:25AM (#22166937)

> A lot of people replace their phones on a 2-3 year cycle. If you could get a new battery for $30 and install it yourself in 30 seconds, would people be throwing less phones out?

For apple products specifically this isn’t a big issue. I got my iPhone battery replaced for $29 a few years ago. I’ll probably get it replaced again at the end of this year if there’s still no SE-sized phone released to replace it (I think it’s $49 now).

For anything that’s not an apple product, finding a store to replace the battery is going to be a lot harder or impossible. I definitely prefer the choice to use removable batteries or rechargeable AAs on stuff like game controllers.

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Re:I won’t buy an iPad: ten years later by benhurmarcel on Monday January 27, 2020 @05:11PM (#22164375)

Given that you only replace them every few years at most, it seems reasonable to make the operation a little bit more work-intensive to gain on other aspects.

In the end it's still nothing very challenging to replace an iPhone or iPad battery.

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