Battery engineer here at an electric vehicle company.

The crux of it is this: when you draw high current from a small battery, the voltage will sag (1). The manufacturer has an on-board battery management system that MUST turn off the battery if it goes below a certain voltage threshold.

As the battery ages, the sag effect increases significantly, up to 2-3x. Thus, when your phone clearly indicates say 20% battery remaining, if a high load were to be applied, the last 20% would be inaccessible because the battery sag from the spontaneous high load would cause a reboot.

Thus, Apple acted in good faith to maximize the battery life on these older devices. The reason is technical, so it's hard to communicate this in a way that all consumers can understand. Yes, they failed at this. Look at all the confusion.

    (1) Exercise:
    Suppose no-load 3.4V corresponds to 20% remaining.
    Suppose that the battery cut-off is set to 3.2V.
    The battery % is usually derived from a current sensor (coulomb counting), NOT from the measured voltage.
    But the battery cut-off is a safety feature and needs to be measured hard against the voltage (and the current sensor needs to be ignored due to cumulative error).
    
    On a new phone, fully loaded voltage drop = 0.1V
    On a used phone, fully loaded voltage drop = 0.3V
    
    Low-load condition, @20% = 3.4V, OK
    Full-load condition, @20% = 3.4 - 0.3 = 3.1V, Emergency OFF.

1. Applied the throttling fix silently 2. Denied warranty replacements 3. Wouldn't even replace the battery with cash in hand until after the suit was filed 4. ..leaving people with no good way to have a working device.

After going into the Apple store, they said that the battery was a "consumable part" and therefore not covered by the warranty. However, when I asked what the part number was and how I could order a replacement myself, they said that the batteries weren't serviceable and even they had to replace the keyboard unit as that contained the battery and it was all glued together.

I pointed out that they've therefore designed this product to fail after a few years as you can't order replacement batteries as a consumer, and they agreed to replace it for free.

They don't want to, but they could with a 5 minute YouTube video and probably $10 in parts (plus the cost of the new tire, or oil, or whatever). Doing so also does not void the warranty on your car (maybe not true for spark plugs? Tires and oil can certainly be changed)

They do state it is a consumable and that it should maintain a certain level for a certain number of recharge cycles. Of course not sure what kind of careful wording they were using pre-controversy. But obviously it should all come down to what they promise to be covering.

The marketing is at issue here. If instead of calling it throttling down when the battery was old they called it boosting up when the battery was new it would have been a best in class feature instead of a $100 million dollar settlement.

And yes, at the point where the throttling was taking place, the battery wasn’t defective. That was a completely expected place along the performance curve of a consumable part. So why replace it when it’s working as designed? In my opinion this is the opposite of planned obsolescence, they took devices that would otherwise have to be replaced due to shut downs and allow them to remain in service.

Why should you have to put up with a car that only goes 45mph when it went 70mph when you bought it?

What part of this is hard to understand. I don't want a phone that runs slow.

Come on dude, stop bullshitting. Every Apple device promotion shows how it is faster or better than the previous device or its competitors. Even the new Apple ARM processor touts how it is equal or better than other processors.

I love Apple devices but the quality regressed in recent years, to the point that I left most of the ecosystem.

But you can not have a healthy discussion about that because some people will come out and defend apple with their blood and tears. No matter ridiculous their stance is.

(1) I'm a right-to-repair activist, I believe that batteries should be user-serviceable and preferably end-user-serviceable. The fact that Apple refused to replace batteries in exchange for a fee is nutters to me. Apple's general disdain for third-party repair is indefensible.

(2) I want a system that tries to get as much performance as possible at all times, and that means as a consumable part (the battery) ages, less performance is available because less instantaneous power is available. This aging process begins on the first day and first charge cycle of ownership. That means if the device is always pulling the most power possible out of the battery, the performance characteristics of the device change over time, like balding tires or razor blades. A balding tire or razor blade is not defective, even if I can't take corners as tightly or have to slow down my shave to avoid cutting up my face.

(3) I would prefer a device that ramps down peak performance over time to match the capabilities of a consumable part rather than one that artificially limits peak performance early on to avoid a ramp-down. And I would certainly prefer a device that throttles at 20% capacity to one that takes a dirt nap at 20%. I had one of those, and it was awful. I couldn't rely on it to get home, for instance. The patch at issue here resolved that completely. I'd also prefer a device that is on at 20% to one that shuts down before it gets to 20% in some effort to avoid throttling.

(4) I don't think that a battery that is able to supply less instantaneous power over time is defective so long as its reduced capability is in line with expectations for the given age and number of charge cycles, and therefore shouldn't be eligible for a complementary automatic in-warranty battery replacement.

(5) Ok, say you prefer the other. Fine, don't buy an iPhone. It's not a 100 million dollar lawsuit worthy issue. It's at most a good will issue for the few folks who would prefer the other behavior, and having a switch resolved it.

Is that really such a ridiculous stance? Does this really irritate you?

And most of these fans are post-iPhone Apple Fans as well.

The early iPhone adopters, myself included, were focused on all the amazing new stuff the iPhone gave me over my Motorola Pebl, like a giant screen, a full desktop web browser, unlimited (albeit very slow) mobile internet in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and a buttery-smooth UI experience.

Remember the state of the art at the time was the Razr for consumer phones, Rokr for music phones, and the N900 for smartphones. Put them side by side with the original iPhone and you'll understand why copy-paste and MMS was the last thing on our minds.

There was no Android, that came out a year and a bit later. And Android 1.0 was hot garbage.

I love Apple devices and the quality improved in recent years, to the point that I will never leave the ecosystem.

But you can not have a healthy discussion about that because some people will come out and attack apple with their blood and tears. No matter ridiculous their stance is.

It’s a real shame if hate and anger are more socially acceptable than defending something.

And to your point, car companies don’t market their cars using ‘achieving 70mph’ as a feature. It’s just a reasonable expectation of performance. They might mention the top speed, but that’s more of a specification than a marketing feature in most cases.

That Apple blocked easy battery replacement, even through their own for-profit stores, is a part of the case against them you seem to be ignoring.

I have no stake at this topic, never owned an Apple device and I don't feel other manufacturers are significantly better, but its a bit sad to see so much apologism at otherwise great place like HN. Or its just paid comments either from employees or otherwise employed, I mean we're still just on general internet and its still 2020 so its unfortunately pretty normal.

In any case, if you guys try to defend these seemingly amoral actions of Apple, the real effect is exactly opposite.

And Apple does advertise benchmarks on their slides.

Or you could notify people of the situation, and sell replacement batteries.

That would have been the best solution.

It's like returning an ink cartridge at 50% capacity because it's only got half the ink left. Yes, that's the point, that's what cartridges do.

This feature is designed to always get the most out of a battery. Is that really something to complain about?

I guess this is where it's a perspective issue.

- You're saying that a new battery starts out at "100%" and that after a year or so, Apple throttles is down to "80%" because it can no longer keep up with how it came out of the factory. Apple designed a function that reduces the performance of a system that's defective to hide the defect. That would be strictly negative.

- What I'm saying is that the battery starts out at "120%" out of the factory (which you can confirm, when you buy a new mac check out the Batter mAh vs. design rating in System Report) and eventually drifts towards "100%" over time. Apple designed a system that allows you to get that extra 20% at the start, when it's available. That would be strictly positive.

What I'm suggesting is that you consider the 100% performance mark to be far side of the performance curve at the end of the expected life of the device, so 80% capacity after 1000 charge cycles or 2 years, give or take.

With that as your baseline ("100%"), if you can make the phone perform better than the that in the first few years you're offering an early-life performance boost over the baseline, not a late performance degradation. Otherwise, the far end of the curve is the performance level you'd have to artificially limit the device to in order to avoid any change in performance over time. The phone was defective before the update was shipped as it didn't appropriately account for this normal battery degradation curve.

Apple was basically giving you more performance than you paid for, for free, early on -- not stealing your performance down the line.

The only time you should be told your battery is defective is if it reaches the 80% mark in less than 2 years or 1000 charge cycles along the defined anticipated performance curve. I do agree, however, that a battery replacement should be available at a fair price to those who want one.

I would literally rather my phone started randomly turning itself off at 30% power. At least that way I might take it for repair, have the reason diagnosed, and get it restored to acceptable performance, rather than simply assuming that software has moved on and I have to live with a slow device or purchase a new one.

The argument others have raised still applies. If Apple had informed users about the transition from 120% to 100%, some portion of users would have enjoyed the 120% experience so much that they would have replaced their batteries in order to get back to 120%. Apple concealed that option by not informing users about the change.

Apple has already fixed the problem in a satisfactory way, so presumably it wasn’t impossible after all.

Ok, and customers should still be informed of whatever it is that you think the situation is, and they should be allowed to purchase a replacement.

> This feature is designed to always get the most out of a battery. Is that really something to complain about?

They should have still told the customer and allowed people to buy a replacement.

> I guess this is where it's a perspective issue.

No. My perspective is not that. Instead my perspective is that the consumer should have been told about that, and offered the ability to buy a replacement.

Manufactures can hide it any number of ways, but a new battery is always better even if your phone is exactly 1 day old. That’s what continuous degradation means.

No, actually, most phones did not release an update like this, deny the situation, and then also refused to let people purchase replacement batteries.

The issue is that Apple did this update, did not tell people about the whole thing, however you want to describe it, and then also did not allow people to buy replacement batteries.

That's only one possible explanation.

Imagine two phones that can both draw 5 watts max. Phone A has a battery that can supply 5 watts brand new, and phone B has a battery that can supply 10 watts brand new.

It's true that phone A is "getting the most out of new batteries", and phone B isn't. But phone B isn't "limiting itself to the performance of an old battery". The 5 watt limit is there for efficiency and heat reasons, and it just so happens that the battery is never the limiting factor.

That makes the job easier! Just cut the battery in half. Let's say the original battery could handle 5 amps before the voltage drop got too bad. If a half-size battery can handle 4 amps, and you put in two of them, now you can handle 8 amps.

Then let users replace them like other consumables.

A better comparison would be an unevenly worn toner cartridge, where someone keeps going "I don't see the problem, it prints just fine on the sides!".

Then you are being deliberately obtuse as many here have already explained that this case was never about the throttling. Quoting another user (Karunamon):

> Again, it's not that Apple didn't violate the laws of physics on their "magical" device, it's that they:

> 1. Applied the throttling fix silently 2. Denied warranty replacements 3. Wouldn't even replace the battery with cash in hand until after the suit was filed 4. ..leaving people with no good way to have a working device.

Basically they were slowing down people's device, without informing them, and forcing them to buy new devices as they refused to replace the battery even when customers were willing to pay for a new battery!

> 1. Applied the throttling fix silently

I would maintain that the device that didn't throttle, taking into account the real capabilities of the battery, and instead shut down unexpectedly at 20% was broken. It was fixed by this patch.

> 2. Denied warranty replacements.

There's as much reason to replace a battery under warranty that has maintained 80% charge capacity after 1000 cycles or 2 years, as there is an ink cartridge starting to run low. Batteries start getting worse after each charge cycle, and my understanding is that they followed the prescribed policy.

> 3. Wouldn't even replace the battery with cash in hand until after the suit was filed.

I'm very much against this policy, as a right-to-repair advocate I believe battery replacements should be simple and end-user achievable. Short of that I agree that the replacement should have been carried out on a cost-plus basis on request.

> 4. ..leaving people with no good way to have a working device.

This is where we disagree except as I replied in (3).

But that's a false dichotomy.

Rather than throttle. You can show less charge. It's what other phones do.

We can all hear the fans spin up and usually we know why. We also know the machine is going to slow down.

The difference on iPhone is there was no precedent and user expectation for this behavior. Apple did not offer a setting for this, though I imagine if they did almost everyone would have turned it on.

Should Apple have explained this up front? Yes. Should they have replaced people’s batteries? Yes.

Was this a 100 million dollar set of mistakes? Probably not. Probably much more in the loss of good will.

I agree w the poster elsewhere this is a marketing and customer support problem.

Sometimes apple makes mistakes and lose in court to great humiliation, like when they tried to force Apple Store employees not get paid to follow their security requirements.

I think it’s good to keep the company on its toes, but this particular case seems pretty mild to me.

I use it extensively as a work computer.

Sure, but if I decide I really need a top-shape battery, and I go into an Apple Store and offer to pay full retail price for a new one, shouldn't they give it to me? GP says they were refusing if the battery was above a certain threshold (but low enough that performance adjustments were kicking in.)

Would this count in this case although this was san francisco

That's not good faith at all. That apologists keep talking about batteries but ignore the real problem smacks of a PR campaign.

* We actually don't know if the slowdown was only for bad batteries - that's Apple's version, but it could be that they applied the throttling generally. I'm unaware of any third party who has verified this.

I sure hope Apple isn't taking your approach to HW reliability across the board. After all, memory and disk eventually go bad too.

It's not a bad banana. Rotting after a while applies to every banana ever sold.

Yes it's a natural thing to happen, but it doesnt mean it's not bad.

Engineering side--

1. Overprovision the battery

2. Make clear to user if the phone is operating in a degraded mode, and why, and how to fix

3. Make battery replacements cheap and easy

Business/Design side--

1. The phone won't look as sleek, and will cost more!

2. We can't tell consumers their phones aren't perfect! It makes us look bad, and maybe they'll force us to fix it for free!

3. The phone won't look as sleek, and will cost more!

4. Bonus--it encourages users to buy a new phone after a few years!

"The battery in your iphone has degraded. Phone performance will be lowered to ensure stability. See an apple store or visit apple.com/battery to have a replacement battery installed"

It would have been so easy.

"This iPhone has experience an unexpected shutdown because the battery was unable to deliver the necessary peak power. Performance management has been applied to help prevent this from happening again. [Disable…]"

Which still isn't perfect because "performance management" is such a weasely way of saying "reduced performance", but it's a lot better than nothing.

Nothing in your longwinded explanation of battery basics says anything about why I can't go into an Apple store and pay full price for a replacement.

The after the fact fix for this is also to not refuse to fix your defective devices when customers bring them in under warranty claims, and definitely to not lie about them not being defective.

You don't make pay out the better part of a billion dollars in settlements and fines because you acted responsibly in a way that is hard to explain to consumers. You pay out a billion dollars in settlements because you broke the law.

In my experience, which included managing and oversight of the operations/budgets for BlackBerry, iPhone and Android fleets with 10-50k devices, early battery death is usually accounted for by poor environmental conditions like temperature extremes. The AFRs didn't change in my experience much at all over time, except that legacy BlackBerries would get battery replacements.

The only outlier was failure rates for Samsung Galaxy phones, which was an operational issue (about 40% more failures if memory serves) -- NOT a defect or problem with the phone itself. They were mostly deployed to field workers operating out of cars or outdoors because Samsung allows a much broader operating range. Extreme cold especially would kick the crap out of the Samsung batteries, especially if they keeping them in outer pockets of winter coats or leaving them mounted to vehicles. Apple is conservative with battery management because the public perception cost of any battery issue is nuclear, as anything Apple is a headline. iPhones have strict shutdown temperatures for both cold and heat. (which make them useless in many outdoor work environments)

(Article that lists the models involved: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/11/apple-settles-wi...)

Absolutely, I'm in the middle of Saskatchewan where it can get down to -40 and this was my biggest gripe with some of my old iPhones. Weirdly enough my BlackBerries (including my Key2!) managed a bit better. Only major issue I noticed was that capacity would rise when coming into a warmer environ. The Titan seems to be faring pretty well so far this winter, but it also is more battery then phone.

Was always funny walking in and having my phone restart, just to shutdown though.

Apple replaced the battery.

The reason you haven't heard this before is that it didn't happen.

Either the warranty expired -- in which case it isn't a "few months", or it was within the warranty period, in which case it is covered.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25144122

But don't take my word for it. RTFA. This lawsuit was settled because of the exact scenario I described.

So, I treat the battery readout as basically a scale of "high / medium / low". This works well with the empirical fact that a 20% readout might in fact last longer than a 50% readout.

What I don't understand is that most other people seem to treat the percentages as meaningful. They certainly aren't based on "time until a recharge is needed", which is what people want. What are we notionally seeing percentages of?

> What I don't understand is that most other people seem to treat the percentages as meaningful. They certainly aren't based on "time until a recharge is needed", which is what people want. What are we notionally seeing percentages of?

So yes it kind of is based on "time until recharge". The problem is batteries are more complicated than that. I think a lot of people tend to view batteries as like a power supply that has a certain capacity you consume. This isn't an accurate view.

First capacity isn't static, it depends on temperature. Lithium batteries generally have thermal cut-off circuity so temperature compensation is pretty standard to add in.

Second batteries have internal resistances which affects its behavior. Internal resistances naturally rise as batteries age, or more accurately go through recharge cycles. This changes voltage sag behavior as GP noted.

Third, as GP mentioned, batteries don't supply a constant voltage. A lot of people realize battery voltage drops as a battery is used, which is true in a very simple sense. A cell can have a fully charged open circuit voltage for 4.2, but it quickly goes down to 3.7 where it spends most of its cycle around. Note that I specified an open circuit voltage. The second you apply a load the voltage will drop in relation to the load applied. This voltage sag and the subsequent recovery is not instantaneous either, it takes time to reach equilibrium states.

So in essence a battery percentage is simplistically portraying the capacity remaining in a battery, but isn't - nor can't - portray the fact that some of that capacity is unusable depending on loading conditions combined with safety cut-offs to protect the battery. Apple's solution was to change the load so there was less unusable capacity.

I'd like to re-iterate that I'm not an expert here. Batteries are complicated electrochemical devices.

Edit - Let me illustrate a hypothetical analogy. Let's say you have a car with a fuel tank and a poorly designed fuel pump. You fill up the tank with ten gallons, and start driving. The fuel pump heats up as you press on the accelerator, the harder you accelerate the more it heats up. However the fuel acts as a heat sink for the fuel pump. After driving for a while you have two gallons left. At this point you go full throttle and suddenly the engine cuts out because the thermal protection circuitry on the fuel pump kicked in. Your fuel gauge still reads two gallons, the problem is you simply can't consume it at full throttle because the pump won't operate under those conditions. You can still drive at maybe half throttle though.

(Sorry for the late reply...)

This isn't an accurate view... so why is battery level reported according to this paradigm? The obvious effect is to frustrate and confuse people.

This drama sounds like a typical corporate misunderstanding: engineers follow technical specs, no written requirements, management doesn’t understand the subtleties - nor do their care for them and they’re busily enough already with all the other tugs.

Eventually shit hits home, PR digests and translates into requirements, management gropes along in the fog.

There’s no malice, it’s just a large org, and there’s no SJ that agonizes over the details (and even then, he also let big fuckups slip past, remember the iPhone antenna issue)

Apple making phones that last a little longer than Google doesn't mean Apple make products that last. That just means that both Google and Apple are designing products that fail unreasonably quickly.

Google isn't the one failing to keep software up to date, its the hardware partners like Samsung.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/18/21373308/samsung-three-ge...

> Samsung generally promised two years of updates

After 2 years you are at the mercy of zero days and hackers. iOS 14 works on phones that are over 5 years old.

The problem was that engineers up and down the chain could say with complete honesty "this isn't a problem because there's nothing unusual about how these are failing", missing the point entirely that no customer would ever be happy knowing they could have fixed it for free/$45 instead of $1000.

Those phones just had tired depleted batteries and the proper thing to do was offer users battery replacement, not lie to their faces while upselling new model.

This assumes you’re powering the phone solely off the cap. Even with a battery you’d still need something in the mF range to make up for the battery’s degradation.

> [only able to use the cap from 4V to 3V]

> (C * 1V * 1V)/2

> [you'll need 1000mF]

Wrong equation. That's the energy from 0V to 1V. Each incremental volt stores more power than the last. 0V-3V is 9x that amount, and 0V-4V is 16x that amount, so 3V-4V is 7x that amount, and you'll need 140mF.

But also it shouldn't be connected directly in parallel to the battery; so I'd think of it more as 4.2V to 2V of supply. That would mean you need 74mF.

So put in two and you'll more than hit the target.

Even better, if you expect the battery to contribute some, you only need the one.

When you open your mail and it has to perform a sync, for example, the transient may last for 10+ seconds and it’s not something you can fix with a supercap. You’d be better off adding more battery at that stage, as a larger battery has lower proportional sag for a given current (coulomb rates).

Another thing you can do is size your battery, say 20% larger than you require it, and only charge to 80%. This reduces ageing significantly, BUT consumers would never see this as a feature. They would just complain that the latest Apple phone has 20% less battery than the competitor and is $50 more expensive and heavier than the last model.

I’m taking it at a punt that 99% of regular consumers want to change their phone every 2-3 years (to get the latest camera, Face ID or car keys or whatever feature it might be), so that’s what Apple has targeted for the maximum age of their battery. Anything more is making a collective trade-off for the, perhaps, 1% no?

Surely without throttling it never draws more than 1A, that's actually enough to cause significant sag like the 0.3V example?

Save the PDF to iBooks, oh I can’t export it now let me try the print to PDF trick etc etc.

All this seems designed to encourage me to pay more for iCloud or other Apple products. Nothing makes sense, everything’s broken and people still love it.

What they did was practically make my iphone 4 useless, forcing me to abandon the phone due to an OS upgrade.

This single experience re-defined my relationship with Apple. Much more than the butterfly keyboard fiasco.

I certainly don't buy the "good faith" invocation.

What's the old sales motto again .. "Sometimes the customer is actually right"?

you are saying that they don't know how to calculate battery percentage left?

The problem is that you really need to be able to override things like this. Sometimes users do in fact have a better grasp of the nuances of the particular situation they're in than the programmers do. Sometimes it makes a lot of sense to make this kind of trade off of stability vs performance.

Do you have a source for that? This would change my opinion on this story.

Reminds me of hot coffee where it sounded a bit ridiculous until you got the full story.

I can vouch for this. My iPhone 6 was under 2 years old and had 82% battery health according to the Apple diagnostics when I experienced the unexpected shutdowns.

The shutdowns were frequent (at least once per day) and, because the phone had to be plugged in before it could be restarted, were incredibly frustrating.

I took it to an Apple Store. The Genius refused to acknowledge any fault. They ran the diagnostics which showed 82% and refused to replace the battery, even if I paid, as it was above their 80% threshold for replacement.

I spoke to the manager, and they stood firm. No replacement, even if I paid. I was extremely persistent and they simply would not budge.

The throttling resolved my shutdown problem.

It similarly showed 80+% battery health, but I showed them the battery charge history in Settings (dropped from 40% to 0% instantly) and they replaced it under warranty.

Happened a year and a half later, exact same scenario, and paid the ~$30 to get it replaced.

I suspect they didn't have any monitoring to detect or log the shutdowns at the time. But I find it extremely confusing why different Apple stores would have such different policies or manager discretion.

I may be mistaken, but I don’t believe there was any battery charge history (at least not accessible to users) in iOS at the time?

In any event, I am not sure the unexpected shutdowns would have manifested themselves as sudden reductions in charge. Once restarted, the iPhone reported a similar charge to before the shutdown.

I'd guess the date is a key factor, as I'm sure thousands of people showed up at the Apple store because they heard on CNN that their battery was broken.

At the time they just refused to even consider the possibility it was a genuine hardware issue. I got the lecture about batteries being consumable items, mine was somewhat degraded (82% health), etc. They suggested I do a software reset, etc.

I like to think maybe in hindsight someone at Apple HQ looked at the diagnostics from my Genius Bar visit as part of the decision to introduce throttling, and realised they were wrong.

The reason they did it was to prevent battery degradation and bad battery life by throttling the CPU. Except back then, iPhone CPUs weren't overperforming monsters they are today, so the slowdown was fairly noticeable. And when done without a notice or reason, you get a perfect publicity shitstorm.

In fact, this feature actually still exists for iPhones, except it now officially exists in settings and can be disabled. It throws a notification on yours screen and auto-activates if your battery degrades below certain level, but it can be disabled (so you can choose whether to prioritize performance or preventing battery from further degradation) by a simple click in a settings menu. And it also explains exactly and in very simple language what this feature does. It isn't hidden behind a million menus either, it is right there in settings => battery => battery health.

EDIT: to clarify, Apple throttling was not only done to prevent it from holding less charge due to battery degradation. Battery degradation to a certain level also led to iPhones rebooting randomly. And apparently it was not that rare of an issue, because the reason I posted this edit in the first place was due to seeing more than a few comments in this thread mentioning that it had happened to them.

Besides, it's not as if this is a strange policy. Apple never has arbitrarily replaced phone parts by user request, even with cash in hand, unless the techs could point to a specific problem. Try walking into an Apple store today and ask for a new screen without an obvious problem.. you will not get one.

> and having internal tooling that would deny a replacement (even at full retail price) if the battery was above an arbitrary health threshold (but still low enough to cause throttling).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25144761

I pointed out the absurdity of their double standard, and resolved to never buy an apple device ever again.

>If you're among those affected, your phone will randomly shut down and completely die, even though your battery indicator might have said you had plenty of juice left. It's not a simple system crash, because your phone will stay dead until you connect it to a charger.

We've seen reports of the battery dying from a charge as high as 67% to as low as 15% on both Android Marshmallow and Android Nougat. So it's not a problem with the recent Android update, and it's not as simple as the battery meter just being off by a few percentage points.

https://android.gadgethacks.com/news/nexus-6p-battery-random...

Google simply refused to fix the issue and settled their own lawsuit over it.

https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/11/16/nexus-6p-early-shut...

So which is better for the consumer? A phone that was never fixed or one that was?

Just a reminder to everyone in the U.S., it is illegal for a company to revoke an item's warranty if you open it up, have a third party fix it, etc. It's the exact same law that applies to cars: The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act

If you're in a state where one-party consent audio recording is legal, it's a good idea to always record your conversations with customer service.

The only thing we got out of this, is the Official battery replacement from Apple are now slightly cheaper at $69 for iPhone X+, and $49 for iPhone 8 and below.