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.
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.