Yup, and I haven't see a raft of other "bending phones" so just the usual rubbish.

I'm interested in where they can take the iOS software now with the additional real estate. We've already seen some ideas in the first version, but there's "room to grow"!

Had my first experience with ApplePay recently and was rather impressed. Will be eager to have this capability on my own device in the future. (borrowed someone else's iPhone 6 to use it).

Oddly now that the iPhone 6 also has NFC, the Google-Apple war quieted a bit to take aim at a shared enemy, CurrentC. It's been cited as the reason CVS and several other retailers shut down NFC payments (thus also disabling Google Wallet).

A small new detail in the 8.0.1 update glitch. Interesting to hear it was on the distribution side, though this makes me even more curious now.

Indeed. There's been a rare detente while we all focus on anti-competitive practices like this. And CurrentC's response to these issues came off as pretty scummy. Everyone involved is saying "well, there might be some way for both systems to co-exist in the future." Why wouldn't they be able to exist now? I thought they already were.

Regardless of the annoyance that ApplePay and Wallet have been blocked, it sounds like CurrentC is a pretty crappy payment method to begin with.

Doug, that upgraded model you've been waiting for is finally here:
https://twitter.com/travisgoodspeed/status/940263089982902272

Smiled a bit seeing that go across my feed this morning and thought of you

Lol reddit, amused that link had someone called "Adolf-Intel" participating. What a wonderful place that community must still be.

Have been meaning to dig into that situation a bit more when I saw it pop up at more trustworthy sites. My old 6s had the faulty battery issue which Apple is covering for 5 years. It makes me wonder if their attempts to address that issue in software/firmware first helped contribute to this new report. The behavior my phone would have is that it would hard shut off as if the battery was unexpectedly going to lose voltage immediately. Then waiting a few moments, would still power back up and boot fine, and come back with an estimate of 40% or so.

Since the fault was happening before the 20% low power mode option exposed to users, it was occurring while the phone was likely still allowed the system to drive the CPU to it's maximum power usage. And this was a generation of processors right before Apple introduced their variant of big.LITTLE architecture. With the 6s still on sale as a new device due to Apple's amazing lead in the CPU space, it may see an update to address this in the coming month or two.

The really funny thing, is that the phones are SLOW even when on AC power.

And it also affects some (all?) laptops as well, again on AC power, even with the old battery unplugged.

Weird.

The take-away I got from it is that, if one has a an Apple product that is feeling more sluggish than before, REPLACE THE BATTERY before thinking about an upgrade to the latest shiny toy!

Or at least follow the lead from that article and check the CPU clock speeds using the free (and almost free) tools linked in the article. This is a really easy issue to verify, regardless of the web site used to publicize it.

Pure speculation on my part ...

Perhaps the underclocking (when an old battery is in use) is in part to reduce thermal stress on the aged battery. Especially in a mobile device, the heat generating components are not far from the battery mass. If heat adversely affects an old battery and increases degradation risk or accelerates aging rates then underclocking may be helpful for squeezing some residual longevity from a battery that is already declining.

I seem to recall a modern iPhone will reduce clock rates as the device internally warms beyond some level. I have had sun exposure overheat an iPhone enough that it switches to a survival mode, only showing a warning message regarding temperature.

There is enormous variation in how different individuals use their iPhones, and use the batteries. I often encounter people who regularly run the iPhone battery down to near zero before recharge. Some cannot be bothered to charge it more frequently, others think it is ‘healthy’ to deep cycle the battery level often.

Even when all iPhone batteries meet a high quality bar from the factory, variations in device usage will induce battery longevity and stamina variability.

The drive for ever improving device functionality in very compact form factors inevitably puts a stress on battery lifespan and capacity.

My understanding is that the external battery case made by Apple for the non-Plus size iPhone provides intelligent battery management of both the external and internal batteries. I suspect the overall calendar lifespan of the internal battery is substantially extended when the battery case is in use.

I will admit I am in the camp of preferring a couple more mm in iPhone design thickness to provide more battery capacity. I always use a shell case on my iPhone, another mm or 2 would not be a problem. For me. I can see that many people value device thinness, and certainly thin devices (not just from Apple) sell in huge numbers.

Sadly there is no Apple iPhone Smart Battery case for the iPhone 8 or iPhone X.

It may look goofy, but it works so much better than third party cases. I wish Apple would open up the protocols used by it to third party battery case manufacturers so that other cases could be more intelligent with managing charge.

I used to try to use my iPad to listen to music outside in the summer. It went into survival mode enough times that I quit bother trying and resigned myself to listen to whatever came on next (iPad stays inside and the playlist just plays - if I want to listen to something else, I have to go in and change it).

Apple Watch can control music playback, both from itself and from the linked iPhone (from iPad I could not say).

I don’t use my watch for music, so not sure how much control there is over track selection.

All iPhone 7 cases work on iPhone 8 devices including the Smart Battery, though Apple isn’t officially stating compatibility. Likely to avoid folks trying to mix the case and wireless charging that the phone supports, but not the case.

And agreed on wishing they’d open the Lightning charging spec a bit more, even if it’s only via their MFi program. It feels like Apple is trying to balance their conservative views on safe battery charging/usage and have been wondering lately if that factors into their proper adoption of USB-C on the Mac side only (lower volume) vs sticking to Lightning on the iOS side of the hardware house. If anything, the iPhone X could have been the transition point had they felt it was the time.

Reading instruction manuals or searching good sites would have revealed why. Apple has printed this in the instruction manuals for any portable Mac they made in recent history with user removable batteries:


Been this way dating back to the old Powerbook era at least.

The above statement was changed for portables that have a sealed in battery to inform folks how to monitor battery health. Modern macOS detects potential battery failures and presents the alert to folks when service is needed. Any time Apple has discovered a manufacturing fault, the entire batch of machines possibly impacted gets an automatic warranty extension usually out to 5 years for any battery issues. Or longer in the case of their iPod Nano battery recall.

I've come to understand it's part of Apple's commitment to triple bottom line practices, specifically focusing on the environmental cost of their products. Better batteries get swapped less, and it requires less wasteful tooling changes to manufacture common chargers to share among a line of laptops for several generations. Part of that compromise means that they plan on the charger hitting peak efficiency when charging the battery, instead of ensuring the charger has the output to supply the machine with efficient power during the extremely rare times a customer pushes the system full tilt. This requires pushing all the components hard to get a Mac laptop drawing supplemental power off the battery. As for how much, it's varied between every model. Several common Windows laptops do the same and have similar info out there about the practice, and I believe there's tighter integration with Windows these days to report the clock speed changes.

I think in my history of owning Apple portables, I've only had a few occasions where I've seen battery drain while plugged in. This includes times I had the old Powerbook running two instances of a game making use of the GPU, while other activities were keeping the single core CPU busy, and my professional experience of building software on various Macs.

Good to know.
In other words, they undersized the AC adapters.

I would not entirely agree with that characterization.

Upsizing the entire power delivery system in a laptop to support continuous, unrelenting maximum power drain conditions for an extended duration does not fit with the requirements most laptops are tasked with.

It would require the power adapter to be larger and heavier, which for a portable machine is not a good thing. It could also require larger and higher heat output componentry in the power management system within the laptop. More weight, potentially less efficient overall power usage.

All that just to avoid calling on the battery during typically short duration ‘max computing’ events?

Portable devices always involve trade-offs. Weight, size, heat, battery durability, power consumption. Everything affects everything.

None of the laptops I have owned have throttled performance while the battery is removed. So I guess I just find it weird when one manufacturer bucks the trend, and Thinks Different.

It is a good way to do things (undersizing the power adapter), as it can result in smaller and lighter weight gear. And for notebooks where the battery is not hot swappable (all of Apple's stuff?) it makes perfect sense.

Cheers

Also, Apple ship a range of laptop power supplies of different capacities, all of which have the same connector (for the current range of models, mostly at least).

If I plug the PSU from my old MacBook into my current MacBook, it doesn't actually have enough power to charge the battery when all four cores are running at 100%.

Underpowered power supplies is not a thing limited to Apple.

Just to be clear, my MacBook has no problem charging with the supplied PSU when running flat out. So it is at least ahead of the Surface on that

Are you speaking of Mag-Safe power supplies or the USB-C power supplies?

Interestingly, with the USB-C ported MacBook models they are able to be charged with power adapters as meager as the iPad 10 watt brick (with laptop turned off). A traveler can charge all their portable Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, MacBook) using a single rather compact power brick (such as this Anker PowerPort + USB-C) , albeit at a modest (overnight) pace for the laptop. A single aftermarket power brick sporting both USB-C and USB-A ports works well for an Apple based traveler.

I was speaking mostly of the MagSafe ones. But the same applies to the USB-C ones, Apple sell more than one USB-C power adapter for MacBooks (and that is before you start considering the ones other people make).

The USB-C PSU that ships with the MacBook is not the same as the one that ships with the MacBook Pros. The MacBook ships with a 29W one, the MacBook Pros ship with a 61W one.

My 15” MacBook Pro has an 87 watt USB-C power brick

Some great research of existing data by the folks behind Geekbench is helping to show the two situations do indeed appear related:
https://www.geekbench.com/blog/2017/12/iphone-performance-and-battery-age/

(Amused that in the great tradition of these boards, we're discussing an iPhone 6s issue in an iPhone 6 thread, that was bumped iniitally for Doug to see a possible upgrade to his amazing smartwatch due to the years old parallel discussion of the Apple Watch announcement )

Will be curious to see what future iOS updates do in regards to this issue. Not as directly interested though as the 6s I had was sold prior to the announcement of the 8/X, though I do have one family member to look after with a 6s. No signs of the bad battery issue, and this performance gating to preserve the battery shouldn't impact them much.

https://www.apple.com/iphone-battery-and-performance/

Not a word about why they still throttle old iPhones even when running off the charger. And nice to reduce the battery costs for USA customers only. The rest of the world must wait another year.

[EDIT] Perhaps I found the wording in the Apple press release to be a bit confusing, and they may have instead meant that everybody gets the cheaper costs UNTIL the end of 2018. [/EDIT]

Perhaps an iPhone never ‘runs on the charger’.

The power management system is centered on the battery. The battery is the most trustworthy power source. It cannot be suddenly unplugged or decide (without warning) to reduce power delivery because another device was plugged into the next USB port on the charger.

Power from the USB charger would be used opportunistically to charge the battery and then supplement the current demand of the iPhone electronics. But that demand jumps up and down rapidly as screen comes on and cell radio powers up, plus the CPU and GPU demands, amplifier for the speaker, GPS, chip, etc.

When the battery becomes ‘chemically aged’ (Apple’s terminology) then the iPhone no longer trusts the battery to not voltage collapse without warning when power demand spikes higher, even when a charger is connected. So the revised software now avoids stressing the battery any more than it calculates the battery alone can withstand.

My take is that Apple is ‘doing the right thing’ here. Clarity, humility, and rather fair pricing on new genuine Apple batteries, installed and with an Apple battery warranty. This may cut into aftermarket replacement battery sales.

Aftermarket batteries may be of lesser quality and creating their own issues for Apple’s reputation, especially if they impair ongoing iPhone reliability more than a genuine Apple battery.

While the current policy statement says the battery replacement discount runs until end of 2018, Apple may well create an ongoing ‘discounted’ battery replacement program. It would engender goodwill and ensure the average ‘older’ iPhone continues to perform well and reinforce the brand.

Very recent models of iPhone (8, X) have had significant increments in stated run time over iPhone 6 or even 7. Apple may be increasing baseline battery stamina in part to further delay onset of performance reductions driven by battery aging.

SWMBO and I are iPhone users, used iPhone users, I with a 5S and she with a 5. The 5S is still on the original battery, which will be 4yrs old in March, and while it does get me through a typical day, it does not get me through a travel or conference day of heavier usage. SWMBO's 5 has had the battery replaced, thanks to ifixit for parts, tools, and instructions.

Both phones meet our needs, though the 5 stopped getting updates in July, and SWMBO is limited be the 16gb. Offering $29 battery upgrades (ifixit charges $20 for the battery alone) will likely be enough to sway us into upgrading to 6S by the end of 2018. Holding off that long because we're not heavy users - an out of date flagship phone does us just fine, I'm cheap, plus we hoping to build a new house in 2018 (which will be far from cheap).

I might have had a point when I started this post, but I'm not sure what it was now...

All iPhones were flagship models at some point (iPhone 5C excepted). Anything older than a 5s is running 32 bit software which means it is not getting iOS updates. No more security patches from Apple. And app updates from independent publishers may also wither away.

Stay off public WiFi and do not click on untrusted web links.

The time to sell the old iPhone 5 was much earlier in 2017 before Apple announced that iOS 11 would not support 32 bit hardware. Residual resale value in the iPhone 5 model I imagine has shrunk since.

I guess there are no third-party OS builds of any kind available for those? Android phones at least have LineageOS to keep them current with OS and security updates. It would be pretty cool if something like that were also available for the iPhones.