Apple iPhone

[Morrey]

First non-beer related post from me, but HBT members are typically a good sounding board. At the risk of sounding paranoid or nuts, looking for advice or at least an opinion.

So I have an Apple iPhone 6 which is in 100% flawless condition and has been protected from day 1 with an Otter Box Defender case. Never had a minutes problem in 2 years, and keep it decluttered so it is not slow running. I let it run down and recharge to properly cycle the battery so it wont develop a memory if this is possible with this particular phone.

Anyway, I get a message from my carrier (Verizon) that my iPhone 6 is now eligible for an upgrade. Phone has always been flawless, so I don't see any urgency to buy something new like the brand new iPhone 8 which would be a huge $$$ upgrade for another 2 year contract. I keep getting message after message to buy this new iPhone 8.

Anyway, this SAME week I start getting these messages to upgrade, my phone suddenly dies with 55% battery life left. I plug it up to charge, it comes on while plugged in and all seems fine. Unplug, head out door and phone dead as a hammer.

This is continuing and the phone keeps just going black and no response. I THINK they may be sending over some signal to trash my phone so I'll go out and upgrade and drop a pile of cash on a new phone. If I am crazy please tell me. At least I make good beer if nothing else...lol.

 

[SlitheryDee]

I hear this kind of thing a lot, but honestly I think it's just coincidence. The simple answer is that 2 years of charging and discharging is hard on a lithium battery. It's starting to lose power and causing the phone to shut off prematurely. If you had the battery replaced you could keep rocking the old phone for another 2 years probably.

 

[pshankstar]

I agree with SlitheryDee that after 2 years of charging the battery will eventually cause issues of holding less of a charge and what not. And I agree it appears to be coincidence too. I have the iPhone 6 too, charge it only after it's below 20% but closer to 0% as possible with the occasional quick charge here and there. So far so good, but I will say the latest iOS update to version 11 is quirky and seems to have a lot of bugs right now.

Anyhow, you could take the phone into an Apple store (I hate going there myself) and ask them to test the battery and get it replaced if you decide it should. I believe they charge around $75 for the battery replacement. That's what I would do if I didn't want to buy a new phone too. Just make sure you make an appointment before just going to their store.

 

[Morrey]

Great advice. While our reasonable minds say 2 years is a lot of cycles on the battery, that coincidence of it happening right at my upgrade eligible time is ironic for sure.

BUT, with that said, I honestly didn't know this iPhone 6 could have the battery replaced. I hope this can be done locally and not need to be sent to a repair center by mail. Good responses and thanks much...I'll take it in for evaluation.

 

[Murphys_Law]

My wife and I both have the same issue with the 6. It will just randomly shut off even though battery is >50%. And it seems like the phone is a lot slower now, as well.

 

[Morrey]

My wife and I both have the same issue with the 6. It will just randomly shut off even though battery is >50%. And it seems like the phone is a lot slower now, as well.

Just looking at Apple website (paraphrased): The battery in this phone will give good service thru 500 charging cycles...so that is less than 2 years, now mine is a bit over 2. After that the battery life slowly goes downhill. Battery replacements are around $79. Many reported problems with the iPhone 6 suddenly shutting down even over 50% remaining power.

 

[azmark]

Most lithium batteries do not like to be deep discharged, keep them topped off.

Older phones don't get slower, you just keep loading newer and newer OSs and apps on them.

 

[AkTom]

You may also need a new SIM card. My i5 was doing the same thing. Changed card, no more problems for a while...

 

[SlitheryDee]

Older phones don't get slower, you just keep loading newer and newer OSs and apps on them.

I WILL accuse apple of updating older phones with later version of iOS that they have no business running. I have no doubt at all that all the people complaining about their iphones running slower than when they got them are accurate. It's hard for me to say that apple is deliberately making their older phones slow to push people to upgrade though. They have a reputation for supporting older devices for an extremely long time, and OS updates with their corresponding exploit patches and bug fixes are all part of that. I think it just works in apple's favor in the end when people notice their phones getting more and more sluggish with each update.

 

[CRZ]

It's the battery, I had 2 6plus with same issue. I replaced 1 battery and all is good with that 1. The other one has SIM card connection issues and I just use it with WIFI. Phones are only made to last 2 years now. I'll continue using it plugged in and have hands free Siri for home automation controls.

 

[hoppyhoppyhippo]

You're slightly crazy in that you're not getting a signal that crashes your phone. Or a text code or anything like that. But planned obsolescence is a thing. Apple builds the battery to only last so long (and it isn't easily replaced by the user) the phone is built to run OS build for 2015 but the OS build for 2017 is built to run on a phone that's by now at least 50% faster, so you get the latest OS and it fails.

For what it's worth, there's a reason I like Android, and it has to do with Google's openness. Because of phone manufacturers and carriers the latest version of android doesn't always get to a phone, but Google will keep updating the core apps so you still get the latest improvements and not the other issues.

Hopefully someday in the future we'll be able to get Modular phones that let us upgrade the RAM or processor as we can with a PC. But I'm less sure of that happening by the day.

In the interim you can take your iphone to someone you trust who works on them they can probably replace the battery for like a 100.

 

[Morrey]

I did get a new battery and my iPhone 6 seems to have new life. Ironically, Apple is being raked over the coals for intentionally slowing down their older versions with updates that sabotage the phones.

Just as I originally thought that Apple was screwing with my phone (see above post 11^^^^^) so I'd buy a new one, this same sentiment was all over the national news this morning. I think, however, the phone simply needed a new battery after two years. Now that it has been replaced...all is well for $59 instead of hundreds for a new phone.

 

[Homercidal]

Two years is really pretty short amount of time to need a completely new battery. Understand that this depends greatly on how much you use it and the size of the battery in relation to it's usage, but one would think that the capacity of the battery would fall off gradually, not all of a sudden.

Few weeks ago we finally got resolution to a problem my daughter had with her iPhone. After she went to college she got an update. Then her phone started to suddenly die with well over 50%. Sometimes at like 85%. Took it to Verizon. They checked. Nothing wrong. Just a bad battery. I've never seen one that sudden dies at 85%. Two weeks later we are together again and I chat with Apple about this and he does a remote test and claims the battery is bad. It's covered under the protection plan we have through Verizon, so we go that night to a Verizon store and they order a new phone to be sent to her next day.

That was about a month ago. This week the blanket has been pulled back and we can see what Apple has been doing. I still believe it to be VERY suspicious that her phone seems pretty normal for a 2 year old phone, then sudden after an update it dies at well over 50%. They either screwed up the program that they claim prevents the phone from suddenly dying, or they were intentionally slowing down older phones to get people to buy new models.

We've had several Android phones and haven't had this kind of problem before (I admit I generally purchase Motorola phones with really big batteries...). In fact, before this time, even the APPLE phones we've had haven't acted like this.

It would not be difficult for them to create a program that can re-calibrate the capacity percentage of a battery as it gets older. It's been done many years ago.

 

[schematix]

It’s the battery. Exactly the same thing I started having an issue with around 2 years - same as wife just started seeing too. I limped it around for 2 more years by keeping it constantly charged. In the end got I got a new 7 plus and after 2 months I haven’t even had the battery go below 50%.

Completely normal for these lithium ion batteries to go south rapidly around 2 year mark.

 

[Morrey]

I just read an article saying Apple was being sued for implanting or using an algorithm allegedly slowing down older phones. Something is rotten here and I smelled a rat back when my phone suddenly started shutting down at 75% after an Apple update. It had not done this before the update, then bam...it started shutting down everyday.

The other side of the coin is I had a new battery installed and the performance level is back where it was when the phone was newer. Honestly, I don't know what to believe but Apple is being sued over this allegation.

 

[MaxStout]

Given the way Apple runs its business I am too cynical to believe they were throttling BW of older iPhone users "to help them conserve battery power." Nobody expends company resources to "help" people with older products. If it truly was a feature and not a bug, they would've been up-front about it, and even touted it. But Apple did it on the sly, which leads me to believe it was merely a way to nudge customers to buy newer iPhones.