Hah. The last iPhone I had whose battery lasted more than 4 years was the original iPhone. Every iPhone or iPod Touch I've owned since then has lasted maybe two. (This is not true for all Apple products, though; I have an original iPad Mini that is still on its original battery, and I haven't had a MacBook battery fail since the polycarbonate days.)
The reason phone batteries fail is heat. You have a hot CPU and a battery that heats up when it charges or discharges, enclosed in a tiny little package, an
I don’t disagree with your general point about batteries. But it is a tad pessimistic, based on my experience - and, even if an iPhone’s battery fails that doesn’t mean the phone has to be tossed. Sure, I’d like a user-replaceable battery... but Apple does (*now*, at least) offer battery replacement for a decent cost.
And obviously Apple leads the pack with regards to software support for old phones. My 6S is still getting OS updates.
I'm not sure why folks are reading my comment to imply that a bad battery dooms the phone. I've personally replaced every battery that has failed. It's no big deal — just annoying as heck.:-)
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. By “the author” I was referring to the original article submitter. And the fact that (for the average consumer, anyway) most phones require the manufacturer to handle battery replacement certainly does make the process much more annoying than it needs to be.
What I can't stand about Apple products these days is that somebody on their hardware team got the hare-brained idea to solder in the battery on the iPod Touch to save a couple of cents per unit. On average, when doing a self-repair on that, you'l have to replace it at least twice, because you'll short the pins the first time and wreck the battery. I still don't understand why the third-party replacement batteries haven't gotten a clue and put an inline connector on the cab
What I can't stand about Apple products these days is that somebody on their hardware team got the hare-brained idea to solder in the battery on the iPod Touch to save a couple of cents per unit. On average, when doing a self-repair on that, you'l have to replace it at least twice, because you'll short the pins the first time and wreck the battery. I still don't understand why the third-party replacement batteries haven't gotten a clue and put an inline connector on the cable so you can solder the cable on and then plug it in. The way Apple built these things is just an incredibly bad design, ranking right up there with the Wallstreet Powerbook in my mind.
Anyway, after my experience replacing one of those soldered-in batteries, if anybody asks me if I'd recommend any iPod Touch model right now, the answer would be "not in a million years". There's just no excuse for such half-a**ery.
...and no reason to try and cheap-out, either.
iPod Touch battery replacement (out of warranty) is $79, including the battery. (A little cheaper, $49 or $69, for iPhones, probably because of the connector).
Because of what I'm using the device for, I couldn't go without the device long enough to do a mail-in repair (they don't fix these things in their retail stores, for obvious reasons), so paying Apple $79 wasn't a realistic option for me. Paying Apple to do the repair would have meant spending $199 for a new one to use in place of the old one, and spending $79 on top of that for the repair, at which point it would have been $79 cheaper to just scrap the old one.
Because of what I'm using the device for, I couldn't go without the device long enough to do a mail-in repair (they don't fix these things in their retail stores, for obvious reasons), so paying Apple $79 wasn't a realistic option for me. Paying Apple to do the repair would have meant spending $199 for a new one to use in place of the old one, and spending $79 on top of that for the repair, at which point it would have been $79 cheaper to just scrap the old one.
That said, you can get replacement batteries for as little as $12, and the official repair costs $79. I could kill a LOT of batteries before it would add up to the cost of one official repair. It is not just a little overpriced. It is massively, embarrassingly overpriced, and almost all of the cost is labor. That's why it costs $79 for that repair, versus only $49 for an iPhone battery (or even less from third-party repair shops) is because these things are so horribly close to being irreparable by design. And because the repair costs is so expensive, it really isn't economical to do the repairs at all. You can spend $80 for the battery, or you can spend $120 to buy the same model used on eBay. If I didn't absolutely require a 6th generation or later device, I could get a refurbished 5th generation for less than the cost of the battery repair on a 6th generation. But I digress.
When I decided to do that repair, it didn't sound like it was going to be nearly as hard as it turned out to be. I do minor electronics repairs all the time, so soldering a couple of leads should be no big deal, right? Well, I was expecting three bare wires soldered to pads with adequate spacing. Instead, I found a weird little self-stick pad with tiny holes that look like the ones in those tabs that they spot weld to lithium batteries, and maybe 1mm pin spacing without any kind of vertical separator between the pads. And you're supposed to put enough solder on those individual pads (which are NOT pre-tinned) to make them stick to the board below without bridging the contacts. That's just insanely hard for any human being to do.
Basically, I would give the iPod Touch a repairability score of -1000 on a scale of 1 to 10 because of the battery alone. And that's coming from somebody who regularly recaps electronics and other similar PCB work often enough to not think twice about cracking open expensive electronics and rebuilding them. Apple's battery connector design is a special kind of awful, like nothing I've ever seen before, and like nothing I ever want to see again.
In hindsight, I don't actually need the battery. I'm using it on continuous external power, so I might be better off just removing the battery entirely and using it that way. It powers on just fine with no battery, whereas with a bad battery, it forces you to wait for the battery to be charged to a certain point before it powers on; this can take up to half an hour. I guess Apple is a lot more concerned than I am about a sudden shutdown corrupting the flash storage. *shrugs*
Either way, that's another project for another week.
You can't be without an iPod for a week? Get an iPad to run your keyboard-rig instead. The batteries in those last for freaking-ever!
And a $12 battery is not going to be anything you want to stick into, well, anything. Again, your problem can be summed-up as "Penny-wise and Pound-foolish"...
Yes, soldering those flex-strips in stuff is a pain. It just takes a little practice, though. But the more compact things get, the harder they are to repair. Apple stuff certainly isn't alone in that truism!
If your application can be ok on "shore power", I'd say that may work out best for you. In most laptops, having no battery can limit performance, because the OEMs depend on the battery to help out the power supply with instantaneous power spikes; but an iPod pretty much doesn't have that sort of Applications; so it should be ok.
But you really do need to stop thinking you're being clever buying trash-bin greymarket batteries and then complaining that they keep failing. Duh!
Hmm... I wonder what phone he forgot... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:5, Interesting)
Hah. The last iPhone I had whose battery lasted more than 4 years was the original iPhone. Every iPhone or iPod Touch I've owned since then has lasted maybe two. (This is not true for all Apple products, though; I have an original iPad Mini that is still on its original battery, and I haven't had a MacBook battery fail since the polycarbonate days.)
The reason phone batteries fail is heat. You have a hot CPU and a battery that heats up when it charges or discharges, enclosed in a tiny little package, an
Re: (Score:5, Interesting)
I don’t disagree with your general point about batteries. But it is a tad pessimistic, based on my experience - and, even if an iPhone’s battery fails that doesn’t mean the phone has to be tossed. Sure, I’d like a user-replaceable battery... but Apple does (*now*, at least) offer battery replacement for a decent cost.
And obviously Apple leads the pack with regards to software support for old phones. My 6S is still getting OS updates.
Regardless of all that - doesn’t Samsung and
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure why folks are reading my comment to imply that a bad battery dooms the phone. I've personally replaced every battery that has failed. It's no big deal — just annoying as heck. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. By “the author” I was referring to the original article submitter. And the fact that (for the average consumer, anyway) most phones require the manufacturer to handle battery replacement certainly does make the process much more annoying than it needs to be.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah. That makes more sense. :-)
What I can't stand about Apple products these days is that somebody on their hardware team got the hare-brained idea to solder in the battery on the iPod Touch to save a couple of cents per unit. On average, when doing a self-repair on that, you'l have to replace it at least twice, because you'll short the pins the first time and wreck the battery. I still don't understand why the third-party replacement batteries haven't gotten a clue and put an inline connector on the cab
Re: (Score:2)
Ah. That makes more sense. :-)
What I can't stand about Apple products these days is that somebody on their hardware team got the hare-brained idea to solder in the battery on the iPod Touch to save a couple of cents per unit. On average, when doing a self-repair on that, you'l have to replace it at least twice, because you'll short the pins the first time and wreck the battery. I still don't understand why the third-party replacement batteries haven't gotten a clue and put an inline connector on the cable so you can solder the cable on and then plug it in. The way Apple built these things is just an incredibly bad design, ranking right up there with the Wallstreet Powerbook in my mind.
Anyway, after my experience replacing one of those soldered-in batteries, if anybody asks me if I'd recommend any iPod Touch model right now, the answer would be "not in a million years". There's just no excuse for such half-a**ery.
...and no reason to try and cheap-out, either.
iPod Touch battery replacement (out of warranty) is $79, including the battery. (A little cheaper, $49 or $69, for iPhones, probably because of the connector).
https://support.apple.com/ipod... [apple.com]
I used to be an electronics tech, and I still won't mess with it myself. Not worth it.
Re: (Score:2)
Because of what I'm using the device for, I couldn't go without the device long enough to do a mail-in repair (they don't fix these things in their retail stores, for obvious reasons), so paying Apple $79 wasn't a realistic option for me. Paying Apple to do the repair would have meant spending $199 for a new one to use in place of the old one, and spending $79 on top of that for the repair, at which point it would have been $79 cheaper to just scrap the old one.
That said, you can get replacement batteries
Re:Hmm... I wonder what phone he forgot... (Score:2)
Because of what I'm using the device for, I couldn't go without the device long enough to do a mail-in repair (they don't fix these things in their retail stores, for obvious reasons), so paying Apple $79 wasn't a realistic option for me. Paying Apple to do the repair would have meant spending $199 for a new one to use in place of the old one, and spending $79 on top of that for the repair, at which point it would have been $79 cheaper to just scrap the old one.
That said, you can get replacement batteries for as little as $12, and the official repair costs $79. I could kill a LOT of batteries before it would add up to the cost of one official repair. It is not just a little overpriced. It is massively, embarrassingly overpriced, and almost all of the cost is labor. That's why it costs $79 for that repair, versus only $49 for an iPhone battery (or even less from third-party repair shops) is because these things are so horribly close to being irreparable by design. And because the repair costs is so expensive, it really isn't economical to do the repairs at all. You can spend $80 for the battery, or you can spend $120 to buy the same model used on eBay. If I didn't absolutely require a 6th generation or later device, I could get a refurbished 5th generation for less than the cost of the battery repair on a 6th generation. But I digress.
When I decided to do that repair, it didn't sound like it was going to be nearly as hard as it turned out to be. I do minor electronics repairs all the time, so soldering a couple of leads should be no big deal, right? Well, I was expecting three bare wires soldered to pads with adequate spacing. Instead, I found a weird little self-stick pad with tiny holes that look like the ones in those tabs that they spot weld to lithium batteries, and maybe 1mm pin spacing without any kind of vertical separator between the pads. And you're supposed to put enough solder on those individual pads (which are NOT pre-tinned) to make them stick to the board below without bridging the contacts. That's just insanely hard for any human being to do.
Basically, I would give the iPod Touch a repairability score of -1000 on a scale of 1 to 10 because of the battery alone. And that's coming from somebody who regularly recaps electronics and other similar PCB work often enough to not think twice about cracking open expensive electronics and rebuilding them. Apple's battery connector design is a special kind of awful, like nothing I've ever seen before, and like nothing I ever want to see again.
In hindsight, I don't actually need the battery. I'm using it on continuous external power, so I might be better off just removing the battery entirely and using it that way. It powers on just fine with no battery, whereas with a bad battery, it forces you to wait for the battery to be charged to a certain point before it powers on; this can take up to half an hour. I guess Apple is a lot more concerned than I am about a sudden shutdown corrupting the flash storage. *shrugs*
Either way, that's another project for another week.
You can't be without an iPod for a week? Get an iPad to run your keyboard-rig instead. The batteries in those last for freaking-ever!
And a $12 battery is not going to be anything you want to stick into, well, anything. Again, your problem can be summed-up as "Penny-wise and Pound-foolish"...
Yes, soldering those flex-strips in stuff is a pain. It just takes a little practice, though. But the more compact things get, the harder they are to repair. Apple stuff certainly isn't alone in that truism!
If your application can be ok on "shore power", I'd say that may work out best for you. In most laptops, having no battery can limit performance, because the OEMs depend on the battery to help out the power supply with instantaneous power spikes; but an iPod pretty much doesn't have that sort of Applications; so it should be ok.
But you really do need to stop thinking you're being clever buying trash-bin greymarket batteries and then complaining that they keep failing. Duh!