Is that a bulge in your pocket or... do you have an iPhone 8+? Apple's batteries look swell Apple has said it is looking into claims that the batteries in its new iPhone 8 Plus phones are swelling and cracking their cases. A number of fans from across the world have reported problems with their shiny handsets, with some posting images on Twitter. The first reported swelling came from a Taiwanese owner who posted …
"Given the views of iThing owners about their iThing"
I was reminded in person of just how silly they can be earlier this week.
In an office, iThing owner asks me for the WiFi key, so I input it into his iThing for him. It claimed to have a good signal strength (and we were only about 10-15 feet from the router through some very thin walls), but it failed to connect. I tried again, being more careful when inputting... same problem, then a third time.
At this point I grabbed my own phone to check if everything was as it should be - mine was connected no problem. I suggested he go out into the hallway and just tell it to connect again and see what happens - and after a couple of attempts it connected.
He then commented on my phone, suggesting I should get an iPhone because of how good they are.
Er... yeah. No thanks.
(Note: I've no idea which model it was - one of the larger ones, certainly, but beyond that, pass.)
"Yawn... funny we have that same thing in my workplace but its a Samsung that wont connect to wifi easily"
Congratulations, AC! You win today's prize for missing the point by such a huge margin.
The point wasn't "Oh look, iThings have trouble connecting!"
The point was "Oh, look, an iThing owner proceeded to tell me how good iThings are, immediately after having a problem with his iThing in front of me."
As a very long time Windows Phone/Mobile and Android and Symbian user I bought my first iThing SE recently out of curiosity more than anything. It’s turning out to have better signal reception, better call quality, better battery life than any smartphone I’ve owned since my Nokia Symbian around 2010.
The only annoying thing is daft things in the OS such as a no back button and pressing a physical key hard twice to pull up the task manager in order to shut down apps....but miles better than faffing around with Symbian on that Nokia!
Who said it had no effect? If an app in that list is running, then swiping it away will kill it. The app may or may not be running though. It is not a task manager and should never be considered a way to close an app. Killing a app that has hung is one correct usage, the other is opening an app you have recently used.
Just using empirical evidence in a company that has hundreds of access points and thousands of users/devices I do find the most problems with Apple devices connecting to WiFi. This is both Macbooks, iPhones and iPads. Not noticed any newer models have too many issues yet but there does seem to be some strange thing with Apple devices that they can sometimes be troublesome unless you use an Airport.
The other thing that I find a real pain with them, create an e-mail connection to an Exchange server. The iPhone asks for the basic information then tries to connect. If it can't you just get a message telling you, basically, something went wrong. But What? Can't it tell you that it could connect to the server but couldn't log in or that it could log in but couldn't get access to the folders etc. I shouldn't have to go to the server to troubleshoot why it can't connect.
FYI - regarding battery swelling...
it's caused by the buildup of H2 gas inside the LiPo battery casing which is typically a somewhat soft material. There are a couple of things that can cause it:
1. mechanical damage, particularly during assembly
2. serious undervoltage with excess current being drawn over a long period of time.
The 1st is a production issue, fixable by swapping out the battery. The 2nd is a design issue, NOT fixable without re-doing the circuit board.
You can mitigate '2' by keeping your unused phone on the charger all of the time.
The reason it happens has to do with the chemistry of an LiPo battery. If you discharge it too much, the polymer breaks down and releases hydrogen.
LiPo batteries can self-discharge, so don't expect a charge to last more than a couple of month because of that. Additionally, if there is undervolt protection circuitry in the phone, it will draw a small amount of curent regardless of the state of the internal protection switch.
I recently designed such a circuit for a system where the entire circuit board + battery is potted in plastic, meaning you can't change the battery [it's waterproof though]. the batteries were having swelling problems. This was generically solved by an EXTREMELY low current battery undervolt cutout circuit, which draws only 10 microamps [or so] in the 'cutoff' state. It leverages a few other things to limit the current and the number of components.
/me takes a bow for the miraculous electronics engineering, a truly 'clever' hack, heh.
In the mean time, you STILL get trickle discharging of the LiPo, but you also get self-discharging. 10 microamps is about what a typical self-discharge is, and you can generally leave a LiPo on a shelf and let it self-discharge and not have it swell up like a pillow, even it it reaches zero volts. [it may still happen but from what I can tell, it's much much less frequent].
On the other hand, if you draw as little as 100 microamps from one of the smaller batteries [it may be more for a larger one], they tend to swell up like pillows once discharged down to 0V, and will do so within a month of being discharged, more often than not. So you can't just set it on a shelf unless your undervolt protection totally cuts off the battery [or gets trickle current down to about 10 microamps].
I've got on battery I've fully discharged at the ~10 microamp rate, and then re-charged, a few times. It's lasted for MONTHS this way, no apparent ill effects. It's as flat as a pancake, like it's supposed to be.
So I'd say Apple's problem is PROBABLY on the circuit board, and retro-fixing that is basically impossible, unless they can wire in an undervolt circuit between the battery and the circuit board somehow. Good luck fitting it in the case. I bet it's really *tight* in there.
/me withholds a comment involving a cherry
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Do I win £5?
No, because you didn't use proper formatting to create a link in your comment (e.g.https://static5.arrow.com/.../lt1389_0699_mag_fig.1.jpg), therefore your link did not work.
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If the user could swap out the battery the 'recall' would be a lot cheaper.
Give it a week. .. and some PR... undocumented feature. If your phone needs a new battery it will expose the device for easy disassembly. You can pick up a new one at your local Apple store for £#randomLargeValue.
"If your phone needs a new battery it will expose the device for easy disassembly."
That should raise its score on iFixit.com... Apple iThings are getting easier to take apart. All you have to do is plug it in to charge, or sometimes just open the box. That sounds even easier than removing a bunch of small screws!
If I had my way, every device with a battery would be required to provide instructions on how the user can change the battery themselves. This would require, of course, every device to have a battery that can be swapped. This rule would apply to phones, laptops, tablets, everything.
And if I also had my way, every phone must have a headphone jack. And while I have a wishlist, I would require every phone, tablet, and laptop to use an industry standard charger. A USB-C for phones/tablets and other low power devices and something universal for laptops.
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That's not the battery, it's the ego chip which by design swells up in relation to the excitement of the owner.
Think of this as a massive Technoboner brought about by over excitement, there is a fix and that is to imagine you're shopping in Primark/Walmart and you receive a phone call only to find you own a windows phone and your ringtone is a popular song that everyone knows.
How someone with a silver goddamned badge asks this site to "grow up"? haven't you been around the place long enough to see the authors here won't ever grow up, and that is the whole joke?
--EDIT--
Just read the "smug" comment by the same commentard a bit down the line.. it seems some people can't handle hearing blasphemous accusations against the Holy iShnny and no amount of badges can change that.
”Have some sympathy - he's worried that his IPho is not quite as svelte and slender as when they first met...“
I had an BYOD iPhone SE. Loved it. Company issued me with a 6S and made it mandatory (device standardisation). Svelte or not, I hate that thing. The SE in my view is a beautiful piece of design (my view), the 6-8 series are just lazy design.
So I couldn’t really care less about svelte. I do care about good design, and if my phones a bit chubbier than the rest but well designed, i’m a happy individual.
On a related note, can’t believe the number of frenzied fuckdroids on this forum; panic-downvoting anything that might be remotely supportive of the fruity arch enemy. Well, enjoy your data slurping insecure adcarriers while you can, until all your data is belong to the Googleship and you can’t move without being spammed to death.
In the meantime I’ll keep using my reliable, secure, functional and fast 6S until Apple stops supporting it in 2021 or so, at which time I’ll sell it for $n*10 (where n is the value of the spec-equivalent Android), and buy a new one.
So downvote all you like bitchezzz, you might bleat here but you know it’s true.
Ok time for some facts of life. I have a passionate dislike of imbalance and unfairness - towards anybody, and anything. Yes that includes corporations. My opinion of Apple is generally positive (through both positive personal experience and through the devices my company manages), but I am very aware they are not perfect - and will recognise when this is so; as you can see if you read through my comment history. The WiFi/Bluetooth control Center buttons not actually turning the radios on and off is a good example of Apple ballsing up, as is the iPhone 6/6s/7/8 ‘what’s the fucking difference’ debacle. I am deeply disappointed in them here.
That said, I hate ‘Cupertino Idiot-Tax’ comments - it’s offensive to Apple owners (the Company couldn’t give a shit), and it’s also wrong, lazy and overused. As I went into in a previous post. This is my personal commitment to El Reg, every time one of their authors uses it I’ll ask them nicely in the comments to grow the fuck up.
Secondly - anybody that accuses Apple of having a smugness monopoly obviously hasn’t seen the Samsung commercials or launch events - which are just as bad.
Don’t want smug? Don’t buy a flagship phone from one of the big boys. They’re all as bad as each other.
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