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The battery may not be defective, but the device is. It previously performed acceptably, then started performing poorly, with no indication to the user that there was an action needed to restore acceptable performance. Nobody expects a magic battery fix, but they do expect to be told that their device has been slowed down.

The device is fine, and so's the battery.

What I'm suggesting is that you consider the 100% performance mark to be far side of the performance curve at the end of the expected life of the device, so 80% capacity after 1000 charge cycles or 2 years, give or take.

With that as your baseline ("100%"), if you can make the phone perform better than the that in the first few years you're offering an early-life performance boost over the baseline, not a late performance degradation. Otherwise, the far end of the curve is the performance level you'd have to artificially limit the device to in order to avoid any change in performance over time. The phone was defective before the update was shipped as it didn't appropriately account for this normal battery degradation curve.

Apple was basically giving you more performance than you paid for, for free, early on -- not stealing your performance down the line.

The only time you should be told your battery is defective is if it reaches the 80% mark in less than 2 years or 1000 charge cycles along the defined anticipated performance curve. I do agree, however, that a battery replacement should be available at a fair price to those who want one.

Your definition is not common to the market. Users can’t possibly anticipate whether the phone will provide acceptable performance when it reaches this ‘100%’ state. The devices are reviewed based on as new performance. The device provides adequate performance for some time, subsequently stops providing adequate performance, without notifying the user that there’s a way to restore acceptable performance. This is extremely user hostile behaviour.

I would literally rather my phone started randomly turning itself off at 30% power. At least that way I might take it for repair, have the reason diagnosed, and get it restored to acceptable performance, rather than simply assuming that software has moved on and I have to live with a slow device or purchase a new one.

For the sake of argument, let's go with your framing: the device starts out at "120%" performance, then degrades to "100%".

The argument others have raised still applies. If Apple had informed users about the transition from 120% to 100%, some portion of users would have enjoyed the 120% experience so much that they would have replaced their batteries in order to get back to 120%. Apple concealed that option by not informing users about the change.

The problem is a battery engineer can't seem to explain this to people here who are ostensibly smart people, though that does somewhat go out of the window when apple is the subject it seems. How on earth could they be expected to explain this to everyone?

Everyone here understands the behaviour of the battery. At issue is the way the customer experience is handled on top of that behaviour. Pretending otherwise is simple condescension.

Apple has already fixed the problem in a satisfactory way, so presumably it wasn’t impossible after all.

The initial state is what the devices are reviewed on, and bought based on. And that's really the only reasonable approach, you can't really delay the reviews until the model is already dead and buried.

> That is how batteries perform at a certain age.

Ok, and customers should still be informed of whatever it is that you think the situation is, and they should be allowed to purchase a replacement.

> This feature is designed to always get the most out of a battery. Is that really something to complain about?

They should have still told the customer and allowed people to buy a replacement.

> I guess this is where it's a perspective issue.

No. My perspective is not that. Instead my perspective is that the consumer should have been told about that, and offered the ability to buy a replacement.

This issue impacts literally every phone ever sold.

Manufactures can hide it any number of ways, but a new battery is always better even if your phone is exactly 1 day old. That’s what continuous degradation means.

> This issue impacts literally every phone ever sold.

No, actually, most phones did not release an update like this, deny the situation, and then also refused to let people purchase replacement batteries.

The issue is that Apple did this update, did not tell people about the whole thing, however you want to describe it, and then also did not allow people to buy replacement batteries.

All that tells me is that other phones aren't getting the most out of new batteries, and are instead limiting themselves to the performance of an old battery. But yes, I agree, they should have permitted replacements - in fact replacements should have been permitted at home. Batteries deserve to be user serviceable.

> All that tells me is that other phones aren't getting the most out of new batteries, and are instead limiting themselves to the performance of an old battery.

That's only one possible explanation.

Imagine two phones that can both draw 5 watts max. Phone A has a battery that can supply 5 watts brand new, and phone B has a battery that can supply 10 watts brand new.

It's true that phone A is "getting the most out of new batteries", and phone B isn't. But phone B isn't "limiting itself to the performance of an old battery". The 5 watt limit is there for efficiency and heat reasons, and it just so happens that the battery is never the limiting factor.

Is there some reason to think that's the case? Batteries are pretty consistent technology, roughly equivalent across manufacturers and all sourced from a pretty small pool of OEMs. If that's the case I'd love to know more!

Lithium ion chemistry can vary things significantly, but I was picturing simply putting in a larger battery for the hypothetical. The motivation is more hours of runtime, but as a side effect you have more peak watts available.

Now you’re paying to change voltage, which adds cost and heat. Sure, users don’t really notice that something’s wrong, but they get a worse device that costs more money and needs to heat throttle anyway.

Not a higher voltage battery. A physically larger battery. More watt-hours and more watts.

Voltage drop is minimally impacted by battery size, it only helps in that the battery would have less usage, but it still ages for time passing.

> Voltage drop is minimally impacted by battery size

That makes the job easier! Just cut the battery in half. Let's say the original battery could handle 5 amps before the voltage drop got too bad. If a half-size battery can handle 4 amps, and you put in two of them, now you can handle 8 amps.

Most phones aren't redlining the battery when brand new. There's degradation but it only affects battery life. By the time you have performance impacts you're typically in "replace the battery" territory.

> Batteries are consumable parts like tires and ink cartridges

Then let users replace them like other consumables.

I don't disagree with you at all. I'm a hardcore right to repair advocate, and frequently criticize Apple's lack of reparability.

An ink cartridge at 50% still performs about the same as at 100%, it's just got less life in it.

A better comparison would be an unevenly worn toner cartridge, where someone keeps going "I don't see the problem, it prints just fine on the sides!".