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We believe there are other factors broadly impacting our iPhone performance, including consumers adapting to a world with fewer carrier subsidies, US dollar str
by CWSZ 8y ago
We believe there are other factors broadly impacting our iPhone performance, including consumers adapting to a world with fewer carrier subsidies, US dollar strength-related price increases, and some customers taking advantage of significantly reduced pricing for iPhone battery replacements.
Why spend $1,449 on an XS Max when you could have replaced the battery on your phone for $29?
- saagarjha 8y agoiPhone XS Max starts at $1099, and it's a newer phone?
- colejohnson66 8y agoI’ve noticed that people like to spout the price for the highest tiered item as a reason for not buying a product. Like the original Apple Watch with the $10k Apple Watch Edition.
- raverbashing 8y agoYes please let me spend more on an "inferior product" (without a headphone jack) instead of replacing the battery Funnily enough I got an email about availability of the new models for a discounted price "for a limited time only". Maybe their prices will be reviewed?
- bdcravens 8y agoOnce you lose that giant bezel it looks really jarring on phones that still have it. As for the headphone jack, for many, it doesn't make the phone inferior any more than the MacBook is inferior for not including an ethernet port.
- sneakernets 8y agoWe once waited until the tech matured before removing older legacy components. Last I checked, Bluetooth audio still sucks, and Apple knows it, which is why they supplied a dongle to get around the justified complaints.
- bdcravens 8y agoI guess that depends on your definition of sucking. Between AirPods, random $10 BT speakers, my car, and a pair of Bose QC's, my phone (X) works well with BT, but I may not be a discerning audiophile.
- londons_explore 8y agoI have never found any pair of Bluetooth devices which can play audio all evening without at least one click or stutter.
- therealx 8y agoMy Sennheiser bluetooth monitors work just fine all night without clicks or stutters.
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoIt isn't even the clicks or stutters, though that can be annoying. It's the stickiness. I turn on my bluetooth speaker and ... it connects to a phone in the other room. So, now I have to walk through the house to find it and turn off bluetooth. Now I can connect to the speaker with my phone. Headphones, same issue, phone wants to initially connect to any other bluetooth device except the headphones in my hand. So, now I have to dig into settings, etc... I don't have that issue with 3.5mm jacks.
- threeseed 8y agoI have the AirPods, Sony 1000mx3 and Sennheiser Momentum and Bluetooth audio quality is perfectly acceptable to me.
- bigwheeler 8y agoAgreed. I can’t even get through a phone call without one of my AirPods losing the signal at least once.
- zozbot123 8y ago> Once you lose that giant bezel it looks really jarring on phones that still have it. And now the Iphone XR has brought the side-bezel back! It almost looks like a rubber case.
- int_19h 8y agoOnce you lose that giant bezel, you get it back immediately by putting that phone in a case. And very few people won't do it to a phone that costs several hundred dollars to buy, and that will likely suffer considerable damage if you ever drop it on any hard surface without a case.
- AznHisoka 8y agoJust one anecdote, but I got my battery replaced and initially my phone was super-fast. After a few months though, it slowed down considerably, and is now as slow as it was before I replaced the battery.
- sjburt 8y agoThe battery-protection performance throttling is either on or of, and you can check the status in iOS 12 (settings>battery>battery health). If it's off ("Peak performance mode") and your phone is slow, it's something else (bloated apps or web pages perhaps)
- isodude 8y agoDo you charge your battery 100% each day? That eats charge cycles like crazy. Never go beyond 80% and your battery will last much longer.
- eridius 8y agoI'm pretty sure this advice was obsolete at least a decade ago.
- londons_explore 8y agoNot true - lithium cells see most 'wear' when used and stored above 90 percent charge and below 10 percent charge. The effect is so dramatic that some manufacturers rescale the indicator so it isn't possible to reach those charge levels, and makers of electric cars won't charge above 90 percent by default.
- eridius 8y agoRight but we're talking about the whole battery, not individual cells. I thought "prevent the cells from charging too high or dropping too low" was standard practice these days for everybody, and so at the battery level the "don't charge to 100%" advice is obsolete.
- matwood 8y agoThat's one part. The other is that iOS 12 really did focus on speed improvements. For many (most?) people, an iPhone 7 with a new battery is still a great phone.
- graeme 8y agoAnd ios 11 may have shifted sales forward. I was still doing ok on ios 10 on my iphone 6. Ios 11 slowed it down (even with a replaced battery) so I got an iphone 8. Now on ios 12 my iphone 6 is fast again. But, I probably would have bought the iphone 8 by now anyway, just because of camera quality, etc. The speed trouble just pulled my purchase up by a year. (I even bought a stopgap SE in the summer of 2017) I suspect others also upgraded early in 2011 due to ios 11. Of course this situation is better long run now that its fixed. I'm so pleased with ios 12.
- jseliger 8y agoI replaced an iPhone 6 or 6s with a 7. I also find $1,000 just obscene for a phone. I'm a person could have afforded the OLED versions and chose not to.
- epanchin 8y agoI’ve just replaced a SE with a 7, couldn’t be happier.
- mattsidesinger 8y agoIn an attempt to get more mileage from my iPhone 6S and prolong a future phone purchase, I recently did the $29 battery replacement. I hoping that I avoid getting a new phone for another 2 years.
- function_seven 8y agoMy thoughts exactly. The iPhone 6S is still plenty fast, does everything I need it to, has a large screen, and a headphone jack. I have used the latest models and don't see any improvements worth upgrading for. FaceID is cool, but not enough on its own to convince me to upgrade. In previous cycles, my update from 3GS to 4S was a no-brainer (retina, massive speed improvement), as was the upgrade from 4S to 6S (lightning port, LTE, massive speed improvement, larger screen). Once I got my battery swapped, the phone was as good as new. And I still have a headphone jack.
- beamatronic 8y agoWhether it’s $29 or $79 for a battery replacement for an iPhone 6S, it’s still a good value proposition to get more years out of it. I’m planning to do the same.
- westoque 8y agoFrom someone having sweaty hands (Hyperhidrosis). FaceID is not only cool, but it’s a game changer! I always get frustrated when attempting to unlock my 6S plus 3 times, then ultimately being just asked for my passcode. With FaceID, everything just works smoothly/seamlessly as if there’s not even an authentication phase. If I knew this earlier, I could’ve bought the X sooner. Couldn’t recommend it enough.
- beezischillin 8y agoI'm in the same boat, I intend to keep my 7+ and X for quite a while - especially since there's nothing really interesting out on the market or any new killer feature on the horizon for now. Having recently deleted all my timeline-based social media accounts, I'd even consider switching to a smart dumbphone like the Nokia 8110 if it had WhatsApp and Spotify (WhatsApp is rumoured to be at least coming soon to KaiOS) and just get rid of the distraction altogether.
- jen729w 8y agoWas just talking to the family the other day about this. Every phone up to the 6 I had in my hands the day it was available, and that’s including the original iPhone which wasn’t available in Australia. We imported them and had to wait for a jailbreak until we could do anything with them! So yeah, iPhone nerd here. I’ve been rocking an SE for a couple of years now. Love it. Works. Quick enough. Small, robust. No plans to update. I think the novelty has worn off. They used to be these cool new toys. Now it’s just a phone. I want to spend less time with the thing as time goes on, not more.
- craigc 8y agoI totally agree with you. This also does not make any sense to me: > US dollar strength-related price increases A weaker dollar (due to inflation, etc.) is the reason that consumer prices increase. A stronger dollar in theory should make the prices decrease. EDIT: I understand that a stronger dollar means the prices in other currencies will increase, but I was referring to specifically the price in US markets. Pretty sure the iPhone prices in the United States increased as well.
- a_c_s 8y agoA strong dollar increases prices in non-US markets, which is most of Apple's revenue now.
- eisa01 8y agoApple raises prices outside the US when the dollar strengthens. Prices in Norway have gone up considerably in the last five years due to this
- craigc 8y agoMmm I should have clarified my comment. I understand that, but in this case the prices also increased in the US.
- function_seven 8y agoThe US price increases aren't being attributed to the strong dollar. The letter is referring to the reasons Chinese sales are weaker than predicted. The stronger dollar is one of those reasons. But I'm still a bit confused on it. How is Foxconn being paid? In dollars or in yuan? If the dollar is strong, shouldn't the BOM and manufacturing costs decline in lockstep with the Chinese buyers' purchasing power (relative to USD)?
- vel0city 8y agoI imagine the BOM and manufacturing costs aren't as big as paying all of those employees at 1 Apple Park Way, their IP holding companies overseas, or all their construction costs on billion dollar campuses they're building, who are being paid in dollars.
- baybal2 8y ago>Why spend $1,449 on an XS Max when you could have replaced the battery on your phone for $29? Just have to crack that digitally signed battery cable ;) Jokes aside, Apple been deliberately reducing their products' repairability since at least iphone 3. I myself had a side business of selling factory refurbished phones when I was an exchange student in Singapore from 2007 to 2009. Malaysian refurbishers told me that in the middle of production run, Apple deliberately began gluing their front glass to the display with impossible to undo glue to nuke any chance of profitable refurbishment. In contrast to "dumb" phones of Japanese brands, that were designed for extreme manufacturability, Apple's products are unique in that regard to be engineered with an opposite goal.
- scarface74 8y agoOr they could have glued the front glass to the display to make the display look better. That’s true for most modern high end phones and has been since 2012. https://ifixsmartphone.com/2012/11/16/smartphones-with-glass-and-lcd-fused/ https://ifixsmartphone.com/2012/11/16/smartphones-with-glass...
- baybal2 8y agoThey used an optical bonding gel before, but switched to an optically inferior glue
- lbotos 8y agoHi, I was someone who traded my 64GB 6s in for a 256GB XS. - $200 no questions asked buy-back - Better camera - Larger screen in a just about the same size form factor I expect to have this phone for ~4 years with probably a battery refresh in ~2ish. I went 4S -> 6S -> XS. I hadn't upgraded an iPhone in years, Apple has made the process extremely slick and painless. I was seriously impressed at picking up the new phone and being "good to go" in ~45 min when my apps downloaded. I'm sure I'm an outlier
- AznHisoka 8y agoOne thing that makes me hesitant on changing my phone is Google Authenticator. I still have some services using that instead of Authy. I got my secret codes but it will be a hassle to use them when the time comes...
- stygiansonic 8y agoSorry to go off on a tangent, but do you recommend Authy instead/because of this?
- elteto 8y agoI actually just completed a migration from Authenticator to Authy. I don’t have much to say except that it was pretty seamless. Sync between multiple devices works very well. I’m not a fan of the Authy UI but it does what I need. If you use a password manager that supports OTP tokens (lastpass with their authenticator app, 1password, bitwarden) you could just use that and remove Authy out of the picture.
- ihattendorf 8y agoYou really shouldn't be storing OTP tokens in your password manager. Yes it's better than nothing, but if your password manager vault gets compromised your 2FA does nothing to stop it.
- 8y ago
- joelrunyon 8y agoOr > Why spend $1,449 on an XS Max? Period. This is the cost of what an entry level macbook was...
- oflannabhra 8y agoBelieve it or not, some people get more value from their smartphones than from a laptop.
- sorokod 8y agoI would argue that such people didn't need a laptop to start with but did have a need to project the fact that they have money to spend.
- disishhsha 8y agoI’ve found that considering positive explanations for other people’s behavior helps me enjoy life.
- spiritcat 8y agoya but the xs max is faster
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]