Apple drops battery price $50

If customers hang on to their phones (or hand them down after renewing them) rather than replacing them, is this good for Apple?

I passed on my Apple watch to a relative who didn't want the watch because he just didn't like wearing a watch. But he is an Apple fan of the iphone. So I learn now he is considering upgrading to the watch 3 and passing the watch on to another family member.

Most people don't want new and better because they believe what they have is good enough UNTIL they try new and better. How many of those would say, take the new one back and give me my old one? Not too many I think.
 
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Now Apple says the $29 deal is effective immediately. That is pure damage-control now !!

Now the question is, will their geniuses refuse to replace batteries on phones that they claim aren't affected ? I know that 3rd-party benchmarks don't mean anything to Apple, but CPU Dasher X says my CPU runs at 1129 mhz when it's at 100% charge (and lower but I didn't keep track). As the battery level goes down, the CPU drops to 839 mhz, and now, at 30% charge, it's only running at 600 mhz. This CPU's default clock speed is 1400 mhz.... Before any of this controversy came out, I could FEEL that it was running slow. I had to wait on the phone while doing different things and these weren't super-CPU-intensive tasks. One I run into frequently is when I open the phone app and recents, I tap the name I want to call back and while my finger is moving to the spot on the screen, it refreshes/updates the screen, adding more recent calls, and I end up calling someone else. Another example is it takes 10 seconds to select an image, share it to Messages, then wait until it allows me to start typing a recipient's name. Our daughter's iPod touch 6th-gen does this same thing in 3-4 seconds !!
 
I passed on my Apple watch to a relative who didn't want the watch because he just didn't like wearing a watch. But he is an Apple fan of the iphone. So I learn now he is considering upgrading to the watch 3 and passing the watch on to another family member.

Most people don't want new and better because they believe what they have is good enough UNTIL they try new and better. How many of those would say, take the new one back and give me my old one? Not too many I think.

So did Apple send you a cut?
:)
 
I'm guessing Apple is breaking even at that $29 rate.

Sure I did. Just because it doesn't line up with your made-up number of $70/hr doesn't make your guess or my guess right or wrong.
When you guessed that they were breaking even at $29, you must have neglected to consider a reasonable overhead. According to PayScale.com, Apple techs make about $17/hour and geniuses make $21/hour. I have no idea who usually performs this procedure as there isn't an Apple Store within 50 miles of me. Overhead costs typically range from 150-250% of the employee's wage or salary. Apple's facilities overhead is probably at the high end but their insurance is probably a little above average so I'll go with 200% overhead.

Doing the math on a 30 minute repair, their "burdened" cost to the business is therefore between $41 and $63 an hour. Add to that the cost of the battery and the cost of processing the "sale" (not part of overhead as it is a function of the number of sales) and Apple is surely not breaking even.
 
I wonder if Apple spends even 30 minutes replacing the battery in an iPhone 6/6+/6s/6s+ since they probably use something like this: First look at Apple’s iPhone screen repair machine in action as it comes to Best Buy & other retailers [Gallery]

They show a picture of the rig that holds the screen off to one side (I was talking about something like this in the other thread):
r-8.jpeg


Since the 7/7+ has the seal it probably takes a few minutes more to replace the battery.
 
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Not the same, but we had a screen/digitizer replaced on our daughter's 5s and the shop called me ~40 minutes after we left to tell us it was done. I doubt they started working on it immediately and also probably "tested" it after the work was done so the actual hands-on repair time could have been a lot less.
 
The battery replacement time in mine took about this:

Get my tools out- a few seconds.
Remove two Pentalobe screws near the Ligntning jack- a few seconds
Pull the screen up from the bottom. - about a minute with suction cup and pry tools
Remove the metal covers to the ribbon cables and the ribbon cables and battery cable - about 2 minutes
Pry up and remove the battery from it's place glued in - about 30 minutes. I literally destroyed the battery in the process.
Clean up the remaining sticky rubbery glue- about a minute
Put new battery in and connect all ribbon cables about a minute
Replace the metal covers with the tiny micro screws- about 2 minutes (7 screws)
Replace screen and two Pentalobe screws - less than a minute

Restart phone boot up. About 2 minutes.


My guess is they have a better way to remove the old battery to save quite a bit of time.

So the longest time in the process was getting the old battery out. I used a heat gun to soften the glue but it still was quite difficult. Without the heat, I would say getting the old battery out would be nearly impossible without damaging the phone case. As I stated before, Making sure the old battery was nearly dead was key to preventing a major fire. Even with mine near zero charge, it sparked and sputtered and smoked as I bet the battery trying to pull it out. Had I known the company would be doing the replacement for $29 while I wait, I would have let them do the repair. Some things just aren't worth messing with at that price.

Also, please note that the only reason I didn't just get a new phone is because I didn't like the screen on the X and the 8+ was too expensive for what I get. Maybe next year. Sometimes, it's worth it for the new technology but I can wait another year to spend $1000+ for a new do everything smart phone / high speed camera / 4K screen for 360 VR / mobile computer.
 
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Hey Roland- I could see that jig working great if it included a heater to warm up the back side of the iphone to make the glue under the battery real soft. While removal of the screen wasn't a big deal, time wise, a few minutes could be saved not having to fiddle with it.
 
Approximately two weeks ago I stopped by our local Apple store and asked to have my almost 3-year old iPhone 6's battery replaced. The Tech ran the tests and determined that my battery had seen its fair share of charge-recharge cycles, so he ordered the battery and told me I would receive an email when it came in.

I received the email on Thursday and this morning I swung by the mall to drop off my iPhone. Two hours later I have my iPhone 6 back, but I think I'll need to live with it for a week or so to see if performance levels are back to "like-new". So far, so good.
 
I took my 6Plus in to the Apple store on January 4 before I left on vacation, they said 2 weeks to order a battery, which was fine as I would be gone 2 weeks. My sister took hers in that day too. She got a message a week later that it would be late March to April before 6 plus batteries were available.

I had switched to my MotoG5splus before leaving as the 6 was just getting too slow. Sunday Jan 21 I got a call from Apple that the battery was in and I could swing by anytime to have it installed. I took it in on the 23rd and two hours later it was done. It definitely runs better and I barely use 25-30% during the day now.

I’ll see how it handles a real workout again in a few weeks when I start taking more video again during my nephews baseball games, along with my normal photos, texts and calls during the work day.

Newer phones do outperform it, even with the new battery. The Moto is a lot faster, but I need the WiFi calling as the G5splus acts just like my old Note 4 did and doesn’t automatically connect to the microcell if there is a hint of VoLTE. ATT being their normal buttheads and not allowing WiFi calling on the G5splus even though it supports it.
 
So Apple continues to have the final word on if your battery “needs to be” replaced? Even though I’m paying, albeit at a lower rate?

Mine is fading. I hope to replace the battery next fall, before the next iPhone comes out, and give it to my MiL.
 
So Apple continues to have the final word on if your battery “needs to be” replaced?
As I understand it, Apple will replace your iPhone 6/6+/6s/6s+/7/7+ battery on request for $29. If your iPhone is under AppleCare/AppleCare+, the battery has to "fail" diagnostics to be eligible for a AppleCare replacement at no cost.

In my case, my iPhone 6 is three years old. Since I charge it nightly, the old battery should have over 1,000 charge cycles; I wasn't worried that Apple would not replace my battery. Apple has said that once you replace the battery under the $29 program it would cost the normal $79 price to replace it again.
 
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