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https://www.ifixit.com/News/apple-is-locking-batteries-to-iphones-now
By activating a dormant software lock on their newest iPhones, Apple is effectively announcing a drastic new policy: only Apple batteries can go in iPhones, and only they can install them.
If you replace the battery in the newest iPhones, a message indicating you need to service your battery appears in Settings > Battery, next to Battery Health. The "Service" message is normally an indication that the battery is degraded and needs to be replaced. The message still shows up when you put in a brand new battery, however. Here's the bigger problem: our lab tests confirmed that even when you swap in a genuine Apple battery, the phone will still display the "Service" message.
It's not a bug; it's a feature Apple wants. Unless an Apple Genius or an Apple Authorized Service Provider authenticates a battery to the phone, that phone will never show its battery health and always report a vague, ominous problem.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @01:28PM (7 children)
I'll take even odds that official Apple batteries are the same as the $5 Chinese battery (except labeling and packaging).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday August 08 2019, @01:39PM (6 children)
Don't forget quality control. The $20 batteries may be the same, the $5 batteries are quite possibly came off the same assembly line as the Apple ones, but failed quality control.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @01:58PM (5 children)
> Don't forget quality control. The $20 batteries may be the same, the $5 batteries are quite possibly came off the same assembly line as the Apple ones, but failed quality control.
How does that Koolaid taste? Is there enough sugar in it?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday August 08 2019, @02:21PM (4 children)
Hey, I'm no Apple fan, but there's a wide world between drinking the koolaid and wishful thinking in the other extreme. Is a $60 Apple battery worth it? Almost certainly not. But pick pretty much any phone you want and check the battery prices: they probably span around $5-$30 for unbranded models, and the $5 ones are almost always going to significantly underperform. Lower capacity, lower durability, higher failure rates, etc.
There's a minimum cost to building quality components - buy from the cheapest end of the spectrum and you're deep in the brambles of deceptive labeling, remarketing of quality-control rejects, etc. Even amongst the honest manufacturers, you can usually cut manufacturing costs by at least another 20-50% by lowering manufacturing tolerances and generally cutting corners. In which case they'll superficially seem the same at first, but will almost certainly degrade much more quickly. Heck, cheap capacitors are one of the leading cause of motherboard death - not because they perform any worse initially, but because those lower tolerances lead them to mechanically fail much sooner.
The old adage that you get what you pay for isn't always true - there's plenty of bad actors willing to overcharge you for sub-standard merchandise. But what is fairly certain is that you won't get any *better* than you pay for.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @02:44PM (3 children)
Some guy in china did a youtube comparing the cheap batteries with the more expensive ones. They were all pretty much the same. The $5 battery may be a used/repackaged one but that's about it.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday August 08 2019, @03:05PM (2 children)
Ahh yes, some guy on youtube. Always a reliable source. Besides, you wouldn't expect to see any difference between high-quality and low-quality batteries in a brief test anyway, at least not beyond deceptive labeling - it's the long-term durability that's primarily sacrificed by cutting corners. Just like used - when a large portion of the operating life has already been expended.
All I know firsthand is that I've bought several cheap batteries when money was tight - and a lot fewer mid-tier batteries when it wasn't. And that the $5 battery that claimed to have 2x the capacity of the OEM model didn't even reach a full 1x (not that I ever expected it to - but it was super cheap and I was about 50% sure I'd need to replace the whole phone after it sat, charging, in a puddle overnight when I could least afford it).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @03:15PM (1 child)
Just let the guy have his quadriple bypass at Havanna General Hospital.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @02:49AM
> ... have his quadriple bypass at Havanna General Hospital
You might want to re-consider the example you chose?
http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2015-10-09/cuban-medicine-achieves-over-95-heart-surgery-survival-rate [granma.cu]
Certainly other services in the "third world" may not be up to "Western standards", but many are as good or better. YMMV, do the research in advance!