Sometimes it is just a bad battery

https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2021/08/19/batt/

by wchar_t • 5 years ago

176 60 5 years ago

watt• 5 years ago

We need kind of consumer protection agency (with teeth) to advocate for "right to repair" and generally don't let corporations away with designing such lemons. (I mean Apple track record with swollen batteries, unworkable keyboards, bendy phones and ipads).

duskwuff• 5 years ago

I mean Apple track record with swollen batteries...

That's just what LiPo batteries do at end-of-life. Not specific to Apple by any means.

double0jimb0• 5 years ago

Australia has a great one.

jaclaz• 5 years ago

Somehow it is missing in the article how the "they" in:

They looked at the battery status screen which was still reporting that everything was fine, and said "it's the logic board".

call themselves "Apple Geniuses".

tootie• 5 years ago

It's a term of art.

CoolGuySteve2• 5 years ago

I had a similar problem with an iPhone 6. The battery page in Settings said the battery was healthy but the phone wasn’t lasting long and was benchmarking at about half the score it should have.

Coconut Battery said the battery was around 65% of its design capacity.

After replacing the battery the phone went back to normal, benchmark scores improved.

It’s really scummy that the phone was downclocking itself to lighten voltage but not informing me. This was all after the iPhone 6 battery scandal and software updates to show battery health.

derefr3• 5 years ago

If it was after the scandal, and you turned the battery-health protection OS “feature” off, then I find it extremely unlikely for it have been the OS doing that—actively lying about what that toggle does would have caused another, even bigger scandal.

Instead, it may have just been a direct, low-level interaction between the battery and the CPU — with the CPU saying “I need more power!” and the battery replying with “she canna handle any more, cap’n, she’s gonna blow!”

(Or more literally: the battery being unable to supply the spike voltages the processor needs in order to boost, and so the CPU’s VRMs noticing that the boost “isn’t working” [by getting browned out] and signalling the CPU to stop trying. Or, alternately, the battery heating up when trying to provide that power, due to increased internal resistance, to the point that the heat so produced, triggers thermal throttling in the CPU. Either way, a CPU that couldn’t get its highest frequency-scaling multipliers going for more than a few milliseconds before stalling and dropping back down. Which would tend to feel slower, and lead to lower benchmarks.)

CoolGuySteve2• 5 years ago

Yeah, every time I post about this somebody on here comes and tells me the Battery Health monitor can’t possibly be lying and that my lived experience must be wrong.

The Battery menu didn’t even present the togggle in the first place because it assessed my battery as healthy. Just like with Rachel here, the Battery menu seems to miss a lot of fucked up batteries. It’s not immaculate.

But if the voltage is not being supplied correctly I would consider that to be degraded “Battery Health”.

emsy• 5 years ago

I did this because my friends who were already there advised me that the company did not supply phones but did expect you to load a crapload of apps on to do your job.

Serious question: what if you don’t have a smartphone (I know several people) or simply don’t want to install work stuff on your private phone? Is this a prerequisite, do they fire you or how would this be resolved? Also, this sounds like a security disaster waiting to happen (I also know people without a passcode on their phone)

wffurr• 5 years ago

You insist that you won't do it unless they buy you one. Then you get labeled as a troublemaker, and fired for unrelated performance reasons.

franciscop• 5 years ago

As wffurr said, you have to pick your battles. I was in a similar situation: absolutely didn't want to install work apps in my personal phone, so when told to install a crapload of software I asked if the company provided phones. When they said no I said:

Sure, wait a few days since I am getting a new phone. Spent ~$80 in what is probably the crappiest no-brand Android I could find in Amazon with questionable preinstalled software. Cleared it with IT and that's what I use to test my work-related stuff.

In my location they could not fire me for requiring a phone for my job-related work, but didn't want to make trouble for $80, specially when I was already fighting for my holidays (a much more important thing for me).

toast0• 5 years ago

Also, this sounds like a security disaster waiting to happen (I also know people without a passcode on their phone)

Some of the corporate phone stuff will require a passcode of a certain length. When I was in this position, I had two phones, but the corp phone stayed in my bag, mostly off (would use it for tethering for work incidents when out of town, and as a backup 2fa device), and I ran corp email on my phone until it got too ornerous (outlook for android ate my battery life and/or was impossible to auth with); then I only checked from the corporate laptop, but outlook for macos would drain my battery in standby, so I couldn't leave it running and forgot to start it.

OTOH, I was established with seniority, so I could do whatever. I'm not sure a new hire could do whatever; especially outside of my group where we didn't really accept the corporate norms.

tetha• 5 years ago

Since US laws tend to be somewhat bonkers, a european perspective.

If you need some applications installed on a smartphone in order to perform your jobs duties, the smartphone is a work tool. This must be supplied by the employer if requested. In practice, our company offers two choices if your position requires this.

For one, you can be issued a company owned and managed phone. This phone is registered with the MDM and the MDM manages the installed software. Additionally, because the MDM can wipe the work phone after loss or theft, company data may actually be stored on the phone. The drawback is that you now have two phones.

Alternatively, there is a small number of use cases authorized to be done on personal phones with basic security enabled. For example, access to mails with a web browser, an authorized messaging client, or a TOTP MFA application, like google authenticator. These are fine, because they either don't store company data on the phone, or because they are not critical on their own. You can have my MFA token generator, because you don't have my password, for example.

So for example, personally speaking, I have to have a TOTP app around, a messaging app - threema for work - installed due to on-call and maybe duo in the near future. I consider those reasonable, especially because I have a TOTP app and something for oncall anyway. Or used to. RIP Firealert :( However, once I'm supposed to install teams, outlook or some of these, I'd balk.

axus• 5 years ago

Good opportunity to mention this niche subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/spicypillows/. I'm guessing her old battery wasn't spicy enough to merit a picture, the one pictured looks fine.

imglorp• 5 years ago

How often do swollen batteries lead to ... violent exothermic reactions?

ranger207• 5 years ago

If you stop using them they shouldn't. The swelling is to reduce the pressure to make a fire less likely. I think that if a swollen battery is disconnected, self-discharge should eventually drain enough energy that it's safeish

mutagen• 5 years ago

My singular experience with Best Buy as an Apple partner was similar to the experience described. Not much leeeway in handling things, no satisfactory resolution.

mapgrep• 5 years ago

My experience with Apple store is also similar to the experience described (actively making false statements, in my case about a laptop logic board).

rasz• 5 years ago

The process is designed to make you buy a new one.

jfoucher• 5 years ago

My car was behaving strangely recently. Sometimes when I gave it the beans it would pop up a flurry of scary error messages about the engine, that I had to take it to the mechanic to have it checked out and so on.

500 € later and the mechanic could not fix the issue.

Other times, just turning on the engine it would complain that some filter was almost full. And once, on a longer than usual trip, it gave up on me in a pretty steep incline and I had to stop on the side of the road, let it cool down a while, and turn it on again and it worked mostly fine if I didn't accelerate too much.

Then a few weeks ago it did not start at all. So I measured the battery and it turned out it was toast. I had a friend bring me to buy a new one and swapped it in.

The car started fine. But incredibly, it never again displayed any error messages and seems to be completely fixed!

Not really phone related, but yeah, sometimes it can be (surprisingly) just the battery...

s0rce• 5 years ago

When my cars give funny messages, or struggle to start (more obvious), if the battery is old (5+ years), I just replace it. Its a $100-200 and I can do it myself, better than paying a bunch of labor to troubleshoot ghosts and its up for replacement anyways. If the battery is new then its a bit trickier, but so far its often been just a battery issue.

sandworm101• 5 years ago

This is why diagnosis equipment always tracks voltage. Most sensors rely on voltage tied to some sort of variable resistor. If your battery/alternator is sending high/low voltages then those sensors will send false readings, leading to any number of random error codes. Put a multimeter on your system and check for any departure from the 12v standard (actually 13.8v) during operation. If so, replacing the battery is a good first step.

If your voltage is steadily above 13.8, then your regulator/rectifier is fried. Swap it out before it starts cooking your battery.

jandrese3• 5 years ago

The caveat of course is that battery measurements are only good if the battery is under load. I had a dead battery that was confounding me because every time I measured it the battery would show 13.5v but then the car wouldn't crank.

This is why shops have battery testers with a big resistive heater on the bottom. The good news is you can diagnose this with a pair of jumper cables easily enough.

In general though electrical problems are the hardest to track down, especially when it turns out to be a corroded or missing ground strap somewhere.

gamacodre• 5 years ago

Sometimes it's the battery (system) even when the battery is fine. My son spent something like $1200 chasing the ghosts of electrical issues in a Ford Expedition with multiple mechanics. And they did in fact replace the battery at some point in there, to no avail.

It turned out that one of the battery _cables_ was bad; enough corrosion had built up under the insulation that the voltage would do all kinds of strange things depending on the exact load on the system. $20 for a new cable fixed it all.

voakbasda• 5 years ago

I had the same problem after refueling once. Car had been running fine for hours and suddenly would not start

Turned out to be a bad ground connection. Fixed it on the spot with a wire brush to remove the corrosion and rust.

cgearhart3• 5 years ago

“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

I bought an old BMW some time back. I took it in to the dealership for an inspection before purchase and I mentioned that the A/C wasn’t working before inspection. They charged me what you’d expect (plus extra to diagnose _just_ the A/C) but gave the car a completely clean bill of health aside from the A/C, which they attributed to a bad blower motor.

I asked the seller to have that fixed before sale, and they took it to another shop who replaced the blower…and still nothing. That shop kept the car for 2 more weeks and came up with nothing for answers. They took it to another BMW dealership who inspected it for another week and came up with nothing.

So I turned to Google. Found a likely problem, but needed BMW dealership to confirm with proprietary tools. The BMW dealership had no idea what I was talking about. I had to literally tell them “can you plug in the foo widget and go to the bar screen and check the baz value shown there? Now can you hit Reset in the corner?” Magically, the A/C started working.

I’m not sure how “right to repair” plays into my story. My real point is that technicians are human and imperfect; troubleshooting is hard. It’s not necessarily a conspiracy that they make mistakes, nor is it personal that they believe the diagnostic data in front of them over some random person _convinced_ it’s a specific problem—even when it seems completely obvious once the problem is fixed.

sixothree• 5 years ago

I grew up in the Deep South. Stupidity is a weapon of malice.

There is no mutual exclusivity. They are interdependent in many ways.

toss1• 5 years ago

Right, as in the naturally occurring stupidity perversely sometimes produces good results, thus reinforcing the stupid behaviors, which ultimately become weaponized...

hinoki• 5 years ago

Hanlon’s first corollary: sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.

ip26• 5 years ago

With cars specifically, shops get paid to replace the blower whether or not it fixes the problem, while troubleshooting doesn't really pay. As a result there's a significant incentive towards scattershot parts replacement as a diagnostic tool.

I'm not saying it's done out of malice, but incentives drive behavior. You'd probably only develop solid diagnostic chops in the shop if the shop placed "bids" on fixing an undiagnosed problem, betting they can figure it out & fix cheaply.

prova_modena• 5 years ago

In my experience with tech-heavy luxury vehicles like BMWs, dealerships have a relatively small time window from when the vehicle is introduced to when their knowledge about that vehicle drops off sharply. For example, I would trust a BMW dealer right now to work on a 2018 car, but I would take a 2000 car to an independent specialist.

One reason is turnover in dealer mechanic staff. Independent specialists tend to be more stable and have a genuine interest in and affection for the older cars of a particular brand.

Another reason is that most new luxury brands are highly focused on leasing brand new cars or getting customers to trade in on the latest model. They really only want to sell brand new cars at the top of the depreciation curve. People who own older cars will usually not buy them from the dealer and tend to not use dealer mechanics (often because the dealer is the most expensive option around). So dealer mechanics see less older cars, and service managers largely don't consider owners of older cars to be good/profitable customers that they need to keep happy.

A related issue that causes poor experiences like you describe is the "book time" job scheduling/pay system used by most dealer mechanics. This system favors a "parts swapping" approach where mechanics try to fix problems by quickly installing new components with a minimum of diagnosis time. This gets expensive for the customer due to dealer parts costs and strongly disincentivizes thoughtful, time-consuming diagnostic procedures and research. There is also usually an informal seniority system in dealers where the senior mechanics will take the easy "gravy" jobs that can be completed quickly but cost a lot. Junior mechanics will get stuck with the difficult, hard to diagnose jobs that suck up a lot of time and reduce a mechanic's earning potential. So you end up getting the least qualified mechanics working on tricky, unprofitable issues like yours.

To be fair, these issues aren't exclusive to high end vehicles, but they are especially noticeable at this market segment.

cgearhart3• 5 years ago

This is what happened in my case. Not my first older German car, nor my first experience with the dealer. I knew what I was getting myself into. :-)

I don’t hold it against them. In fact, I think it confirms my original assertion that there’s no malice involved.

ploxiln• 5 years ago

This kind of thing is what makes some software engineers think they can solve problems or have an informed opinion about almost any other field :)

Sure there are experts in every field who really know their stuff, but 95%+ of the people we run into day-to-day just aren't that good at their job and don't pay much attention to what they are doing. So with a bit of research, experimentation, and logic, we can figure out stuff that should be other people's job that they can't seem to do. (... but the average software engineer probably isn't any better ;)

generalizations• 5 years ago

It's also what makes doctors|lawyers|physicists|$person_who_survived_rigorous_schooling think they can "solve problems or have an informed opinion about almost any other field." I think the reality is, 'smart people are smart'.

Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/793/

jandrese3• 5 years ago

"Right to Repair" would hopefully mean that instead of that diagnostic tool being a BMW proprietary exclusive there would be some open source tool with the same functionality that you could load on your phone and connect to the $10 ODBII reader you bought off of eBay to solve the problem.

Already there are tools that do most of the basic ODBII functions, but some brands are bad about hiding away specific codes in $50k+ tools as a way to extract money from shops and funnel customers to the dealers.

cgearhart3• 5 years ago

The tool is actually already available (maybe a gray market thing though…), but it’s windows-only and a little pricey. I’m not convinced that “right to repair” will result in custom open source software for every smart fridge in existence, and I don’t really trust average folks to make good decisions if everything was open to all anyway.

ksec• 5 years ago

My biggest problem of all is the company aren't updating their internal system with these sort of information. If you happen to meet a technician who really really knew his craft, 99.9999999% it has nothing to do with the training provided by the company. But it was his dedication and enthusiasm to solving the problem for their customers.

In the very early days Apple Store has a similar internal system where Genius gets to report and share these sort things. I think it was written by an employees as well. Pretty sure now that thing is gone.

zeusk• 5 years ago

With BMW however, you can get the factory tools - so you didn't do your research well. They're also available from BMW legit www.bmwtis.com aos.bmwgroup.com

Just search for ISTA-P, ISTA-D, INPA, E-SYS and realoem, TIS, ETK for parts (you can get them for free* too)

malchow• 5 years ago

Swelling jelly rolls have a real competitor in the very near future:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-to-build-a-safer-more-energyde...

sdfsadfjaslj• 5 years ago

I had a nearly identical issue with an iphone, and it was the battery. The apple store employee was sure that the battery was fine because the "diagnostic" didn't show any battery problems. But after insisting for half an hour that I wouldn't leave with anything except a battery replacement, they gave in and swapped the battery. Worked perfectly afterwards.

adrianmonk• 5 years ago

I accidentally discovered a good diagnostic test for swollen batteries:

(1) Remove phone from case and place on a very flat, smooth, hard, clean surface. (Granite countertop, glass coffee table, etc.)

(2) Give the corner of the phone a sideways flick with your finger.

(3) Does the phone spin around and around and around like a top? If so, it may have a swollen battery.

This probably doesn't work for every model of phone, but on mine, I noticed the phone's newfound ability to spin much earlier than I could easily see visually that the back of the phone was bowed.

ChuckMcM• 5 years ago

That is inspiring me to replace the swollen battery on my first generation Surface Book screen.

slownews454• 5 years ago

I never get these articles. The writer always seems to take a super long and complicated path to the solution. Who has time for all this.

If I think it's the battery, I go into the Apple store, ask for a battery replacement, pay and leave. $49 for an iphone 8 or so.

You can set the apt up online, usually takes 2 hours.

What am I missing?

seaknoll• 5 years ago

That some people like learning how to fix things themselves?

slownews454• 5 years ago

Then why go on and on about how stupid apple is. Sure, they may not give you a free battery etc, but maybe just schedule the apt and do the standard replacement if you want to? This guy goes to best buy and then apple.

Did they literally turn down his offer to pay the $49 for a replacement?

jatone• 5 years ago

the fact that is exactly what the writer did.... and they refused?

G3rn0ti• 5 years ago

If you read the article you would have learned that the Apple store staff was trying to convince her into buying a new iPhone instead. They told her they would need to swap the iPhone‘s mainboard.

slownews454• 5 years ago

I understand that - they are doing a script - no health check problems on other components -> go to mainboard. I don't fault them for that.

That said, I've never had a problem just saying things like sounds great, I'd love to pay for and try replacing battery first. Done.

Next time I go in I might try this as an experiment actually. Just ask, could I get a battery replacement

rachelbythebay• 5 years ago

No, I’m the one missing something. It tends to make people assume I don’t know what’s up technically.

Based on your experiences, I am going to assume you are not in the same situation. You will likely have better results for an otherwise identical request.

Have a good day.

haihaibye• 5 years ago

I've never had technicians be sexist to me but they've definitely been condescending and think I don't know what I'm talking about.

They didn't refuse you service, because you never explicitly asked. I think if you just said "please just take my money and replace the battery like I ask" they almost certainly would have.

nonbirithm• 5 years ago

One time I bought a replacement battery for my ThinkPad, only to have it "die" after only a few hours of use - on A/C power. It wouldn't even turn on anymore. I dismantled the whole thing and pored over it for days, before thinking to remove the replacement battery and run it on A/C power with nothing in the slot. Then it started working again.

lamontcg• 5 years ago

Thought my old NAS was going bad because the cheap power transformer I bought off of Amazon went bad (after the old one failed completely). Guess it wouldn't put out the wattage.

I actually bought a whole spare diskless NAS off of ebay, and wound up only using the transformer that came with it ($150 or so for a $15-ish transformer).

Sometimes it is just a bad battery

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