My iphone 6, purchased a mere 5 years ago, started having battery problems again. This would be the second time it’s had battery problems, the first time being when they had that lawsuit. It got down to 84% and I decided I might as well send it in before it got down to the recommended 80% while I was on Christmas break and not expecting to leave the house. DH and DC1 both have phones, and I can text people using my iPad pro even if I can’t get calls.
So I sent it off (and immediately had a reporter want to call me, but we ended up zooming instead, which was nice because I was able to show him what I was talking about visually instead of using words). Last time I got a battery replacement, I think we went to the city, but I’m not planning on going to a genius bar until after I’m vaccinated!
It made it to California and then I got an email saying it needed $299.99 worth of repairs, though it didn’t give any other information. DH called the customer service link and they were like, yeah, the technician didn’t write down what the problem was so I can’t tell you. But they’re not going to replace your battery unless you give them another $300. You want us to send it back to you? And DH was like yes please. We’re certainly not going to get something repaired if we don’t know what it is being repaired for!
And three days later they still hadn’t sent it back, so I clicked the “please return to me” button when they emailed me to say we hadn’t told them what to do. That didn’t seem to do anything either, but on the day they said they’d return it if they didn’t hear from us, I got an email saying they were returning it. It came back and seems to be in the same working order as when I sent it, though I did have to switch off a bunch of personal data sharing that somehow magically got turned back on.
If this had happened before DH’s layoff, I would have gotten the iPhone 12 mini, probably a souped up version for like $900, given it to DH and then taken his iPhone 8 as my own. Now I’m stuck trying to decide if I should do that (maybe with a less fancy version for $750) or get an SE which is only $450. Right now I’m mostly at home with access to charging so the battery isn’t as bad a problem as it could be, so I might be able to put this decision off until the *next* iphone product comes out. But once I’m spending more time outside of my house, especially if travel is involved, I will definitely need something that can hold a charge longer than my phone currently does.
I’m irritated because I do not really ask much of my phone, just websurfing (including youtube), google hangouts, email, and occasional map stuff. I have only downloaded three apps (hotmail, hangouts, and google maps). I spend most of my time on Safari. I don’t need a fancy phone. My iPhone 6 was fine.
My friend’s iPhone 6S’s battery is dying and she’s getting a new one. I saw revanche complaining about her iPhone 6 on twitter. I have to wonder if there’s some kind of planned obsolescence thing going on that doesn’t care how much or how little you use your phone or when you bought it. It’s almost enough to make me want to try an Android.
Have you experienced planned obsolescence on your phone recently? How do you decide when to get a new phone? How do you decide which kind of phone to get?