Iphone batteries might be causing overheating
WHILE APPLE FANBOYS struggle with the reality that the fruit themed toymaker's latest Iphone 3GS sometimes gets hot enough to discolour the plastic, Wired thinks that the problem might be due to the battery.
Wired said that there have been only a few complaints, but Aaron Vronko of Rapid Repair, which performs teardowns of Iphones and Ipods, said overheating is likely an issue due to faulty battery cells.
He is predicting that the overheating issue could result in massive recalls of Iphone 3GS units, since the dodgy batteries are from very large production runs and this could mean that thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of Apple's latest technogeek fetish devices might turn out to be faulty.
Part of the problem is that Apple had planned for a nice little revenue stream by refusing to let punters replace their own Iphone batteries, hardwiring the things so that you have to take the unit in to the Apple store for battery replacement.
So, if the Iphone 3GS battery goes wrong like this, Apple will have to recall and replace the whole unit.
Apple PR is not saying anything at the moment, as we would expect it to do at this point. What it will be doing is hoping that not enough people experience any battery problems, so the issue can be safely dealt with without having to make any public announcement or recall.
Back in 2006, Apple had to recall its Ibook and PowerBook G4 notebooks because battery cells provided by Sony were causing some batteries to explode.
And in August 2008, Apple issued a recall for defective Ipod Nanos, which had caused three fires in Japan.
Meanwhile Apple fanboys have been rushing to share with the world their technical expertise on the white French phone discolouration. Their expert opinions have been that it must have been left out in the sun too long because they claimed there is nothing inside the Iphone that would leave that shape.
However, Vronko told Wired that the pictures of discoloured white Iphones he has seen reveal the outlines of the battery, something we would think an 'engineer' would know. So we can't help but think that Apple fanboy 'engineers' defending Jobs' Mob on websites are probably kids who own a Gameboy and think they are technology wizards. µ
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shouldnt that be:
rushed development and insufficient testing causing overheating!
While I love OS X and most Apple hardware I will not buy their non removable battery crap. These people can not even pull off the battery on these expensive devices and if they short out it is toast. Nope, this only supports my belief that battery operated devices should be user friendly/removable.
Apple lies about their own health, let alone how honest they are about their products'!
M$ may not make the better electronic consumerism goodies but they surely lie better.
be a limited problem. Wife and I got our new 3G S units and are heavy users and experience no issues.
I saw many complaints of iphones 3g and iphones from the first generation (some unlocked and jailbroken, some NOT), with firmware 3.0, that got ultra hot (well, not ultra, only hot, compared to the usual temp) and started lossing battery like crazy.
maybe not only the 3gs battery is faulty, but the new firmware too.
Here's a thought Nick, fucking grow up and report some news without sounding like some teen bedroom geek talking about fanbois and the like. Christ you must be 40ish, how about acting like it. if the iPhone has a manufacturing problem that's certainly news but ffs by all means give us your opinion but at least try and be impartial.
Oh how I'd snigger if Apple do have a mass recall. That'd teach them to make batteries non-removable! Maybe then they'd start asking themselves why almost no one else in the world hardwires batteries...
Isn't the EU bringing in a new law soon about how all batteries are to be consumer replaceable? Sounds like a good idea to me.
BTW does any suppose that the irrate poster Gavin has an overheating 3GS?
Apple will apparently be releasing a fix for this soon - http://bit.ly/5GCn0
of my HTC Magic has never gone above 35c :)
I wonder if Apple has included a CPU temperature sensor and throttling? From my own work years ago on embedded systems I can imagine this scenario:
1. Badly behaved third party application causes high CPU loading
2. High CPU loading increases power draw
from battery
3. As battery gets warmer, internal resistance and self heating increases.
If this is correct, the design fault would be with the motherboard, not the battery. The old Powerbooks with the first Li batteries had ASICS and temperature sensors built into the battery case for protection, and I wonder if this has been left off to save money.
The other iPhone problem, of course, is that the case is badly designed to dissipate heat. Polished plastic is about the last thing you would choose to encourage convection. The Palms, with their matt metal cases, were much better designed in this respect.