1. Battery defects caused some of them to underperform, leading the battery management subsystem to shut down the phone due to voltage drop when too much current was drawn.
2. To work around the shutdown issue (very bad), Apple implemented throttling (IMHO less bad) in a new version of iOS, to prevent too much current from being drawn. They figured the throttling would be so light as to be unnoticeable to users, except...
3. Benchmarkers noticed the throttling, and all hell broke loose.
Battery defects are unfortunate, but the decision to make them not user-serviceable leads to a host of bad downstream decisions.
(Of course, making them user-serviceable also leads to a host of other difficult decisions, and I'm not just talking about opening the case. What happens to system design when you can no longer trust the battery's specs?)
My recollection is different. The batteries were not defective. They simply got old in terms of cycle life and once they were old enough, they could not support the peak current needed by the phones causing crashes. Apple shipped an iOS update that throttled the CPU frequencies of phones with old batteries and called it a stability update without explaining anything. Phones stopped crashing, but started to become slower. Then 12-18 months later, people realized how the update worked and there was outrage because of how Apple handled it. Then Apple shipped an update to give customers visibility into this, published documentation and offered to replace batteries that were below 80% capacity for $29 for a year.
I've owned multiple iPhones that I've kept for a long time. The iPhone 6 was the only one that shut down randomly, and the phone was only 2 years old then, so yes it seemed defective. After it did that once, it got throttled to the point of being nearly unusable for several months until Apple pushed an update to let me disable that.
Most users seemingly responded by just buying newer iPhones that didn't have this problem, before Apple even offered the $29 fixes. I got an old iPhone 5 instead, and it was fine. So I'm pretty convinced the 6 was just bad.
> “We found that a small number of iPhone 6S devices made in September and October 2015 contained a battery component that was exposed to controlled ambient air longer than it should have been before being assembled into battery packs. As a result, these batteries degrade faster than a normal battery and cause unexpected shutdowns to occur. It’s important to note, this is not a safety issue.”
> Pixel 6a owners can get $100 in cash or $150 in store credit. Alternatively, Google offers a free battery replacement with the same limits on phone condition.
This might be a different program, but NEVER use Google's trade-in program.
You might get lucky, but they use a third party to process the phones and they have ZERO oversight or control over them. It's extremely common to send in a perfectly working phone to get denied because it's DOA with whatever claim and google refuses to do anything about it because "it's an external partner"
It’s okay, but the cash is pretty tricky to get full value from if you’re not on your toes. It goes through the “Payoneer” service. The Payoneer terms aren’t entirely clear, but seem to imply that you’ll get charged an annual fee after a year if you keep the account open but inactive.
If you want the payment in non-USD, Payoneer takes a 2% cut on conversion fees - I figured I’d take the payment in USD, but neglected to do a full read-through of how the payment would happen - it comes as a wire transfer, and the bank I used has a 15 USD incoming wire transfer, so I got hit with that instead of the 2% conversion fee. (And the payment got blocked until the bank called me to inquire about whether I was expecting a wire transfer.)
I really would have just preferred a physical cheque in USD. (The mechanism with which I’ve received refunds for recalls from other companies that didn’t want to do internationalized payments.)
Not sure if it is different than mine but I use Payoneer to get payments through Fiverr, From my knowledge they don't really hold money but just transfer it to your available card. I have never been hit by a fee for inactive account (i've paused my gigs on Fiverr but not my Payoneer account for more than a year at this point)
The fees are quite real though, before I've moved to using BTC for payments i've been getting around 900~ while when i moved to BTC my payments went up to 1900~ thanks to no wire and skipping Fiverr's and Payoneer's cuts.
From the article comments, that only applies if your phone is pristine (I guess because opening the phone stresses the screen, so if the screen has any damage it'll exacerbate the problem). Also linked in the article, getting the cash may be unreasonably difficult even in cases when they have a credit card on file that bought the phone.
I just filled it out for store credit, and it didn't matter at all the condition of my phone (it's in horrible shape), I just put in the IMEI number and that was that. It could be different for cash, though.
Their website says I am "not eligible" but that doesn't tell me if my pixel 6a is impacted or not. It would be nice if Google would tell me if my phone is a fire hazard.
I get nervous when I see videos of people buying random Li-Ion/Po-battery powered crap from Teemu etc.
My personal policy for buying anything with such a battery: the seller must have a meaningful presence in my country and sell for at least like $10M/year.
First 4a, now 6a. At least they're giving 100 USD this time and 6a batteries not total dogshit like 4a and it won't turn into landline.
Annoying 150 USD store credit can't go towards something like Youtube Premium. Or multiple 6a credits can't be stacked on 1 device. Cause I'm never touching a pixel again.
Yeah, while I liked the pixel 4a, I just upgraded to a 7a because of this nonsense (thankfully I did not go with a 6a!) If they come for the 7a next year, I won't choose a pixel again either.
Sure, I could send it in for a battery replacement. and not have a phone for a week or two, and get my phone back or maybe not.
If its like the 4A updates, your phone will charge rapidly and discharge rapidly. And half the time the phone is charged it will say 100% and then go to 5%.
If only there were a way to quickly swap out defective, used batteries for new, safe batteries without needing to return a critical device to the manufacturer.
I think it's sad and funny that most of the replies to this assume the difficulty of the non-replaceable battery. For years, it was the way things worked. Smaller battery, maybe a spare in your pocket. Then the iPhone:(
I don't think it helps anyone to dismiss the difficulty involved in doing that in 2025 vs 2004.
I'm not saying it's not possible, of course it is, but there is some friction and difficulty especially if you seriously want to compete with Apple, Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi, etc.
Fairphone exists[0]. Nobody is in the market for either a Fairphone vs Galaxy vs Pixel.
I hate this "tabs and adhesive" business. I've had to replace batteries way more often than I've benefited from it being a couple millimeters smaller or marginally better sealed against being dropped into a puddle.
It takes about five seconds after a new phone is released for Chinese factories to design and start selling all sorts of accessories, including batteries. High quality ones too.
The average consumer needs to be able to swap it without doing deep surgery on the phone, and that's on the phone's manufacturer.
I just ran into this on my wife's phone. I started removing the tempered glass screen protector to replace with a new one and the whole screen came up. The battery had started to puff up enough to lift the edge of the screen.
Readit News
What happened was:
1. Battery defects caused some of them to underperform, leading the battery management subsystem to shut down the phone due to voltage drop when too much current was drawn.
2. To work around the shutdown issue (very bad), Apple implemented throttling (IMHO less bad) in a new version of iOS, to prevent too much current from being drawn. They figured the throttling would be so light as to be unnoticeable to users, except...
3. Benchmarkers noticed the throttling, and all hell broke loose.
Battery defects are unfortunate, but the decision to make them not user-serviceable leads to a host of bad downstream decisions.
(Of course, making them user-serviceable also leads to a host of other difficult decisions, and I'm not just talking about opening the case. What happens to system design when you can no longer trust the battery's specs?)
Most users seemingly responded by just buying newer iPhones that didn't have this problem, before Apple even offered the $29 fixes. I got an old iPhone 5 instead, and it was fine. So I'm pretty convinced the 6 was just bad.
Deleted Comment
Seems a defect to me.
This seems very fair
You might get lucky, but they use a third party to process the phones and they have ZERO oversight or control over them. It's extremely common to send in a perfectly working phone to get denied because it's DOA with whatever claim and google refuses to do anything about it because "it's an external partner"
If you want the payment in non-USD, Payoneer takes a 2% cut on conversion fees - I figured I’d take the payment in USD, but neglected to do a full read-through of how the payment would happen - it comes as a wire transfer, and the bank I used has a 15 USD incoming wire transfer, so I got hit with that instead of the 2% conversion fee. (And the payment got blocked until the bank called me to inquire about whether I was expecting a wire transfer.)
I really would have just preferred a physical cheque in USD. (The mechanism with which I’ve received refunds for recalls from other companies that didn’t want to do internationalized payments.)
The fees are quite real though, before I've moved to using BTC for payments i've been getting around 900~ while when i moved to BTC my payments went up to 1900~ thanks to no wire and skipping Fiverr's and Payoneer's cuts.
My personal policy for buying anything with such a battery: the seller must have a meaningful presence in my country and sell for at least like $10M/year.
Annoying 150 USD store credit can't go towards something like Youtube Premium. Or multiple 6a credits can't be stacked on 1 device. Cause I'm never touching a pixel again.
Or it could mean they've assessed your next of kin are the non-litigious sort...
Sure, I could send it in for a battery replacement. and not have a phone for a week or two, and get my phone back or maybe not.
There's walk-in replacements in select countries:
>Starting July 21, 2025 battery replacement will be available:
>At walk-in repair centers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Singapore, Japan, and India.
>[...] Additional battery replacement capability is expected in Japan, France, some other parts of Europe, and Australia soon.
I didn't get from the article how the update will make the phone unsable.
I'm not saying it's not possible, of course it is, but there is some friction and difficulty especially if you seriously want to compete with Apple, Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi, etc.
Fairphone exists[0]. Nobody is in the market for either a Fairphone vs Galaxy vs Pixel.
The average consumer needs to be able to swap it without doing deep surgery on the phone, and that's on the phone's manufacturer.