A Week with my New iPhone Battery

It has been nearly a week since going to the Apple Store to replace my aging iPhone 6 Plus battery with a new one. The result is night and day. For what came to a total  $37 (including sales tax) and almost two hours of waiting, my phone feels fresh, again. Not as bright as the day I bought it and unwrapped it from its plastic wrapping. However, renewed.

The Apple Genius’s even managed to fix my iPhone’s dent. During the first six months of having my iPhone, I was using a straightforward and thin iPhone case thinking I did not need a big bulky case as I used with my previous iPhone 5s. I threw my phone down on the ground while arguing like an idiot. When I went to pick-up my phone, I saw it now had a bent. The top of the screen had also separated from the back of the phone.

I went to the Apple Store as soon as I could to get it fixed. They were able to reconnect the top of my screen to the back, but now my phone had a slightly bent. I then bought a tougher case and resolved to live with this for the rest of my time as owner of this phone. I believe the only issue related to the phone bent is my reception.

Since owning my iPhone 6 Plus, I have switched phone providers three times. The luxury of having an unlocked and paid off iPhone has also afforded me the opportunity to try out different cell phone providers. This is how it should have always been. I started with AT&T, then switched to Verizon when they released an unlimited plan. Since Verizon is evil, I then switched to T-Mobile, who is primarily charging me the same as Verizon (Verizon had claimed they were giving me a military discount), coupled with an offer to pay for my Netflix subscription.

Of all the three, so far T-Mobile has turned out to have better service where I live versus the others. However, I have always noticed I do not ever get the best reception compared to my wife, who has the same iPhone model and same service as me, but her phone has one significant detail: it has no bend. I must have damaged the cellular antenna somehow. Or maybe not? I am no expert, after all.

Everything works again. The only thing that still doesn’t work is my Touch ID. According to the Apple Store peeps, the cost to fix my Touch ID would be the same as buying a new iPhone (not the iPhone X, mind you). So, I would be better off either not fixing it for now and waiting for a new iPhone. Which is what I plan to do: Wait for a new iPhone. It will be easier to wait now that my iPhone has been given a breath of fresh life.

Apple Music works again. I am not sure why artificially slowing down my iPhone was the culprit, but I was able to download all of my music from the iCloud back and store them offline on my iPhone’s storage. Apple Maps works. Bear works still!

Before replacing my battery with a new one, Bear was one of those apps that always stalled. Sometimes this app would crash multiple times before  I finally gave up. I have the MacOS version of Bearand use it every day. But I can now use it on my iPhone. It still sometimes takes a few seconds to get working. But from what I have read via their support forum, this is a bug others are also experiencing. And the Bear developers have stated they hope to fix this bug with the release of their next update. I hope so because there is no reason why their app should be freezing anymore. Sometimes it still takes two attempts to open Bear before it unfreezes itself.

My iPhone is starting to settle in; there are some moments of slowdown. Some moments of hanging such as when I try to delete an app. For some reason, the app will go grey and hang there for a solid five seconds or more before it disappears. I think this is more related to the nature of iOS 11. Even since Apple adopted new drag and dropped features for the iPad in iOS 11, its become more cumbersome to delete apps, moves apps around, or move apps in and out of folders. If they do not fix this in the next iOS 11 updated, I do hope they fix it in iOS 12. (this problem has been apparently fixed with the iOS 11.3 update)

I recall Apple stating one of the main reasons they artificially slowed down iPhones with older batteries was to save these iPhones from having a constant state of a crashing iPhone restarting itself.  And that may well be the case, however, my iPhone was most definitely freezing and restarting at least once a week regardless of this ’safety’ feature Apple claims they built into their iOS. Not so much anymore with my new battery. However, it has only been a week. I remain skeptical. Let’s see how it does in a month or so. Or maybe even several months.