At Home with Tech

Is your iPhone having trouble holding a charge? If you’ve owned it for long enough, that’s inevitable. Now it’s time to take your phone on a little trip…

My iPhone was in big trouble. After not even two and a half years, the battery in my old iPhone 6 Plus was showing some serious wear.

It just couldn’t make it as long anymore without a little pick me up. And never for more than a day. Sometimes it couldn’t even get to lunch. And then there were the times the battery level would suddenly go from 30% to zero.
(What?!)

In the cold… forget it. My iPhone would shut down faster than you can say,
“I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me,” five times fast.

Time to Make the Doctor’s Appointment
So I brought my ailing companion to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store. The Genius ran the diagnostics on the battery and reported it was almost due for replacement… but not quite yet. I asked if it would last me until this fall.
(Yeah, I’m planning on pulling the trigger on the latest and greatest then.)

“Definitely not,” she said.

“How much for a new battery?”

“Eighty dollars.”

Huh.
So the way I saw it, I had a choice:

I could nurse my iPhone with a power drip and carry around an external battery or stay close to power outlets for as long as possible. And then rush back to the Apple Store for the operation when there was no longer an alternative…

Or I could electively do the battery swap out now.

Is that even a choice?

The Cost of Living in a Digital World
Look, no battery lasts forever.
It would have been nice for my iPhone to go a full three years on its original power cell, but it’s not like I didn’t get a lot of use out of it.

Is there any other device you depend more on every day?
Exactly.

Is $80 a lot of money for a silly battery? At one level… yes.
But considering the original cost of the iPhone, not at all.

Think of it as a simple maintenance cost…
(The thing doesn’t run on Pixie Dust.)

Tech Zen Restored
So my iPhone was whisked away to the back of the Apple Store for a ‘Battery Replaceadectamy.’
(No, you can’t do it yourself… or at least, you’re not supposed to.)

Now… my iPhone is back to its old self again.
And I’m a whole lot happier… not having to stress about all this.

Look at all of the time I’ve brought back into my life not having to always figure out how to feed my smartphone a little more juice.

I think it’s the best eighty bucks I’ve ever spent.