My Apple Experience - Pure Joy to Bitterness in 7 years

Apple knows how to make slick and sexy products .  This ability has made them richer than the U.S. government. When we talk about creating a product or providing a user experience, we often compare it to Apple products and experiences .  Apple products and services are the benchmark for simplicity, elegance and user experience.  I have purchased (upgraded) every version of the iPhone ever produced by Apple,  and I have loved the improvements and design changes with each version of the phone.  I also own a couple of MacBook Pros and love how tightly integrated my iOS devices and Mac OS devices are.  Be it sharing photos or Air dropping humongous files.  Apple is simply the leader in this space !

Some background on me . This is relevant to the point I would be making later in the article.  I grew up in Ottawa and our winter temperature gets as low as -25 degrees celsius and with windchill it gets as low as -40 degrees celsius (that is between -13 degrees Fahrenheit and -40 degrees Fahrenheit). This is normal winter temperature for a large part of the east coast of the North American Continent.  Since I grew up in the cold east, I love snowsports and I tend to get to the slopes at least 5 times during winter in California.  I am an engineer and like a lot of the Canadian engineers, I too ended up in the Bay Area .  Now, weather in California never gets as cold as the east coast,  however,  it does get cold in places like Tahoe allowing Californians to enjoy snow sports within a short driving distance.  The lowest recorded temperature in Tahoe is -29 degrees Fahrenheit, and it was recorded in 1972.  Last weekend it was just 26 degrees Fahrenheit. That is not considered cold even by California's standard !

Getting back to the point. I bought the latest iPhone (6S) in September 2015 shortly after it got released, I have done this for every single iPhone release to date since its inception!  Compared to the iPhone 6, the iPhone 6S has a better case, which is much stronger and less prone to scratches and dents.  I have  noticed that iPhone’s quality has gone down over the past few generations of iPhones. Every single iPhone I purchased gets all the protection needed for a mobile device, and my latest iPhone also got a screen protector, a bumper case and I keep it clean and safe.  From iPhone 6, I started noticing sluggishness in the software and way too many resets, however I wasn’t being too picky about it because I had experienced similar issues with Android. This degradation in quality is not what my article is about ! This article is about a very annoying experience that I have been encountering when I am in the mountains and the response I received from the Customer service specialist at the Apple Store. It was such a deeply disappointing experience that I felt the need to take some time to write a detailed posting on it !

What is the annoying experience?

My iPhone 6s had at least 60% battery when I experienced multiple random phone shut downs, especially when I was about to snap a picture of the beautiful scenery that Lake Tahoe had to offer.  The device would shut down and pressing the power button  showed the dead battery logo.  I, then attempted to reset the phone. It booted  up all the way to the home screen and shut down briefly after.  I reported the issue to the Apple customer service specialist and he suggested that I wipe the phone clean and configure it as a new phone avoiding any sort of restore.  In his defense the claim is that I had stale data or incompatible data that got restored into the iPhone 6s.  My thought process at that time was this is highly unlikely, as I believe the Software Engineers at Apple would have implemented all the possible backwards and forward compatibility measures. I have deep respect and faith in the designers and engineers at Apple !

Being an accommodating person that I am,  I configured my iPhone 6s just as suggested by the Apple customer service specialist right in front of them at the store.  I went to Tahoe this past weekend and I kept my phone away from water and snow in my waterproof jacket pocket.  People that go snowboarding would know that most of the snow sports jackets come equipped with a waterproof pocket in them.  This time I went to Northstar.  I wanted to capture some scenery and picked up my phone, opened the camera app, and that was it! The phone shut down on me and I had my friends witness it as well.  Once again, I was patient and put the phone away into my waterproof jacket pocket so I can enjoy the fresh powder instead of fiddling around with the phone.

As soon as I got back to San Jose, I decided to go to the Apple store so that I could get my phone replaced, which the folks at the Apple store did replace.  However, the experience wasn't very pleasant ! The Customer Specialist asked me to remove the bumper case that I had on for the phone and she looked at the phone, and marked down on her sheet noting that there are minor scratches.  I am pretty sure I didn’t have any scratches.  I took the phone from the specialist and wiped it clean using my shirt because it had dust marks around the bumper case lining.  The specialist just ignored me when I pointed out that there weren’t any scratches after wiping it clean. Instead she added another line on her sheet stating there was a dent, and I looked at the phone and saw no dents at all.  I kept my mouth shut as I figured it wasn’t helping the situation.  One thing the specialist emphasized though is that even if they replaced my phone the phone would die again if I were to be on the mountain, which made me think: Is Apple compromising on quality while they expand and grow or is the new leadership not able to pay attention to detail as was done by the previous leadership? As an Engineer this made no sense to me at all. Whether this issue is caused by hardware or software, it is a failure in the quality  of the product itself, and is not acceptable from Apple !!

Based on my experience with the iPhone 6s and the random shutdowns that happened over the last few months, I suspect it’s an epidemic failure that people would run into in cold temperatures. Anyone who thinks it’s related to the colder temperature, please check other phones too before commenting as I had few friends who used BlackBerry PRIV and it did not shutdown.  I am not using a PRIV and I am not writing this to market BlackBerry either.  This is my personal experience with iPhone and it's quality over the past 7 years.

Anyone out there who uses an iPhone 6 or 6S and have experienced these random shutdowns while in colder temperature, please comment here because according to the Apple customer specialist, I am the first to report such a case.  I did some research online after this incident. You would notice on the first reference below , there are some postings about random shutdowns by other iPhone customers. When I reported these findings to Apple,  the Apple support specialist asserted that I should not believe in unverified blog posts or people complaining about the product.

Anyone who experiences weather below 0 degrees celsius or above 35 degrees celsius is probably going to have to get another means of communication especially during emergency call scenarios if you own only an iPhone. Based on my experience, there is a probability that your iPhone devices could become iBricks just like my experience when attempting to take a picture of the beautiful Lake Tahoe atop Northstar mountain; and the temperature was only 26 degrees Fahrenheit (-3 celsius).  For the amount an iPhone costs, it should work in a Canadian winter climate or a Louisiana summer! Last but not least, I just hope the rumored Apple Car doesn’t turn off in the middle of the freeway driving under subzero weather! Can Apple really fix this before I switch to another phone?

References:

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/3xjk7u/iphone_6s_turns_off_when_cold/
2. “Environmental Requirements”, https://www.apple.com/iphone-6s/specs/