Dear Apple, why does the iPhone earpiece fail after 16 months?

The-Editors-Desk

The last time I have written a “Dear Apple” piece it was about Apple not listening (pun intended) but claiming to know exactly what customers wanted, before customers even realized it. Now I am writing another “Dear Apple” piece, on a completely different topic.

“You know, when you get old in life, things get taken from you”, to quote Al Pacino’s speech from Any Given Sunday. Your eyesight is getting worse, your hearing deteriorates, and so on. But I’m not that old yet, and still I had a moment, the second one in the past five years, when I was genuinely scared that my hearing was getting worse.

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The first time it hit me was with the iPhone Xs Max.

The first time it hit me was with the iPhone Xs Max. You see, I buy my iPhones out of my own pocket as they are my personal phones, while I use review devices for work, so it makes sense for me to keep an iPhone for about two, maybe even three years.

But I found it more and more difficult lately because, contrary to popular belief, the battery is no longer the weakest link in the phone. Well, while almost two years old, my iPhone 12 Pro Max is still rated at 98% battery health.

You’d be surprised to find out, or maybe you already heard (another pun, same intention) about it, that it’s the earpiece that usually dies after about 14-16 months. This was also what made me consider the quality of my hearing. Being an audiophile, hearing is a pretty important thing to me. After one year and a half the earpiece on my iPhone Xs Max died. It did not happen overnight, but it started slowly deteriorating around the one year mark to the point where it just completely died 16 months in. I had to sell it at a major discount because I knew that the buyer would have to send it in for an earpiece replacement.

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History does indeed repeat itself, as the same is happening to my iPhone 12 Pro Max. As a matter of fact I can no longer take calls on the iPhone 12 Pro Max unless I use earbuds or the speakerphone option. I remember out-of-the-box that the earpiece was so loud that it would balance the speaker on the bottom for an almost perfect stereo experience. Now, at full earpiece volume it barely mumbles something, and in speakerphone mode it is simply outshined by the speaker, to the point where you can barely hear the earpiece, if at all.

This got me thinking for a second that things might be fishy.

This got me thinking for a second that things might be fishy. I do not believe in coincidences. Asking around, it turns out that people in my inner circle, as well as some of my coworkers who use iPhones, and people in their inner circles who are iPhone users, are experiencing the same issue.

So here I am, writing another “Dear Apple” rant where I’m asking myself, and Apple at the same time: when are you going to fix this, Apple? It is clearly an issue, it clearly happens to a lot of people around the world, so what are you going to do about it?

Either way I look at it, it is Apple’s fault. In the optimistic scenario Apple just needs to acknowledge that there is an issue and pay more attention to the hardware component, or the supplier. In the pessimistic scenario, without pointing fingers or accusing the company of shady practices, it is pretty darn easy to adhere to a narrative that maybe this is being done on purpose. Why? Because they need to sell the latest model and you have no choice but to buy it, since your current one is failing, and repair is pretty darn expensive. Where did I see this before? That’s right, when the performance of older models was held back to “preserve battery health” and longevity. That didn’t quite go the way they anticipated. So, are you going to acknowledge and address this, Dear Apple?

With love,
Anton!

PS: I’m just putting it out there because it has been my experience, and I have the luxury of writing about it to a larger audience. If you have the same issue or you know somebody who does, send them this article, drop a comment below, who knows, maybe Apple will do something about it.

Thanks for reading! Welcome to The Editor’s Desk!

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