Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[bd139]

Enclosure costs more than most things these days. Upside down biscuit tin FTW. Back to the 1950s.

Edit: plus you can get into the tin easily to piss around with it

[mnementh]

Yeah, but AL extrusion is cheap; case in point the fact that the enclosure I wanted cost US$7 shipped, and oodles of similar-sized brick-shaped ones cost approx the same on banggood and AliEx. Of course, now that the angled-face unit isn't available, I want it twice as much.


mnem
*Slightly swollen*

[Specmaster]

Interesting article this, and this guy makes his earning repairing Apple products.

[Specmaster]

Yeah, but AL extrusion is cheap; case in point the fact that the enclosure I wanted cost US$7 shipped, and oodles of similar-sized brick-shaped ones cost approx the same on banggood and AliEx. Of course, now that the angled-face unit isn't available, I want it twice as much.


mnem
*Slightly swollen*

I'm very happy with the standard enclosure now that I've sorted out the IEC sockets dodgy connections and the poorly executed earthing, its small footprint easy interface and stackability of other such units or iron holder make it a winner in my book.

[bd139]

I am slightly considering buying one with a power supply in it now as it's nicely fixable as you have demonstrated. Which aliexpress listing did you buy from?

Yeah, but AL extrusion is cheap; case in point the fact that the enclosure I wanted cost US$7 shipped, and oodles of similar-sized brick-shaped ones cost approx the same on banggood and AliEx. Of course, now that the angled-face unit isn't available, I want it twice as much.

But they don't come with free biscuits!

[mnementh]

Interesting article this, and this guy makes his earning repairing Apple products.

Yeah, Chris Louis is a well-known hater of Apple's closed ecology, yet he makes a living doing OOW repair on their products; this is just another revision of the same tired old spiel. He thinks he espouses the open-source ideology, but he has a very self-serving interpretation of how Open-Source and CopyLeft work. Bottom line is these videos drive more work to him, so of course he doesn't want to believe any of it, or at least won't admit publicly that there is any merit to Apple's position.

mnem
*poot*

[Specmaster]

I am slightly considering buying one with a power supply in it now as it's nicely fixable as you have demonstrated. Which aliexpress listing did you buy from?

Yeah, but AL extrusion is cheap; case in point the fact that the enclosure I wanted cost US$7 shipped, and oodles of similar-sized brick-shaped ones cost approx the same on banggood and AliEx. Of course, now that the angled-face unit isn't available, I want it twice as much.

But they don't come with free biscuits!

Not a bad idea, I just looked at their listing and I see that following my email to them they seem to have made some changes, the enclosure is slightly longer by the look of it and the black earth lead has now been changed for a green one and it is now directly connected to the socket for the handle, can't see if they have changed any of the earthing problems though. Here is the link that I ordered from but it now has the modified photos and that enclosure certainly looks to have much more internal space, my PCB touched the front plug & sockets and the IEC socket was directly soldered to the PCB over the full spade terminal, now it looks like just the tip is soldered. That's not a bad thing because it makes modding it so much easier, you could slide the PCB further to the front and retain it like I did with a earth stud by the caps and then flexible cable from the IEC socket the PCB without rotating the IEC socket even. Worse case, if you get one the same as mine, you know how to fix it any way.



https://www.aliexpress.com/item/2017-STC-T12-Digital-Soldering-Iron-Station-Temperature-Controller-EU-Plug-Temperature-180-450-Degrees-T12/32803295956.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.BAXxvr I selected set 5 which comes with 5 tips as well.

[bd139]

Purely by ironic coincidence, Look in the feedback for that. Some of them ship with an Apple charger inside them 

[Specmaster]

Interesting article this, and this guy makes his earning repairing Apple products.

Yeah, Chris is a well-known hater of Apple's closed ecology, yet he makes a living doing OOW repair on their products; this is just another revision of the same tired old spiel. He thinks he espouses the open-source ideology, but he has a very self-serving interpretation of how Open-Source and CopyLeft work. Bottom line is these videos drive more work to him, so of course he doesn't want to believe any of it, or at least won't admit publicly that there is any merit to Apple's position.

mnem
*poot*

Are you still dosed up? That was Louis Rossman, not Chris, who's Chris? on the video and he was making sense, not slagging of Apple, indeed in many places he was openly praising them for being at the forefront of design and new ideas, but as he says, they like many others, don't always get things right and I don't think they get this slowing down right at all.

[Specmaster]

Purely by ironic coincidence, Look in the feedback for that. Some of them ship with an Apple charger inside them 

Yeh, saw that, does not sound right to me, what apple charger is capable of giving out 24V and 4.5A. I think that's a wind up personally. Mine is just like the photos, a dedicated power supply and so far, I'm very pleased with it. Heats up really fast, goes to sleep as instructed, powers down as set and activates again on picking the handle up, by the time I have the solder ready, the irons up to temp, perfect.

[bd139]

Earlier MacBook chargers were 24v 4.5a. Found another one (15:50 in):

https://youtu.be/UT7P8_jnSco

Edit: wrong link

[mnementh]

Interesting article this, and this guy makes his earning repairing Apple products.

Yeah, Chris  Louis is a well-known hater of Apple's closed ecology, yet he makes a living doing OOW repair on their products; this is just another revision of the same tired old spiel. He thinks he espouses the open-source ideology, but he has a very self-serving interpretation of how Open-Source and CopyLeft work. Bottom line is these videos drive more work to him, so of course he doesn't want to believe any of it, or at least won't admit publicly that there is any merit to Apple's position.

mnem
*poot*

Are you still dosed up? That was Louis Rossman, not Chris, who's Chris? on the video and he was making sense, not slagging of Apple, indeed in many places he was openly praising them for being at the forefront of design and new ideas, but as he says, they like many others, don't always get things right and I don't think they get this slowing down right at all.

Sorry, you are right; total typo. Looking at Chris's name on the screen, typed it while thinking about Louis. I've followed Louis for years; I respect his skills as a repair tech, but he has a strangely solipsistic view of how mass-produced electronics manifest in the real world.

Having a lot of personal experience with the bleeding edge of LiPo technology, I will state categorically that there IS a real kernel of truth in Apple's position.

Every piece of mobile computing technology on the planet nowadays CLOSELY monitors battery consumption and adjusts both processor speed and kills/opens processes based on user demand, history of how often the unit is charged, battery state of charge, and how close to the next anticipated charge cycle the device is as well as number of charge/discharge cycles and a dozen other variables. Battery management technology is an engineering discipline all its own nowadays; there are companies that managed portable power systems is ALL THEY DO. On my current phone, power management is so granular that it can actually tell me how much CPU time a given process has run since the last charge, and roughly how many mAH of battery capacity that single process has consumed.

This is just another aspect of that same battery management technology; throttling back the CPU to prevent failure and corrupted user data due to unexpected system crash or even real potential battery failure caused by aging. The only difference is Apple is doing it, so of course all the haters will assume the motivation is 100% greed.

Is their management approach overly aggressive? Maybe... but, particularly given the exploding iPwn debacle that almost destroyed them just as Jobs was pulling the company back up by its own bootstraps, I'd personally rather see them err on the side of caution even if it does seem, or even if it actually is, a little self-serving.

Purely by ironic coincidence, Look in the feedback for that. Some of them ship with an Apple charger inside them 

Yeh, saw that, does not sound right to me, what apple charger is capable of giving out 24V and 4.5A. I think that's a wind up personally. Mine is just like the photos, a dedicated power supply and so far, I'm very pleased with it. Heats up really fast, goes to sleep as instructed, powers down as set and activates again on picking the handle up, by the time I have the solder ready, the irons up to temp, perfect.

MacBook Pro used a 24V/4.5-5.5A power cube. Very high-quality SMPS made by Delta; I have several in a drawer and do in fact intend to gut one and use it in my own T12 Station if I ever get the enclosure I want. I have no doubt there are warehouses full of them in ShenZhen and Hong Kong just waiting for repurposing like this.


mnem
*Back to the bench*

[Specmaster]

I understand about battery management and the ageing process, a LIpo in this respect is no different to a lead acid battery that we all have in our cars and as an electrical engineer that used to look after a fleet of over 100 buses and coaches, I'm well used to aging batteries and their failure modes. As batteries age, their internal resistance increases and this itself limits the output capabilities under heavy demand. The real danger with LIpo batteries is more to do with the charging rate and of course inadequate short circuit protection.

As a device draws power from a battery, it is possible to extract more power from a fresh new battery then it is an old one, which has a higher internal cell resistance which resists the flow of current, just basic ohms law at play here so therefore there is far higher chance of having a phone etc burst into flames due to something going with the phone on a new battery than you do with an old battery as this resistance acts as a brake on the energy discharge, a new battery with lower internal resistance does not have this extra safety feature, so can disgorge massive energy release quickly.

There should be a well designed regulator in place to prevent excessive demands on a battery and also excessively high charging currents as well, both of these are well known battery killers and potential sources of fires as well and in the case of LIpo batteries making things thin enough to allow the battery to be flexed is also a definite no no, take any Lipo battery and bent it and you had better be ready to get of of the way sharpish because they do not like that as they tend to short internally with dire consequences, this is going to be become ever so apparent with all the electrical cars being developed, they become fireballs very quickly as demonstrated with the Rimac car that Richard Hammond was driving in the Alps when he crashed. It kept on bursting into flames hours after his accident due to the LIpo batteries shorting internally because they had been deformed.

Apple did not need to do that slowing down if the right circuitry had been place it would have taken care of itself and the user would seen their phone losing power quicker and needing charging more then usual and taken steps to resolve it on their own, I have experienced this personally on all of my phones be they from Nokia, HTC, Blackberry or Samsung and when that happened, I just had new batteries fitted and it was to normal  speed and lasting just as long between charges as they did when they were new.

As a battery ages and reaches the end of its life, the cell resistance (like a capacitors ESR) will restrict the flow of current and volt drop will occur and this slows down the phone anyway, pop in a new battery problem solved.

EDIT.

I'm not an Apple hater, I have had a few iPod classics and still own and use an iPod Touch and an iPad Air 2 and also own 3 Acer tablets, a Samsung Galaxy Pro Tab10 and also a Windows 10 tablet so I have knowledge of each of the systems strengths and weaknesses and also replaced many Lipo batteries on so called sealed devices.

[bd139]

I've got a Moto G here you can have if you want an example of shitty battery management. It lasts 8 minutes before it browns out or drops the SD card completely. The battery was 6 months old when it ended in this state. I didn't bother replacing the battery and just chucked it in a drawer and bought a windows phone (for some stupid reason).

Problem solved: https://www.apple.com/iphone-battery-and-performance/

Also got to whinge about Thinkpad batteries. Mine last about a year before they are unusable (under 20 minutes of use) and they are £140 a pop. My 2013 MBP which I still have (because it cost me a fucking fortune) still does 4 hours after 4 years and 898 battery cycles on the original battery. Current MBP (2017 non touch bar rubbish) is quite happily kicking out 7 hours after 9 months and 138 cycles. iPhone 6s, 11 months old now is showing 87% battery health.

[Specmaster]

I would think your Moto G is faulty, every now and then faulty gear gets out into the wild.

As I said, I'm not anti Apple at all, I personally own and use their products and very happy with what I've got.

What I do know is that I'm the only person in my family who does not have an iPhone and that is by design, based on 3 things, 1/ lack of depth to their phone range, 2/ Priceed way to high for my pocket to comfortably afford, more expensive phone, less money for TEA  3/ sealed in battery, experience has taught me that you will at some point need to do a battery upgrade, again car analogy, when the car battery dies, do you throw away the car and buy another?

In my family and inlaws there are no less than 16 iPhones and my youngest son has an old 5s and running on battery dies after about 3 hours and is slow as fuck since the upgraded OS was installed. When he is at home it is constantly on the phone charger 24/7 so the battery does not come into play, it runs entirely from the wall wart and still just as slow so the upgrade does not seem to be monitoring the battery as much as it does the phones unique id which identifies what type of phone it is, and thus is a give away of its age.

The acid test would be to replace the battery with a brand new one and see if it resumed normal operation and speed again, but as it actually belongs to my eldest son, who lets his brother use it, as he cannot afford a phone of his own, the owner is anal about tampering with any thing and is a apple lover through and through and has to have everything 100% authentic. Anyway the upshot is that he will not allow a new battery to fitted for fear of marking the phone, he will not even allow it to done at the Apple store, so we will never for certain if the updated OS is checking the battery condition or is checking the phones ID. But I for one would love to find out for sure which way it is.

All I know is that while Apple are just as anal about sealing everything to prevent me from doing anything with what is my property and also limited choice and costing so much, they will not be getting me buying one of their phones.

[Mr. Scram]

Moto G is known to be a pretty resilient model. Even the cheap oriental smartphones I owned didn't do that after a few years of abuse.

[Specmaster]

Back on TEA again, just checked the tip temperature of my new OLED T12 clone soldering station and with the calibration ratio set at 96% the temperature is almost spot on when checked with my Hakko 191 tester and so is the boost setting and I have tested this at various setting of boost from 30C to 80C and its bang on the money.

There are other versions of this clone on the market that only seem to have 3 digits for the temp setting with a manual calibration so I'm not sure how you can set the time delay before it goes into sleep mode, power off mode, boost temp setting or the operating voltage setting, if you can at all.

If you're thinking about taking the plunge from a basic iron to one of these do your homework carefully. 

[mnementh]

I understand about battery management and the ageing process, a LIpo in this respect is no different to a lead acid battery that we all have in our cars and as an electrical engineer that used to look after a fleet of over 100 buses and coaches, I'm well used to aging batteries and their failure modes. As batteries age, their internal resistance increases and this itself limits the output capabilities under heavy demand. The real danger with LIpo batteries is more to do with the charging rate and of course inadequate short circuit protection.

As a device draws power from a battery, it is possible to extract more power from a fresh new battery then it is an old one, which has a higher internal cell resistance which resists the flow of current, just basic ohms law at play here so therefore there is far higher chance of having a phone etc burst into flames due to something going with the phone on a new battery than you do with an old battery as this resistance acts as a brake on the energy discharge, a new battery with lower internal resistance does not have this extra safety feature, so can disgorge massive energy release quickly.

There should be a well designed regulator in place to prevent excessive demands on a battery and also excessively high charging currents as well, both of these are well known battery killers and potential sources of fires as well and in the case of LIpo batteries making things thin enough to all the battery to be flexed is also a definite no no, take any Lipo battery and bent it and you had better be ready to get of of the way sharpish because they do not like that as they tend to short internally with dire consequences, this is going to be become ever so apparent with all the electrical cars being developed, they become fireballs very quickly as demonstrated with the Rimac car that Richard Hammond was driving in the Alps when he crashed. It kept on bursting into flames hours after his accident due to the LIpo batteries shorting internally because they had been deformed.

Apple did not need to do that slowing down if the right circuitry had been place it would have taken care of itself and the user would seen their phone losing power quicker and needing charging more then usual and taken steps to resolve it on their own, I have experienced this personally on all of my phones be they from Nokia, HTC, Blackberry or Samsung and when that happened, I just had new batteries fitted and it was to normal  speed and lasting just as long between charges as they did when they were new.

As a battery ages and reaches the end of its life, the cell resistance (like a capacitors ESR) will restrict the flow of current and volt drop will occur and this slows down the phone anyway, pop in a new battery problem solved.

EDIT.

I'm not an Apple hater, I have had a few iPod classics and still own and use an iPod Touch and an iPad Air 2 and also own 3 Acer tablets, a Samsung Galaxy Pro Tab10 and also a Windows 10 tablet so I have knowledge of each of the systems strengths and weaknesses and also replaced many Lipo batteries on so called sealed devices.

The well-designed regulator IS there... it is in the software; what do you think causes the CPU to slow down when a discharged battery's voltage drops? The SAME EXACT SOFTWARE. IT IS ALL THE SAME SOFTWARE. A Lixx BMS board used in a game controller, laptop, camera or rechargeable flashlight's battery also has software; same exact principle only much-simplified. The laptop may take more direct control of charging than other electronic widgets; but that is STILL software.

The only difference here is that some think-they-know-it-all dumbasses figured out that the phone's software was updated to include management based on the phone's age (actually, based on charge/discharge cycles, but grossly oversimplified by ignorant reporters) which is perfectly sensible, and they made a big, ignorant dumbass stink over what they THOUGHT they knew.


I'm no Apple fan-boi, but I don't hate them either; I just can't justify the cost of their closed ecology. Not when a 3 generations-out-of-date used 6S Plus in a minimum 32GB build still costs US$350-400 from any reputable vendor.

But I have sense enough to understand that I AM NOT THE CUSTOMER APPLE CATERS TO. They cater to folks who have enough disposable income that $800 for a phone is not unreasonable. That have good enough credit to get that $800 financed over 2 years with their carrier so they never even SEE that sticker shock.

I don't hate them for not catering to me, any more than I hate the Maserati dealership or the Porsche dealership for not catering to me. I simply am not their intended market.


mnem
*Phone-ish*

[Specmaster]

I understand about battery management and the ageing process, a LIpo in this respect is no different to a lead acid battery that we all have in our cars and as an electrical engineer that used to look after a fleet of over 100 buses and coaches, I'm well used to aging batteries and their failure modes. As batteries age, their internal resistance increases and this itself limits the output capabilities under heavy demand. The real danger with LIpo batteries is more to do with the charging rate and of course inadequate short circuit protection.

As a device draws power from a battery, it is possible to extract more power from a fresh new battery then it is an old one, which has a higher internal cell resistance which resists the flow of current, just basic ohms law at play here so therefore there is far higher chance of having a phone etc burst into flames due to something going with the phone on a new battery than you do with an old battery as this resistance acts as a brake on the energy discharge, a new battery with lower internal resistance does not have this extra safety feature, so can disgorge massive energy release quickly.

There should be a well designed regulator in place to prevent excessive demands on a battery and also excessively high charging currents as well, both of these are well known battery killers and potential sources of fires as well and in the case of LIpo batteries making things thin enough to all the battery to be flexed is also a definite no no, take any Lipo battery and bent it and you had better be ready to get of of the way sharpish because they do not like that as they tend to short internally with dire consequences, this is going to be become ever so apparent with all the electrical cars being developed, they become fireballs very quickly as demonstrated with the Rimac car that Richard Hammond was driving in the Alps when he crashed. It kept on bursting into flames hours after his accident due to the LIpo batteries shorting internally because they had been deformed.

Apple did not need to do that slowing down if the right circuitry had been place it would have taken care of itself and the user would seen their phone losing power quicker and needing charging more then usual and taken steps to resolve it on their own, I have experienced this personally on all of my phones be they from Nokia, HTC, Blackberry or Samsung and when that happened, I just had new batteries fitted and it was to normal  speed and lasting just as long between charges as they did when they were new.

As a battery ages and reaches the end of its life, the cell resistance (like a capacitors ESR) will restrict the flow of current and volt drop will occur and this slows down the phone anyway, pop in a new battery problem solved.

EDIT.

I'm not an Apple hater, I have had a few iPod classics and still own and use an iPod Touch and an iPad Air 2 and also own 3 Acer tablets, a Samsung Galaxy Pro Tab10 and also a Windows 10 tablet so I have knowledge of each of the systems strengths and weaknesses and also replaced many Lipo batteries on so called sealed devices.

The well-designed regulator IS there... it is in the software; what do you think causes the CPU to slow down when a discharged battery's voltage drops? The SAME EXACT SOFTWARE. IT IS ALL THE SAME SOFTWARE. A Lixx BMS board used in a game controller, laptop, camera or rechargeable flashlight's battery also has software; same exact principle only much-simplified. The laptop may take more direct control of charging than other electronic widgets; but that is STILL software.

The only difference here is that some think-they-know-it-all dumbasses figured out that the phone's software was updated to include management based on the phone's age (actually, based on charge/discharge cycles, but grossly oversimplified by ignorant reporters) which is perfectly sensible, and they made a big, ignorant dumbass stink over what they THOUGHT they knew.


I'm no Apple fan-boi, but I don't hate them either; I just can't justify the cost of their closed ecology. Not when a 3 generations-out-of-date used 6S Plus in a minimum 32GB build still costs US$350-400 from any reputable vendor.

But I have sense enough to understand that I AM NOT THE CUSTOMER APPLE CATERS TO. They cater to folks who have enough disposable income that $800 for a phone is not unreasonable. That have good enough credit to get that $800 financed over 2 years with their carrier so they never even SEE that sticker shock.

I don't hate them for not catering to me, any more than I hate the Maserati dealership or the Porsche dealership for not catering to me. I simply am not their intended market.


mnem
*Phone-ish*

You and I are alike, I don't hate them, how can I when I own and use some of their products but this battery thing is something that Apple took it on themselves to do without any notifications to users that they were doing this. Read my later post with regard to a phone that my sons uses and if I was allowed to get that battery replaced either I do it personally or at an Apple Centre (assuming that would actually do so and come up with another reason for not doing a battery replacement) would prove beyond any doubt if their monitoring a batteries condition or the age of the phone.

What I do know is that with the sheer number of iPhones within my immediate and extended family, they are largely replaced every 2 years when their contract comes up for renewal or when they notice the slow down after an OS update. Phones that were up to the day of the update was installed, were being used perfectly normally as phones (not games or music machines or even mini tablets) immediately become almost unusable following the installation of the update and in typical fashion with phones, no way of restoring the old OS. That has caused them all to be replaced with new phones and this has only been experienced by those that actually owned their phones as sim free, these on a contract get renewed every 2 years.

[mnementh]

I understand about battery management and the ageing process, a LIpo in this respect is no different to a lead acid battery that we all have in our cars and as an electrical engineer that used to look after a fleet of over 100 buses and coaches, I'm well used to aging batteries and their failure modes. As batteries age, their internal resistance increases and this itself limits the output capabilities under heavy demand. The real danger with LIpo batteries is more to do with the charging rate and of course inadequate short circuit protection.

As a device draws power from a battery, it is possible to extract more power from a fresh new battery then it is an old one, which has a higher internal cell resistance which resists the flow of current, just basic ohms law at play here so therefore there is far higher chance of having a phone etc burst into flames due to something going with the phone on a new battery than you do with an old battery as this resistance acts as a brake on the energy discharge, a new battery with lower internal resistance does not have this extra safety feature, so can disgorge massive energy release quickly.

There should be a well designed regulator in place to prevent excessive demands on a battery and also excessively high charging currents as well, both of these are well known battery killers and potential sources of fires as well and in the case of LIpo batteries making things thin enough to all the battery to be flexed is also a definite no no, take any Lipo battery and bent it and you had better be ready to get of of the way sharpish because they do not like that as they tend to short internally with dire consequences, this is going to be become ever so apparent with all the electrical cars being developed, they become fireballs very quickly as demonstrated with the Rimac car that Richard Hammond was driving in the Alps when he crashed. It kept on bursting into flames hours after his accident due to the LIpo batteries shorting internally because they had been deformed.

Apple did not need to do that slowing down if the right circuitry had been place it would have taken care of itself and the user would seen their phone losing power quicker and needing charging more then usual and taken steps to resolve it on their own, I have experienced this personally on all of my phones be they from Nokia, HTC, Blackberry or Samsung and when that happened, I just had new batteries fitted and it was to normal  speed and lasting just as long between charges as they did when they were new.

As a battery ages and reaches the end of its life, the cell resistance (like a capacitors ESR) will restrict the flow of current and volt drop will occur and this slows down the phone anyway, pop in a new battery problem solved.

EDIT.

I'm not an Apple hater, I have had a few iPod classics and still own and use an iPod Touch and an iPad Air 2 and also own 3 Acer tablets, a Samsung Galaxy Pro Tab10 and also a Windows 10 tablet so I have knowledge of each of the systems strengths and weaknesses and also replaced many Lipo batteries on so called sealed devices.

The well-designed regulator IS there... it is in the software; what do you think causes the CPU to slow down when a discharged battery's voltage drops? The SAME EXACT SOFTWARE. IT IS ALL THE SAME SOFTWARE. A Lixx BMS board used in a game controller, laptop, camera or rechargeable flashlight's battery also has software; same exact principle only much-simplified. The laptop may take more direct control of charging than other electronic widgets; but that is STILL software.

The only difference here is that some think-they-know-it-all dumbasses figured out that the phone's software was updated to include management based on the phone's age (actually, based on charge/discharge cycles, but grossly oversimplified by ignorant reporters) which is perfectly sensible, and they made a big, ignorant dumbass stink over what they THOUGHT they knew.


I'm no Apple fan-boi, but I don't hate them either; I just can't justify the cost of their closed ecology. Not when a 3 generations-out-of-date used 6S Plus in a minimum 32GB build still costs US$350-400 from any reputable vendor.

But I have sense enough to understand that I AM NOT THE CUSTOMER APPLE CATERS TO. They cater to folks who have enough disposable income that $800 for a phone is not unreasonable. That have good enough credit to get that $800 financed over 2 years with their carrier so they never even SEE that sticker shock.

I don't hate them for not catering to me, any more than I hate the Maserati dealership or the Porsche dealership for not catering to me. I simply am not their intended market.


mnem
*Phone-ish*

You and I are alike, I don't hate them, how can I when I own and use some of their products but this battery thing is something that Apple took it on themselves to do without any notifications to users that they were doing this. Read my later post with regard to a phone that my sons uses and if I was allowed to get that battery replaced either I do it personally or at an Apple Centre (assuming that would actually do so and come up with another reason for not doing a battery replacement) would prove beyond any doubt if their monitoring a batteries condition or the age of the phone.

What I do know is that with the sheer number of iPhones within my immediate and extended family, they are largely replaced every 2 years when their contract comes up for renewal or when they notice the slow down after an OS update. Phones that were up to the day of the update was installed, were being used perfectly normally as phones (not games or music machines or even mini tablets) immediately become almost unusable following the installation of the update and in typical fashion with phones, no way of restoring the old OS. That has caused them all to be replaced with new phones and this has only been experienced by those that actually owned their phones as sim free, these on a contract get renewed every 2 years.

Yeah, but I always have the same problem with my Android phones as well, so to me it's not an Apple problem, it's still mostly a "march of progress" problem.

Folks expect that upgrade (no matter the OS) to bring them some form of current functionality and featureset, so it also brings more work for the CPU to do. Sometimes it can handle it, sometimes not. The only time this was not the case were with my Nokia 521s, which upgraded a few months after I got them to Windoze Phone 8.1. That upgrade actually REDUCED processor loading greatly over 8, while bringing a number of new features. I kept those phones for almost 3 years, too... because they JUST PLAIN WORKED. 


mnem
Dave's not here, man...

[beanflying]

As a punisher of LiPo batteries I am yet to see one actually catch fire in the flesh. I have seen a couple vent and smoke after severe R/C crashes (200+km/hr). I have managed to puff plenty of the earlier ones in particular and a couple of 6S 5000 mAH ones in my big Heli's due to the peak currents involved. Dead shorts and over voltage charger protection are the main reasons for them going on fire. Plenty of Lead acid caused fires in Vehicles over time in particular British wired ones

Puffed ones btw still work but I don't use them for R/C.

Ebay buying with 10-20% off spending to much ........

[Specmaster]

The thing I find with Android phones is that each phone is treated differently, the makers support it for say 2 years with any updates, this is then passed onto the service providers, the carriers to implement as they see fit once they have customised it to suit their requirements, i.e. logo branding etc, sometimes the phones do not get upgraded at all because the providers don't think its worth while or because it costs them money. After the manufacturers of a particular model cease software support, that is the end of it, the providers are not expert enough to work with the phones feature set. We all know that Android is effectively freeware and each manufacturer is free to put their own twist on it to support features that they have built into their devices.

I have working Android phones here that are several years old HTC Desire, HTC One, Samsung Galaxy S3 and my latest one is Samsung J5(2016). All of them work perfectly OK and if I connect them to the network here and go to software update, there is no update for them. The last one was my J5(2016) which was a couple of months ago.

Why did I replace them, well the first one had a slide out keyboard which I found that I could not get on with as the keyboard would partial open up in my pocket and the phone switched on and drained the battery because the screen was on. The second one was working fine as a phone but many of the apps would not work anymore as they needed the latest version of Android which was not available to the phone because it was considered old. The Galaxy S3 was replaced because of water damage by dropping it in the bath so I purchased the J5 and subsequently I repaired the S3 and that one is now my back up phone and is also used as a mini tablet for games.

So my experience of Android seems to be vastly different from yours, I have never had any of my phones slow down apart from when the memory was full up or the battery was failing, both of which are easy to fix and the phones were made with easy to remove batteries without any need for tools and batteries are still freely available for all of them.

Added to that there is a thriving community of custom ROMS available that will allow the very latest versions of Android to run on them OK without problems and still work as SIM free phones on any network I chose.

Moving on because this is rapidly sliding into an Apple v Android debate and this not what I intended at all so back to the lovely T12 system.

I have modified my 9501 handle to accept the 4 core cable, removed the thermistor altogether and fitted the 4 pin plug from the handle that came with the Quicko and fitted that to the 9501 5 core lead with the white core chopped back and using the blue as the new white core as this core was already connected to the mercury / ball switch in the handle. The other end of this switch was disconnected from the earth tag and reconnected to the -ve tag as per Quicko handle and it works perfectly.

I agree the 9501 handle is better balanced in the hand and does give greater control over the tip in use.

When my ordered 4 pin plug is delivered I will fit this onto the Quicko handle so I'll have a spare handle available incase I need it. I have ordered another iron rest / support and will be very shortly ordering another system, just debating which one I should go with. I want to retain the menus system that this one has but do I go with another Quicko or another make altogether that uses the standard 5 pin system as per your diagram. which would probably make more sense. 

Watch this space.... 

[Specmaster]

As a punisher of LiPo batteries I am yet to see one actually catch fire in the flesh. I have seen a couple vent and smoke after severe R/C crashes (200+km/hr). I have managed to puff plenty of the earlier ones in particular and a couple of 6S 5000 mAH ones in my big Heli's due to the peak currents involved. Dead shorts and over voltage charger protection are the main reasons for them going on fire. Plenty of Lead acid caused fires in Vehicles over time in particular British wired ones

Puffed ones btw still work but I don't use them for R/C.

Ebay buying with 10-20% off spending to much ........

Indeed dead shorts was the cause for the recent Samsung Galaxy Note phones catching fire which Samsung say was down to a batch of faulty batteries from one of their suppliers, which we shall have to take as gospel but you have ask, if that is the case then why did they remove the phone from sale and drop the range altogether??? Who knows or cares as long as they resolved the issue which they did in very short time as well and to my knowledge, that was the only time that they actively nobbled the battery management of the phone to prevent it being over charged and also preventing it from getting to flat to reduce heat rise during the recharging period.

I took advantage of the Ebay discount too, it was a nice surprise I thought. 

[Specmaster]

As a punisher of LiPo batteries I am yet to see one actually catch fire in the flesh. I have seen a couple vent and smoke after severe R/C crashes (200+km/hr). I have managed to puff plenty of the earlier ones in particular and a couple of 6S 5000 mAH ones in my big Heli's due to the peak currents involved. Dead shorts and over voltage charger protection are the main reasons for them going on fire. Plenty of Lead acid caused fires in Vehicles over time in particular British wired ones

Puffed ones btw still work but I don't use them for R/C.

Ebay buying with 10-20% off spending to much ........

Indeed dead shorts was the cause for the recent Samsung Galaxy Note phones catching fire which Samsung say was down to a batch of faulty batteries from one of their suppliers, which we shall have to take as gospel but you have to ask, if that is the case then why did they remove the phone from sale and drop the range altogether??? Who knows or cares as long as they resolved the issue which they did in very short time as well and to my knowledge, that was the only time that they actively nobbled the battery management of the phone to prevent it being over charged and also preventing it from getting to flat to reduce heat rise during the recharging period.

I took advantage of the Ebay discount too, it was a nice surprise I thought. 

[xrunner]

Fluke 45 shipped, on the way today - signature required.