iPhone XS caught in "charging scandal": refusing to charge in standby mode

According to Leifeng.com, after the previous "signal gate", Apple's latest mobile phones, iPhone XS and XS MAX, have another big problem. According to reports from multiple overseas media, many netizens found that their newly purchased mobile phones refused to charge when connected to the charging cable in standby mode.

Normally, when an iPhone in off-screen standby mode is connected to a charging cable, the screen will light up to show that the iPhone is charging. However, on some newer models, the screen will not light up, indicating that the phone is not charging.

Specifically, the problem occurs when using a power adapter to charge an iPhone in standby mode. What's worse, some phones will even freeze and need to be restored to factory settings to be saved, YouTube blogger Unbox Therapy told Forbes.

It is currently impossible to estimate what proportion of all new iPhones released have this problem. However, many users on social media at home and abroad have said that they have encountered this problem, so it can be said that it is quite common.

In order to verify the universality of this problem, Unbox Therapy took 8 iPhone XS and iPhone XS MAX to do an experiment, and connected them to Apple's own charger to charge. As a result, only 2 of the 8 (one XS and one XS MAX) would charge normally in standby mode, and the other 5 (2 XS and 3 XS MAX) needed to turn on the screen to start charging. The remaining XS MAX would not charge even when it was turned on and directly crashed for several minutes.

At present, this is most likely a hardware problem. A post on the Apple Support Community stated that Apple technical support staff are already aware of this problem and recommend that users who encounter such problems go to Apple after-sales to replace their phones.

However, Apple has not yet given an official response to this issue.

When new iPhones are released, some phones are usually caught up in various "gates", such as the previous "antenna gate", "bend gate", "chip gate", etc. In addition to the charging problem, the signal of the new product has also received a lot of complaints.

According to 9to5mac, a user wrote on the Apple Support forums:

My iPhone 7 Plus and iPad (2017) have no problem connecting to the 5ghz network, but the Xs has problems. It only shows two bars of signal and can't stay connected very well. I'm really disappointed and have now switched the Xs to a 2.4ghz network. I hope Apple can solve this problem with a software update.

Another Reddit user said that Verizon replaced his original iPhone Xs Max, but found that the replacement device also had the same LTE connection problem. When using the iPhone8 Plus, I always maintained a two-bar LTE signal in my home, and occasionally dropped to a 1-bar signal. I could watch videos, etc. with a 1-bar signal, and never had a disconnection problem. The current Xs Max has only a 1-bar signal most of the time, and occasionally a 2-bar signal and search services. I was very disappointed with such a significant difference. I thought it was a defective device and asked Verizon to replace it, but the new device had the same problem. I like the screen of the iPhoneXs Max, but I had to switch back to the iPhone8 Plus.

The network blog WiWavelength pointed out that lab tests showed that the RF performance of iPhone Xs and iPhone Xs Max was disappointing compared to previous iPhones. WiWavelength also said that the performance issues some users are experiencing are caused by "antenna problems", specifically related to antenna gain. As for whether this problem can be fixed through software updates, the blog said that iOS updates and carrier updates can change the way baseband modems interact with the network.

As for the reason, many people in the industry believe that this is related to Apple's abandonment of Qualcomm and switching to Intel baseband.

iPhone has always used Qualcomm baseband chips with the best performance in the industry, but due to the patent dispute between Apple and Qualcomm, Apple decided to use both Qualcomm and Intel baseband chips starting with iPhone7. Both Qualcomm and Intel basebands support three-way carrier aggregation for downlink and two-way carrier aggregation for uplink, with a maximum downlink data rate of 450 Mbps. However, the evaluation report of CellularInsights shows that when the signal is good, the performance of Qualcomm and Intel baseband chips is the same; when the signal is poor (-105dBm), the performance (transmission data rate) of Qualcomm version of iPhone7 is 30% higher than that of Intel version; when the signal is very poor (-108 dBm), the Qualcomm version performs even better, exceeding the latter by 75%, which attracted great attention at the time.

Before the release of the new iPhone this year, there were reports that due to the unresolved patent dispute with Qualcomm, the baseband chips used in the 2018 iPhone will be exclusively supplied by Intel, which was also confirmed by Qualcomm. According to Leifeng.com, Intel provides the latest 14nm XM7560 LTE baseband chip for the three new iPhones, which supports full network access and 4×4 MIMO, QAM and LAA, with a maximum downlink rate of 1Gbps (Cat 16) and a maximum uplink rate of 150Mbps (Cat 13). It also supports DSDS dual-SIM dual standby, GPS, Beidou, GLONASS and other global satellite systems.

Apple has not yet made an official response to the signal issue, and Leifeng.com will continue to pay attention.

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