Speculation that Apple intentionally slows down old phones

I read that before and in another forum. I guess it depends on who you believe. One writer claims that Apple slows the older phones down as the battery wears and no longer is up to performance. One guy went on to say that when he replaced the battery with a new one, everything returned to normal. Personally, I think it's just another one of those "Apple Rumors" that opponents like to spread around.

Older batteries reducing performance does make sense since they will end up providing less juice over time and these new CPUs have smarts built in to basically underclock themselves to deal with the lower energy level. When you underclock, that means the CPU can do less work and that shows up reduced performance.

If the CPUs don't do that, then the battery drain would be ridiculous on older batteries and you'd have other complaints.

In this case, looks like Apple has added code to iOS to "force" this behavior on the CPUs to better control it.

Read more: https://www.engadget.com/2017/12/20/apple-says-slower-performance-of-older-iphones-intentional/

Personally, I think it's just another one of those "Apple Rumors" that opponents like to spread around.

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Sorry Charlie, Apple came clean and admitted to their method today:

Apple admits it slows down old iPhones (but for the right reasons)
https://9to5mac.com/2017/12/20/apple-statement-iphone-performance-battery-age-issues/

And of course, the poll follows…
What do you think of Apple slowing down older iPhones to account for battery wear? [Poll]
https://9to5mac.com

Hmmm…???

A bit late Apple I'd say and rather dubious ethics… and communications…

But it seems they didn't have much choice as it seems some geeks did some decoding and discovered that Apple did have their hands in the iOS software cookie jar to slow some stuff down!!!





- Patrick
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Patrick, even for a curmudgeon, that was pretty harsh, IMHO. What Apple has done is to recognize that as the CPUs get more powerful when the batteries are old the CPU can actually demand more power, at a peak, than the battery can provide. So they throttle the CPU from that peak so that the phone doesn't shut down. Apple pretty much has to live with the battery limitations because of the size of the devices and the current battery technology, so they opted to have the phone work, albeit sometimes perhaps a bit more slowly, rather than just quitting altogether and rebooting. I'd say that was pretty smart of them. Which would you prefer: Your iPhone shuts down if you do something CPU-intensive, or it runs a bit more slowly but gets the task done?

As for the recent disclosures, when the benchmarks run, they deliberately put continuous high stress on the CPU as part of the test, so that stress then forced out the current limiting function and the results that they are showing. In real life use, unless you are a heavy gamer on the iPhone, the CPU is rarely stressed as much as the tests force, so most users, for most of the time and most of the life of the battery will never notice a slowdown in practice.

As for whether or not Apple should have communicated this feature, that's a business call for them. If they had advertised it, people would have complained and tried to disable it even if it has almost zero impact on day-to-day usage. Personally, I'm ok with not advertising it. No reason for me to know how the internals work at that level of detail if it doesn't impact me in my daily life and use of the device.

I'm not seeing an ethics issue here. Just a design decision that impacts probably less than 1% of the users, if that, ever in the life of the phone.

Patrick, even for a curmudgeon, that was pretty harsh, IMHO. What Apple has done is to recognize that as the CPUs get more powerful when the batteries are old the CPU can actually demand more power, at a peak, than the battery can provide.

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I realize what they did and why thanks Jake, my grievance is that they basically denied doing so when first asked about the discovery some geeks made some time ago. And they just shredded off such a suggestion.

And yes, I'd actually be surprised if much more than 10% of users, if that, even used 90+% of the software installed that could have taxed the CPU and the battery capacity. And more likely, as you state: that impacts probably less than 1% of the users…




- Patrick
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Patrick, I neve saw where they denied doing it. All I had heard was that they didn't offer comment until today. Hence, my reaction. But if they originally denied any such practice, then that was deceptive. Silence is just silence.

I've been thinking about what people do with the phone and I can't think of anything other than gaming that would drive the CPU to peaks like that for more than a few seconds. And the iPhone is not particularly good at gaming. So to me, it's all a tempest in a teapot. But some people get all bent out of shape over such things. For me, life is to short. The practical impact is basically zero, so it's not worth getting worked up about it.

It appears now that Apple is being sued over this. Here's a quote:

"Los Angeles residents Stefan Bogdanovich and Dakota Speas, represented by Wilshire Law Firm, this morning filed a lawsuit with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California accusing Apple of slowing down their older iPhone models when new models come out."

Apple has plenty of lawyers, should be no problem defending that.

Yeah, but that lawsuit is about deliberately slowing down older phones to get people to buy new ones. Apple's scheme slows down ALL phones with weak batteries, new or old. From a news website:

Apple did in-depth briefings on it almost a year ago explaining how batteries age (including prematurely), what was being done to prevent spikes and shut downs, etc. Tech press knew.
...
The battery life issue for Apple, and iPhones, is a fascinating one because the average life of an iPhone is so much longer than other devices.

It is their attempt to problem solve for lots of people who hold onto phones for 3 years or longer.

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What the lawsuit is alleging is that Apple's motive is not for the power issue, but to "coerce" owners to replace them with newer iPhones.

I don't think it has a chance of success unless they can produce some documents from inside Apple discussing how to slow down iPhones to drive up sales. Plus, they have to show how they were harmed by the process. But you never know what a tech-ignorant jury is going to do, and California is full of tech-ignorant people.

From what I understand if the older phone's battery is getting weak you can get it replaced. I believe I read that Apple chargers $80 to replace a battery???? Anyway once the battery is replaced the throttling stops.

As for the lawsuit - it amazes me what people will spend money on to either get money or prove a point. In this case I do not see the reasoning behind it. But I have discovered the older I get the more I realize some things are really not that big of a deal.

Lisa

From what I understand if the older phone's battery is getting weak you can get it replaced. I believe I read that Apple chargers $80 to replace a battery????

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Not really Lisa. Unless the iPhone fails Apple's battery test, they will not replace the battery even if the phone is out of warranty and the payment is up to you. That's one of the major complaints that customers have with Apple and iPhone battery replacement. Also the reason so many customers are using third party repairers to replace the battery for them.

But you never know what a tech-ignorant jury is going to do, and California is full of tech-ignorant people.

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That's why we refer to California as the "Left Coast". Beautiful state, lots of good people that live there, but the state government is just out of whack in my opinion.

chscag said:

Not really Lisa. Unless the iPhone fails Apple's battery test, they will not replace the battery even if the phone is out of warranty and the payment is up to you. That's one of the major complaints that customers have with Apple and iPhone battery replacement. Also the reason so many customers are using third party repairers to replace the battery for them.

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I can attest to this. The hard way. We don’t have an Apple Store here, but we do have CitiMac which for all intents and purposes is one. I bought my wife a gift card for X-mas to get the battery replaced in her 6s Plus because it could only hold about 78% of the design capacity. She works off her iPhone quite a bit and has to charge it partway through her day, so getting a new battery was pretty important. CitiMac initially refused to do the battery replacement, saying it tested as nothing wrong with it. I had to go back up there with screen caps of CoconutBattery’s analysis and spoke to the guy I got the card from. He wound up having the replacement done since it was on a fine line for when Apple considers the battery “depleted”.

So that replacement ran about $96 in total yesterday, and today Apple announces they will replace batteries for $25 starting next month as a result of the uproar over slowdowngate. Aaaaarrrrggghh!!!!!

Actually the new price is $29 not $25. And it will take effect starting in January of 2018 and it's for any iPhone 6, 6+, 6s, 6s+, 7, 7+. The iPhone 8 series and 10 are not affected.

chscag said:

Actually the new price is $29 not $25. And it will take effect starting in January of 2018 and it's for any iPhone 6, 6+, 6s, 6s+, 7, 7+. The iPhone 8 series and 10 are not affected.

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Oh you and your pesky facts/details...

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chscag said:

Don't forget to join us at our new site (mac-forums.org) and be sure to read about this site closing down for good on Dec 31st. You can find all that info in the forums community notifications and information. (Community Announcements)

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Glad I caught this post!

Apple, what are we doing? Slowing down the “older” iPhones because of a battery issue is a lazy man’s/quiter’s way out. Do you think Steve Jobs would have approved such a move? He would have said, “NO!” He would have pushed everyone to find a better answer or decided to make reparations if a workable solution couldn’t be found. How did you regain your brilliance and become a global powerhouse? Steve Jobs. I fear we are sliding further and further from his influence that made Apple great again and why I came back to Apple. What’s happening to your mojo.

You're preaching to the choir. Send your complaints direct to Apple. Also, Apple has lowered the battery replacement price from $79 to $29 starting this January.

Apple, what are we doing? Slowing down the “older” iPhones because of a battery issue is a lazy man’s/quiter’s way out.

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I think you'v got caught up in some of the media hype and you may want to do some reading of the facts and maybe start here:
http://www.idownloadblog.com/2017/12/20/apple-phone-cpu-throttling-old-battery/
https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/20/a...ones-with-older-batteries-are-running-slower/

I will agree Apple's method and finally their acknowledging statement could have been done and handled much better, but I really doubt if it's sure not the first time any software development firm hasn't had to throttle down some applications or apps to save crashing the hardware as I recall.

PS: And I don't think you'll find that Steve Jobs was quite as perfect and angelic as you seem to suggest he was if you do some reading and checking, and that includes his time at Apple.





- Patrick
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I'm with Patrick. This issue has been over-hyped. Probably no more than a fraction of one percent of users in the real world will see the impact of what Apple did. To get to the slowdown, you have to push the CPU to the limit, which is what benchmarks do. In normal usage, unless you are MMORP gaming on an iPhone you won't get close. And Jobs would have made the same decision, given the limits of the technology of batteries available. And if you don't believe he would do that, read up on the original presentation of the iPhone to the world. Although he did the presentation, it was highly scripted, carefully controlled and the iPhone was no where near ready for real use.

Finally, which option would you prefer: a slightly slower old iPhone that ran all day or a full-speed iPhone that crashed several times a day when the demand exceeded the battery? I'll take the slow but steady.