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Apple Says It Slows Older iPhones to Save Their Battery Life

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Re: Apple Says It Slows Older iPhones to Save Their Battery Life

#81

Post by C6C6C6C »

mmcconnell1618 wrote: post #53
golemotron wrote: post #8

Well, that makes me want to upgrade.

What makes you think that Android isn't subject to the same physical limits of older batteries? You have more ability to customize the Android phones response to the battery condition but that doesn't change the underlying reason for the slow down: The battery can't handle the requested load anymore.

The battery can't handle 1 year of use because they undersized it. A 1 715 mAh battery will, once aging, be less able to provide the voltage asked by peak CPU usage than a 2900 mAh battery that has aged for about the same amount of charge cycles.

iPhones are the only device sold by Apple that are only rated for 500 charge cycles before degradation starts. Macbook, iPads and Apple Watches are rated for 1000 cycles. In the case of the Apple Watch I'd guess it's because despite being tiny, the SOC also doesn't ask for as much peak voltage as the phone SOC.

I've had the Honor 8 for a year. It's still holding a great amount of charge and running fine and as fast as the day I bought it. And unlike my 5s, no phone update is coming to turn it into a slow crawl.

The iPhone battery problem with regards to the topic, spontaneous shutdown at 30% and less battery remaining, is probably exacerbated since the evolutions that made those SOC more powerful than before. There wasn't a large wave of 5s owners having spontaneous shutdown requiring an OS update to throttle the CPU. That only started with the iPhone 6. A combination of paltry battery and modern SOCs having peak power usage that stress such battery more than before.

Re: Apple Says It Slows Older iPhones to Save Their Battery Life

#82

Post by TrainedMonkey »

basseq wrote: post #29
djrogers wrote: post #3

It's not only to make them run longer - they're reducing the peak demand on the batteries to avoid spontaneous shutdown when the aged battery can't handle the load. This seems like a good idea, and it appears to be well executed (ie it's not apparently based just on age or milage like a crappy car maintenance reminder), but Apple should probably have something in iOS that tells people their phone is running slow beca…

This comment deserves more attention. And, in fact, means the headline is wrong. Apple is not slowing down devices to extend battery life. Apple is slowing down devices to prevent the thing from crapping out entirely ("unexpectedly shutting down"). Arguably, this does more to prevent obsolescence than plan it. Agreed with @djrogers suggestion to alert the user to the situation. It should not be a user choice. "Last y…

I do not think situation is quite so simple. Apple has designed phones with insufficiently good battery to guarantee top speed operation as device ages. They have probably done it to make thinner handsets, but the end result is that an older device physically slows down. Moreover each new iOS release is slower and makes the older devices feel cruftish.

Where does that leave us? People that must have newest and fastest are encouraged to upgrade every year. Others accept slow downs due to old batteries and new iOS.

This is definitely not 'planned obsolescence' because your phone still works. Maybe 'encouraged obsolescence' is a better term.

Re: Apple Says It Slows Older iPhones to Save Their Battery Life

#83

Post by IBM »

jhiska wrote: post #44
justonepost wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would replaceable batteries decrease the life of the smartphone?

It wouldn't. It would obviously increase the lifespan of it. The spinsters are deliberately confusing "lifespan" with "resale value".

>The spinsters are deliberately confusing "lifespan" with "resale value".

I realize I'm responding to someone arguing in bad faith. But lifespan directly influences the resale value.

Re: Apple Says It Slows Older iPhones to Save Their Battery Life

#84

Post by wccrawford »

jrs95 wrote: post #68
jhiska wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that means all Samsung phones ("not sure which ones") are inferior to Apple phones, hm? ;)

Haha, no. It just wasn’t a Note or Galaxy S, but it still cost like $700. Was a bit smaller. No idea what device it was specifically. And she couldn’t replace the battery easily, either. It was non-removable, as are basically all high end Android devices now.

I had to replace the batteries in our Nexus 6Ps recently. I didn't buy from Google, so they wouldn't deal with it out of warranty, despite it being a defect.

They're replaceable, but they are clearly not meant to be done by the user. There were many opportunities to break pieces of the phone or ruin it completely. It's a horrible design.

Re: Apple Says It Slows Older iPhones to Save Their Battery Life

#85

Post by logfromblammo »

IBM wrote: post #32
Blazespinnaker wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about just the ability for a user to replace the battery? Should be a law to cut down on ewaste.

iPhones have the longest life of any smartphone and you can verify that yourself by looking at the used market for it (and any Apple product). User replaceable batteries may ironically decrease that and increase waste.

What metrics are you looking at in the used market to support your hypothesis? Could they be explained by a different hypothesis?

I'm still enjoying my 3-year-old non-iPhone, and intend to keep using it until it stops working entirely, whereas my spouse with an iPhone was already voicing suspicion before this announcement that Apple was intentionally slowing their old iPhone through updates, just to provoke an upgrade. With the announcement, I can't fault the reasoning.

How much of the used market for iPhones are devices that had been traded in (because slowed by Apple due to old battery), refurbished by the mobile phone company (probably just to replace the battery and reset it to factory settings), and then resold to people whose older model refurbished iPhone now needs yet another new battery? That generates an additional sale of an entire old iPhone, whereas other phones would only generate a sale of a replacement battery at that time.

I think you would probably have to look at what mobile phone customers are actually using, right now.

Re: Apple Says It Slows Older iPhones to Save Their Battery Life

#86

Post by robotresearcher »

TrainedMonkey wrote: post #82
basseq wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment deserves more attention. And, in fact, means the headline is wrong. Apple is not slowing down devices to extend battery life. Apple is slowing down devices to prevent the thing from crapping out entirely ("unexpectedly shutting down"). Arguably, this does more to prevent obsolescence than plan it. Agreed with @djrogers suggestion to alert the user to the situation. It should not be a user choice. "Last y…

I do not think situation is quite so simple. Apple has designed phones with insufficiently good battery to guarantee top speed operation as device ages. They have probably done it to make thinner handsets, but the end result is that an older device physically slows down. Moreover each new iOS release is slower and makes the older devices feel cruftish. Where does that leave us? People that must have newest and fastes…

There is no such battery.

Re: Apple Says It Slows Older iPhones to Save Their Battery Life

#87

Post by Bud »

jsilence wrote: post #79
basseq wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment deserves more attention. And, in fact, means the headline is wrong. Apple is not slowing down devices to extend battery life. Apple is slowing down devices to prevent the thing from crapping out entirely ("unexpectedly shutting down"). Arguably, this does more to prevent obsolescence than plan it. Agreed with @djrogers suggestion to alert the user to the situation. It should not be a user choice. "Last y…

> Arguably, this does more to prevent obsolescence than plan it. Why not simply make the battery replacable?

The battery is replaceable. Apple offers free replacement with AppleCare and $79 replacement otherwise.

Re: Apple Says It Slows Older iPhones to Save Their Battery Life

#88

Post by jlmorton »

jtbayly wrote: post #75
jlmorton wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't pass the sniff test. The available voltage from a lithium ion battery will decrease as it is discharged. When your phone turns off, that does not mean there is no more energy in the battery. It means there is no longer enough voltage to power the phone. Over the course of many discharge cycles, the battery will lose capacity, and the point when the voltage is no longer sufficient to power the phone will…

Wrong. The peak demand from the phone can exceed the available voltage even if you're at 30%, causing an immediate shutdown. That's what we saw a year ago. Now they no longer shut down unexpectedly, but the performance of the phone sucks, even with a battery that holds 87% of its original capacity.

I don't dispute that, but that does not explain the observations that a fully-charged, reduced-capacity battery performs poorly on a standard benchmark test versus a new battery.

It's not just smoothing out a peak demand. It's reducing the peak performance all of the time, and that is unique to iPhone.

Re: Apple Says It Slows Older iPhones to Save Their Battery Life

#89

Post by QuotedForTruth »

jsilence wrote: post #79
basseq wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment deserves more attention. And, in fact, means the headline is wrong. Apple is not slowing down devices to extend battery life. Apple is slowing down devices to prevent the thing from crapping out entirely ("unexpectedly shutting down"). Arguably, this does more to prevent obsolescence than plan it. Agreed with @djrogers suggestion to alert the user to the situation. It should not be a user choice. "Last y…

> Arguably, this does more to prevent obsolescence than plan it. Why not simply make the battery replacable?

It is replaceable, just not replaceable without expertise and tools. Would you say that most of your car parts aren't replaceable?

Re: Apple Says It Slows Older iPhones to Save Their Battery Life

#90

Post by macns »

I don't get it. An old iPad 2 was running fine card games until we upgraded to IOS 9 a few weeks ago. Now it's almost unusable. Pretty sure we had the same battery before we upgrade, so why wasn't cpu throttled before we upgrade?

This looks more like Apple needed to slow down devices to sell new ones and found a really good excuse for it.

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