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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

#121

Post by swiley »

mempko wrote: post #69
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…

Strange, I have an old HP veer That is 6 years old and it doesn't spontaneously shut down. I have a 3 year old android phone that doesn't spontaneously shut down. What is so special about iPhones and why do they crap out in 2 years?

All of the Android phones I've had do when the battery starts to get old, Especially when you use the camera while it's low. Maybe you take better care of your batteries?

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

#122

Post by dbingham »

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…

Or they could, you know, design the thing so that the battery is replaceable and provide easily accessible replacement batteries.

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

#123

Post by logfromblammo »

IBM wrote: post #92
logfromblammo wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 upgrad…

The fact that iPhones are updated for the longest time and are built well is directly related to why you can get as much as you can when you sell a used iPhone. Apple actually has an incentive to create the longest lasting iPhone because the economics of the iPhone Upgrade Plan and every carrier upgrade plan depends on it. That iPhones retain their value over time is a testament to the fact that Apple has not been sl…

But I don't intend to sell my non-iPhone, ever. It works as well for me now as it did when I first bought it, so why would I? It's the same reason why I'm never going to sell my 2001 Honda Civic.

Have you examined the reasons why iPhone owners sell their older iPhones, and why people buy refurbished used iPhones?

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

#127

Post by mfoy_ »

johansch wrote: post #93

So this might be the largest scam, ever? We're talking trillions USD. (Their yearly revenue is around $200B, most of it iPhone.) (Wow, that was downvoted almost instantly.)

Apple's _total_ revenue since 2000 has been less than 1.2T, and it's not like they provided no value.

Calling it a "scam" in any capacity is already a stretch. Calling it a scam in "trillions" is utterly hyperbolic, and equally stupid.

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

#128

Post by nogridbag »

mempko wrote: post #69
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…

Strange, I have an old HP veer That is 6 years old and it doesn't spontaneously shut down. I have a 3 year old android phone that doesn't spontaneously shut down. What is so special about iPhones and why do they crap out in 2 years?

My 2013 Macbook Pro would spontaneously shut down with anywhere between 30-40% battery. I tried a few tips I found online to fix it, but nothing seemed to work.

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

#129

Post by unobtaniumstool »

jlmorton wrote: post #88
jtbayly wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not entirely accurate. They observed that with a fully charged battery it performed as expected. The CPU wasn't throttled until the battery was depleted.

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

#130

Post by compiler-guy »

jtbayly wrote: post #65
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…

I think the problem is deeper. They put batteries in these devices that cannot handle load the rest of the hardware demands. Their solution is to just slow down the rest of the hardware. I've got a phone that is nowhere near to needing a new battery. It holds 87% of its original charge capacity. Yet it never runs above 50% speed unless it is above 97% charged, and even then it only runs at 2/3rds original speed.

The batteries handle the load just fine until they start wearing out around 500 cycles.
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