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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

#221

Post by chrislomax »

valuearb wrote: post #209
chrislomax wrote: post #55

My wife had a phone replaced off Apple about 6 months back because it was shutting down for no reason about 40% battery life. She’s recently upgraded from 10.x to latest version. She’s noticed an actual decrease in performance to the point where she’s nearly punching the phone. It just locks up for no reason. I’d like to blame this on the battery or age of the phone but I can’t. It is an iPhone 6 but it is only half…

Was her replacement phone a refurbished or new unit? Either way, she can probably get a brand new battery just by taking it in to the Apple Store. Also, battery age isn't actually time based, it's cycle based. If your wife uses her phone so heavily that she has to recharge it multiple times a day, she's putting more cycles on the battery. Still should last more than 6 months though.

I’m not 100% on whether it was refurb or brand new. It came in a non branded box without a charger etc. The phone looked brand new.

I’m going to install the app to check what the CPU is running at.

It’s still ridiculous that she was running 10.x fine, she only updated because someone sent her some emojis that her phone didn’t understand and now is it’s running like crap

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

#223

Post by sambe »

abakker wrote: post #194
sambe wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That quote really hurts. My iPhone 6S has had spontaneous shutdowns since the first winter it was out (and is supposedly not in the replacement program). No previous Apple phones did. This winter it's the same. To me it suggests a more widespread defect that they do not wish to admit.

FYI - https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6s-unexpectedshutdown/ that was effected by a recall. You should check your serial number.

Like I said, it's not part of the replacement program.

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

#224

Post by nightski »

mikeash wrote: post #148
jrace wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The battery sure is, and so are the tires, windshield wipers, seats, etc. have non-replaceable ram and cpu is one thing, but a part that is known to deteriorate with age and usage should be user replaceable.

It is user replaceable. You can buy the part and the tools and do it yourself if you're handy with a screwdriver. It's not a simple matter of snap-out/snap-in, but it's not much harder than replacing a car's windshield wipers, and much easier than something like replacing tires or brake pads.

I've done this on many phones. The phone often isn't the same as it was initially because it was not designed for this. Many phones have tape that has been adhered through the use of heat. Changing the battery requires removal of many screws and disassembling very sensitive parts. Little mistakes can make the phone inoperable.

Not to mention you take it to a technician who has the tools and you'd assume is doing a good job right? No, often it's some high school kid who is not invested in doing a good job but rather just getting it done. It's sloppier than if you were to do it yourself. So you have to resort to buying hundreds of dollars of tools and taking painstaking hours to get it done right and even then it might not turn out.

To the other posters who argue'd that we make a choice about this - no we really don't get a choice. If you want a cutting edge phone there are simply 0 options with replaceable batteries. This is planned obsolescence in an age where my several year old Motorola works just fine for my needs.

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

#225

Post by mikeash »

nightski wrote: post #224
mikeash wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is user replaceable. You can buy the part and the tools and do it yourself if you're handy with a screwdriver. It's not a simple matter of snap-out/snap-in, but it's not much harder than replacing a car's windshield wipers, and much easier than something like replacing tires or brake pads.

I've done this on many phones. The phone often isn't the same as it was initially because it was not designed for this. Many phones have tape that has been adhered through the use of heat. Changing the battery requires removal of many screws and disassembling very sensitive parts. Little mistakes can make the phone inoperable. Not to mention you take it to a technician who has the tools and you'd assume is doing a go…

Hundreds of dollars of tools? iFixIt sells a kit with tools and a battery for $25.

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

#226

Post by rkapsoro »

Does anyone know if any Android vendors are using a similar approach?

I have an Android phone which apparently has a 40% degraded battery (60% total capacity remains, at least according to a battery health estimation app that I used since Android does not appear to surface battery wear via API) that is always painfully slow, even if I'm careful to ensure that at least 10 gigs of free space to avoid storage slowdown.

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

#227

Post by notatoad »

Tloewald wrote: post #167
labster wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feature list: * 4.7-inch retina display * 12MP camera * Phone will get slower over time No, not seeing that advertisement working.

Well it's not like Android phones advertise "comes with malware direct from Google Play store" and "malware can run your phone so hard it will deform, catch fire, or explode"

no, but that's also not true so it's not really a valid comparison.

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

#228

Post by blensor »

xster wrote: post #191
blensor wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell how well it's executed but the major issue I have with this is that this is not properly communicated to the user. I guess most people already get the feeling that their devices slow down after time, or the new apps/OS's just require more potent hardware and replacement of the devices is necessary as time goes by. But for many of those it seems that a "simple" battery replacement would have done the tric…

> not properly communicated to the user s/user/buyer Selling a car that markets 300,000 miles but can't drive over 3,000 rpm anymore after the first year is not a car, and marketing it as such is fraud.

In my car case it was a know issue of this model and repaired for free within one hour. And while a degraded battery is nothing that needs to be replaced for free, the manufacturer of the phone probably sunk a lot of time and money into developing a strategy to cope with the phone shutdowns due to a degraded battery. During that process it is hard to imagine that no one ever came up with the notion that maybe it would be a good idea to also notify the user that a serious issue is developing which should be handled some time. After all this is not going to get better since the battery will continue degrading (and probably with increasing rate) if it is not replaced.

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

#229

Post by ISL »

valuearb wrote: post #184
ISL wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The performance requirements could be met, but the battery (and phone) would be larger and more massive.

Even a bigger battery is going to degrade at the same rate. It might limit the need for CPU throttling, but probably not by much.

A larger battery, running the same CPU, with the same stated "battery life" as the original battery, will degrade gracefully for a longer period of time before the compute performance must also degrade.

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

#230

Post by verytrivial »

compiler-guy wrote: post #133
macns wrote: post #90

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.

There are two issues with older phones running more slowly, and you are probably encountering both of them 1. Newer versions of iOS demand more processing power because they do more (or perhaps do it less efficiently). 2. Old batteries can't deliver as much power. So an old phone will new version of the OS mores slowly than a new one, regardless of the battery situation. But, if the battery was marginal but hadn't hi…

> 2. Old batteries can't deliver as much power.

Does anyone have a citation for this? I know capacity falls, but what fraction of peak current is lost with age? And what fraction with throttling just the CPU to 50% save in total load?

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