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A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

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Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#731

Post by rplnt »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #728
rplnt wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My experience has been that upgrading the OS results in degraded performance 100% of the time. I have the same experience on Android. Of course I rarely received OS updates, but even that's better than Google making the device practically unusable. Be it a marketing ploy, a conscious decision trying to protect me, or just a mistake, I don't care. It's bad.

I have the opposite experience with Android. My Nexus 5X now went from version 6 to 7 to 8, and that's not including the minor version updates. It hasn't gotten any slower. Looks like it will last a few more years easily. Storage degradation is the only thing that worries me, I wish more companies made phones with microSD slots. Modern microSD cards are cheap and fast. My old Apple devices, for comparison, are useles…

My Samsung is definitely slower than it was few OS upgrades ago. It's becoming an annoyance. My at-the-time-google-owned-Motorola did't receive any updates. My Google Nexus tablet became completely unusable (like, really, really unusable, not just slow). With older devices, Android 2.x was horrible from the go, so I don't know if it could get worse (and there were only minor updates anyway).

A very small sample, I know. But part of my post was to point out that Apple users can consider themselves lucky at least in the regard that they do receive updates.

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#732

Post by abdelm »

polack wrote: post #676
RayVR wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The outrage doesn't seem overblown to me. For years I knew that my iphones were becoming obsolete not entirely from the passage of time but instead from upgrading the OS. Apple insisted they were not slowing down devices. Now they claim that they started this in iOS 10.2, without notification. My experience has been that upgrading the OS results in degraded performance 100% of the time. Whether intentional or not App…

What people are missing here is that while Apple now confess that they did slowdown the iPhone 6 and 6s when they released the 7, they are not saying anything about earlier models. They are however lowering the price to exchange batteries even for older models. Why would they do that if they where not affected? Why don't they say this practice started with the IOS 10 update? They just say they did it in the 10 update…

The reduction in battery replacement is only for anyone with iPhone 6 or later, not older models.

"Apple is reducing the price of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement by $50 — from $79 to $29 — for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later whose battery needs to be replaced, starting in late January and available worldwide through December 2018. Details will be provided soon on apple.com."

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#733

Post by lsc »

kodablah wrote: post #288
jsz0 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For years I knew that my iphones were becoming obsolete The clock down feature is new so your past experiences are very likely unrelated.

Sure, for this specific issue. But the culture of increasing hardware requirements beyond the reasonable point of not-that-old phones coupled with the opacity surrounding what is done to support them is systemic (and not Apple-specific of course).

>But the culture of increasing hardware requirements beyond the reasonable point of not-that-old phones coupled with the opacity surrounding what is done to support them is systemic (and not Apple-specific of course).

My recollection is that back when you needed a new computer every three years if you wanted to be able to read word processor documents from others in the office is that there was a whole lot less vitriol then. Maybe I am misremembering; it has been a long time.

We did joke. "What Intel gives, Microsoft takes away" - I do remember that every upgrade came with complaints of "Bloat!" - but I remember there being a lot more excitement than complaints, (modulo really bad ideas... Did anyone like Microsoft bob? I mean, I understand where they were coming from, but it was just a really terrible implementation)

I personally find it super amusing that I now have two laptops in front of me; one that is a year old, and one that is seven years old. Both running modern software, and they both work just fine. The new one uses a lot less power, of course, and doesn't get as warm on my lap, and the old one has some physical problems; I need to take apart and clean out the keyboard, but it mostly just works.

I wonder if cellphones will be that way in twenty years?

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#734

Post by madez »

carterehsmith wrote: post #669
madez wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not impressive. However, it shows that I don't need to abstain from modern uses of my device. The first ancestor of this comment chain is saying, that they were locked-in partly because they couldn't move media out. This contradicts you.

>> The first ancestor of this comment chain is saying, that they were locked-in partly because they couldn't move media out. This contradicts you. Sorry, you are just making things up. The first ancestor did not complain about moving media out. That is something that you invented. Btw I do not know what your purpose here is... lying... to get what? Upvotes? Are these really worth... this? Just asking.

They didn't state it directly, but indirectly.

The exact quote is:

> Since we were already locked into the Apple ecosystem (with paid apps and media), we bought iPhones.

So, they are locked-in into the ecosystem partly because of media. This directly implies they can't move their media out, for else they wouldn't be locked-in.

I'm not lying, and received no Upvote, still I'm responding. Actually, I think I'm risking downvotes for responding to a rather angry comment without content for the topic of the link. It's simply that you asked, so I answer.

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#735

Post by dannyw »

jlian wrote: post #103

One thing that Apple hasn't addressed is if the Geekbench results [1] over-represents or exaggerates the the throttling effect. Since Geekbench pushes the iPhone to its limits for the duration of the benchmark, iOS needs to throttle performance to prevent shutdown while being tested. This results in lower-than-expected test scores every time. But how much does this map to real-life, visible performance drop? Edit: An…

The problem isn't very prevalent in Android devices, because they have more "voltage headroom". The chipsets are not pushed to the limits / the red line, so battery degradation won't result in performance drops or sudden shutdowns.

Sudden shutdowns do still occur for some devices, but it is nowhere as iPhone devices pre-throttling. It's also something that didn't affect previous iPhones before the 6, because those devices did not have a very thin redline.

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#736

Post by dannyw »

MBCook wrote: post #572
dandersh wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more than reasonable to expect a manufacturer to not stress their (recently released) hardware to the point of it being damaged without significant throttling or flat out shutting it down. But if it is that reasonable than surely there is a long list of electronic devices that do such a thing...

I agree, I simply don’t believe that the iPhone is not designed to be able to run at full speed a reasonable fraction of the time. The implication that I keep getting from people seems to be that Apple is running their phones at 140% and when the battery can’t keep up they then slow it down to make up for the CPU being underprovisioned on battery. I think it’s far more likely that Apple is running the phone at 100% o…

In that case, why don't Android devices face sudden shutdowns as frequent as iOS devices (yes, you can point to isolated cases, but it is nowhere as prevalent as Apple devices pre-throttling)?

Note that this problem only occurred on devices where Apple fully designed the chips (iPhone 6 and later). "Off the shelf" chips, and those used for Android, simply have a lot more of a voltage window.

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#737

Post by tinus_hn »

rorykoehler wrote: post #620
tinus_hn wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The update that ‘caused’ this issue only did so for the iPhone 6 and up so a replacement wouldn’t be necessary for older models. Also, if you must keep using these old phones when they are no longer supported and have known and unpatched vulnerabilities, please be a good citizen and keep them off of our internet.

I find that very hard to believe. We've been witnessing these slow downs since the beginning

Should be easy to prove that then now that it is clear what to look for.

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#738

Post by bufferoverflow »

rplnt wrote: post #731
bufferoverflow wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the opposite experience with Android. My Nexus 5X now went from version 6 to 7 to 8, and that's not including the minor version updates. It hasn't gotten any slower. Looks like it will last a few more years easily. Storage degradation is the only thing that worries me, I wish more companies made phones with microSD slots. Modern microSD cards are cheap and fast. My old Apple devices, for comparison, are useles…

My Samsung is definitely slower than it was few OS upgrades ago. It's becoming an annoyance. My at-the-time-google-owned-Motorola did't receive any updates. My Google Nexus tablet became completely unusable (like, really, really unusable, not just slow). With older devices, Android 2.x was horrible from the go, so I don't know if it could get worse (and there were only minor updates anyway). A very small sample, I kn…

You're confusing the slowness caused by the updates (which doesn't exist on Android) with the slowness caused by the flash storage degradation (which absolutely does exist). I too have an old Nexus 10, which died from that cause, a common problem.

That's exactly why I think microSD support is so important. Your old card got slow? Buy a new one for $20, copy the files over, done.

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#739

Post by mmjaa »

raverbashing wrote: post #713
mmjaa wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the outrage is justified, for one particular reason: none of this would have happened if Apple hadn't devolved the feature: user-replaceable batteries. It is Apples' arrogance that painted them into this corner, and nothing less.

Incorrect I had the same problem with a user-replaceable phone battery It took me a while to realize it was the battery to blame. Yes, replacing it was easier, but you need to identify the problem first

Not incorrect at all. Its a perfectly reasonable function of the operating system to tell the user that their battery is end-of-life and it should be replaced.

What is "incorrect" is all the justification for this unacceptable, anti-customer behaviour. The current design serves no purpose other than to treat the customer as a cash-cow, who must upgrade their phone at the EOL of their battery, or suffer a degradation in the capabilities of a device they own. Or, do they not?

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#740

Post by LaGrange »

visarga wrote: post #621
LaGrange wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's quite a bit of work into recycling those, and Apple has already has the means of recovering much of it - pity people don't generally return their used phones to them, though. Your replacement battery is unlikely to be recycled better than when it's done in an automated manner on a fairly large scale. Of course Apple can get away cheap because of that "people don't even try to recycle" thing. Forcing the indus…

> far better than the romanticised "repairability" I decide on my own what I want, which is to fix the damn thing if it's fixable and not spend 1000$ on a new one. And to fix it is "far better" than to recycle it, or to have it artificially slowed without explanation and deceived into buying a new one. Apple is not the company I once admired. Time passes, MS is slightly more ok and Apple is bad. Weird. I wouldn't hav…

"And to fix it is "far better" than to recycle it"

Because what, because you say so? I mean, I can say it's far better to dress my phone up in a green skirt and hang it outside my window as a Christmas decoration then. About just as relevant.

"Time passes, MS is slightly more ok and Apple is bad."

You seem to have missed the lesson from the Apple thing: companies ain't your friends.

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