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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

#111

Post by mfoy_ »

Multicomp wrote: post #13

WOW. Conspiracy was real the whole time! Devil's Advocate to spark discussion (I'm not an iPhone owner so no dog in fight): Apple did the right thing by not putting a switch in to toggle this slowdown[1]. For many iPhone users, the phone is a magic box that gives them videos and apps and (unlike our HN audience) don't have a clue about how it works, nor do they care. If such a switch existed, these same people would…

Or make the battery replaceable...

It pains me that I effectively have to choose between replaceable batteries and IPXX ratings.... T_T

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

#112

Post by kregasaurusrex »

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…

The problem isn't specifically Apple's batteries; it's with current Lithium-ion battery chemistry in general. As a whole, we've nearly reached the upper bound of where energy density and consumer safety are at for providing us with a good battery that doesn't easily explode and gives the phone a constant current. The documentary series NOVA had a good episode earlier in the year that showed some possible alternatives to these https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gxZrQ5yPsLI

Regarding the slowing down of devices, underclocking the CPU allows for both less power and a lower peak voltage to be drawn from the battery and extends the real usable life of the phone. Others would simply not turn on or pass a hardware test by failing to POST. You are right about new software versions being 'encouraged obsolescence'- a company that pushes features to its older phones knowing they may not be able handle these alongside the older essential ones definitely has an interest in you purchasing a new phone. This could easily be fixed by not having the slimmest phone on the market and instead have a thicker and more easily user-replacable battery.

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

#113

Post by jhiska »

chrisseaton wrote: post #95
jhiska wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sealed, seamless, performance-degraded, costly to service, with planned obsolescence. It's quite obvious that it's a waste of money to pay middle-men to perform basic service on it for stuff a user can do at home with any other phone.

Right... but the point was I get something, in return for having to pay middle-men to service it. It's a trade I'm happy with. Maybe you aren't, but it works for me.

You can go to a store and ask someone there to replace the batteries of your TV remote or battery-swappable phone for free, if you like.

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

#114

Post by IBM »

shock-value wrote: post #101
IBM wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because there is no low-speed mode. It changes based on a variety of conditions including how degraded the battery is (the OS tells you when it needs to be serviced once it's near the end of its life, 500 cycles), cold or hot temperatures, and the remaining battery life (low power mode decreases performance).

How did you come to this conclusion? My 6S was running in this “low speed mode” (as confirmed by Geekbench 4 results) even when the battery was at 100%, phone plugged in, placed at my desk at room temperature all afternoon. Only relevant variable seemed to be the battery age, and the results improved (along with subjective perceived performance increase) only when I recently had it replaced.

Those 3 conditions are literally what Apple said influence performance in the story you're commenting on.

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

#115

Post by mfoy_ »

poorform wrote: post #54
jdminhbg wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> WOW. Conspiracy was real the whole time! No, because this is a new feature as of the iPhone 6. The conspiracy way predates that.

Why haven't I observed my old iPhone 4 or 5 spontaneously rebooting?

After my iPhone 3g's (not even 3G S) last update, it became noticeably slower. It became one of the main reasons I upgraded my phone. It never spontaneously rebooted, but it definitely became slow.

I ended up getting a Samsung Galaxy S5 in 2015. I've replaced the battery once after the original started swelling, and it's still going strong. I plan to next upgrade my phone in 2018/9. I'd be pissed if the OS updated and suddenly made it very slow before then!

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

#117

Post by jelder »

komali2 wrote: post #96
QuotedForTruth wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's a "regular maintenance" type thing - less common than an oil change, sure, but perhaps just as necessary. So why not make it as easy as an oil change?

Cars, you may have noticed, are big. Apple has made a tradeoff between replaceable batteries and small phones, and the market has more or less agreed with this decision.

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

#118

Post by chrisseaton »

jhiska wrote: post #113
chrisseaton wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right... but the point was I get something, in return for having to pay middle-men to service it. It's a trade I'm happy with. Maybe you aren't, but it works for me.

You can go to a store and ask someone there to replace the batteries of your TV remote or battery-swappable phone for free, if you like.

You're just being sarcastic for the sake of it and not really contributing anything to the discussion.

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

#119

Post by jhiska »

wccrawford wrote: post #84
jrs95 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Both the iPhone and the Nexus 6Ps have horrible battery-swap design, but I still don't want to pay middle-men for what should be simple service I should be able to do at home.

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

#120

Post by mfoy_ »

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.

Exactly. I had an old iPhone 3G that was working fine until Apple released an update that crippled it after I held on to it too long after their product line had moved on...

I mean, to all those who might think "well, old phones be old", it's not that simple. The OS was running very smoothly, it's Apple, after all, but then I installed an OS update and after the update everything was slow and painful and took long to load, etc. It was night and day, pre-update: perfection, post-update: laggy as hell.

You can't tell me that this is anything but a way to force users of older models to upgrade.

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