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iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

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Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#131
post #126

Can someone explain to me why (outside of this one issue) phones get so slow over time? As a professional programmer I though I understood computers but I clearly don't. What's going on my phone that it grinds to a halt? Why does a factory reset sometimes help, but sometimes not? It can't just be that the workloads are more resource intensive. If I go get an old tablet it will take 5x as long to load google.com as th…

This article does a good job of explaining the main reason: To retain runtime on a degraded battery, they underclock/undervolt the hardware.. drawing less power and producing less performance. This honestly accounts for mobile device performance loss in the majority of cases and it isn't iPhone or Apple-specific.

A resets might improve performance of the flash device if it frees up additional space or does something similar to an SSD "trim" event.

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has decided that people want to buy razorthin phones and there is just not way to fit a large battery in there. I wish there were phones built like the old IBM thinkpads. Bulky, square, ugly but also indestructible and fully user servicable with replaceable batteries.

>> Apple has decided that people want to buy razorthin phones I wonder what percentage people who buy those razorthin phones end up adding a millimeter or more to their phones by adding tempered glass screen protectors and cases over them. IMO, that defeats the purpose of the thinness.

Actually, no. Due to the thinness, I can add a protector that adds just enough so the thickness feels right to me. A thicker phone would necessitate a thicker protector that would make it difficult remove the phone from my front left pocket where I always carry it.

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#133
post #126

Can someone explain to me why (outside of this one issue) phones get so slow over time? As a professional programmer I though I understood computers but I clearly don't. What's going on my phone that it grinds to a halt? Why does a factory reset sometimes help, but sometimes not? It can't just be that the workloads are more resource intensive. If I go get an old tablet it will take 5x as long to load google.com as th…

This article does a good job of explaining the main reason: To retain runtime on a degraded battery, they underclock/undervolt the hardware.. drawing less power and producing less performance. This honestly accounts for mobile device performance loss in the majority of cases and it isn't iPhone or Apple-specific. A resets might improve performance of the flash device if it frees up additional space or does something…

Pretty much. I was still using the original Galaxy S when the Galaxy S6 was the hot new toy. I was able to use it despite its archaic hardware on the latest versions of Android because I forced the CPU to always run at maximum speed instead of throttling. I couldn't get around the minimal amount of RAM that came installed with the phone, but the CPU trick helped immensely day to day.

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious if you have a source on that? I see otherwise here: https://www.apple.com/support/products/iphone.html I bought a new iPhone about 48 hours ago and was told the same thing as shown above.

@tolien: Yeah I remember when AppleCare for Mac did that too. Not sure at what point it changed to "within 60 days of purchase."

Early this past summer when AppleCare for Mac became AppleCare+ for Mac.

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#135
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can replace the batteries at both Apple stores Or you know, Apple could make it easy for the user to replace the battery by themselves. But they chose not to.

Know how I can tell you haven't designed any consumer products with a battery, replaceable or otherwise? This is the engineering equivalent of saying, "Why doesn't someone just go to the Middle East, sit down at a round table with with the Israelis and Palestinians and Sunnis and Shiites and rebels and Baathists and Saudis and ISIS members and refugees and all those other guys, and help them work out their difference…

Let's not pretend that Apple's hand was forced here. This is the company that dreamed up a proprietary screw to keep people out of their phones and computers.

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#137
post #82

I feel like more transparency would have been welcomed, but aside from that this is a "no win" situation, since you have to pick a winner: - Do you degrade performance but leave screen-on time relatively unchanged? - Do you degrade screen-on time but leave performance relatively unchanged? Most Android devices seem to do the opposite (lose screen-on time, but keep performance relatively unchanged). Different people w…

I think out of the two options, Apple picked the far more deceptive one, or at least the one that will be perceived to be deceptive (which IMO is the same thing). Few people would be surprised that batteries degrade over time, eventually causing noticeable drops in battery life, many people seem surprised that performance is intentionally and artificially reduced over time.

No. People are generally not educated enough about electronics to understand that batteries degrade over time. The most common way this manifests is “this phone sucks the battery dies in 10 minutes zomg I’ll never buy x phone again!”.

Your phone battery has been abused for years and you expect it to hold a charge?!

It’s a much much better decision to slow it down than let the phone die.

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree. Apple chose to have the phone continue to work all day. That will keep it useful more than being fast. A better option is a larger battery, but without that, I think they make more customers happy than I'd they did the alternative.

Nothing you've expressed is an effective counterclaim to the assertion that Apple chose a more deceptive route to dealing with the inevitable degradation of batteries in its devices. On balance, the expected behavior for an aging phone is to suffer from decreased battery life as total battery cycles increase. Apple instead has chosen to decrease system performance to hide diminished battery life, and failed to disclo…

For people familiar with electronics yes. Most people don’t understand this and think the phone is a cheap piece of crap if the battery starts dying early.

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has decided that people want to buy razorthin phones and there is just not way to fit a large battery in there. I wish there were phones built like the old IBM thinkpads. Bulky, square, ugly but also indestructible and fully user servicable with replaceable batteries.

>> Apple has decided that people want to buy razorthin phones I wonder what percentage people who buy those razorthin phones end up adding a millimeter or more to their phones by adding tempered glass screen protectors and cases over them. IMO, that defeats the purpose of the thinness.

I once had a phone with a removable back, and a special case designed to hold a massive battery in place without the back plate. Sucker was almost like a brick in your hand, but I've got huge hands, and I LOVED the fact that my battery would last for nearly a week with intense usage(I read books, like, all the freaking time on my phone)

Re: iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages

#140

I feel like more transparency would have been welcomed, but aside from that this is a "no win" situation, since you have to pick a winner: - Do you degrade performance but leave screen-on time relatively unchanged? - Do you degrade screen-on time but leave performance relatively unchanged? Most Android devices seem to do the opposite (lose screen-on time, but keep performance relatively unchanged). Different people w…

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