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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

#211

Post by valuearb »

jlmorton wrote: post #67
roc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole problem is that the batteries can't deliver that performance. They can throttle the chip to what the battery can deliver or it will crash. Maybe Apple's more conservative on the throttling, and some amount of performance could still be achieved without a crash, but there's zero chance Apple's putting a "make my phone unstable" switch in Settings.

That doesn't pass the sniff test. The available voltage from a lithium ion battery will decrease as it is discharged. When your phone turns off, that does not mean there is no more energy in the battery. It means there is no longer enough voltage to power the phone. Over the course of many discharge cycles, the battery will lose capacity, and the point when the voltage is no longer sufficient to power the phone will…

Android phones do suffer from spontaneous reboots. It appears not as much as iPhones, and the most likely reason is the higher performance CPUs in iPhones. Android manufacturers have chosen to let the minority of users who suffer through spontaneous reboots, to keep suffering through them, rather than moderate CPU performance for them.

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

#212

Post by ghthor »

valuearb wrote: post #182
davrosthedalek wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the market know that their phone will be slowed down after a year? I don't think it was an informed decision. An informed decision might yield the same outcome though.

One of the reasons I upgraded to an iPhone X was that my 6 Plus was getting slow. I'm just now finding out that I could have replaced the battery for $85. Am I mad!? No, I'm not. 3 years is long enough for a smart phone, I probably would have replaced it anyways. And I like the X way more. My guess is most people plan to replace their phones after 2 years, and few have this problem before that. So disclosing probably…

No guarantee that replacing the battery would disable the underclocking. I suspect it's still be underclocked.

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

#213

Post by acchow »

basseq wrote: post #29
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…

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…

Alternatively, you could say Apple is putting in a barely-sufficiently-sized battery for planned obsolescence... and masking it under "make it as thin and light as possible".

In reality, it's probably some mix of both sides.

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

#215

Post by valuearb »

nephrite wrote: post #58
bec123 wrote: post #5

Dear one of the richest damn companies on the face of the earth: MAKE . IT . EASIER . TO . REPLACE . THE . BATTERY !!!

Yes. Also make the batteries standard, like they did with the chargers.

Yes, lets have lower battery capacity, and heavier thicker phones so that 2 years from now a user can save $30 replacing their battery.

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

#216

Post by ghaff »

valuearb wrote: post #182
davrosthedalek wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the market know that their phone will be slowed down after a year? I don't think it was an informed decision. An informed decision might yield the same outcome though.

One of the reasons I upgraded to an iPhone X was that my 6 Plus was getting slow. I'm just now finding out that I could have replaced the battery for $85. Am I mad!? No, I'm not. 3 years is long enough for a smart phone, I probably would have replaced it anyways. And I like the X way more. My guess is most people plan to replace their phones after 2 years, and few have this problem before that. So disclosing probably…

I mostly agree although I don't really know if my iPhone 6 seemingly getting slower is due to power throttling or general software optimized for more performance over time. The geekbench numbers are still fine. I'd hesitate to get a new battery purely on speculation my phone would get faster. So it would be nice if there were some indication of where the battery is in its life. Though like you, I'm upgrading to an X in any case.

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

#217

Post by gnopgnip »

Blazespinnaker wrote: post #14
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…

How about just the ability for a user to replace the battery? Should be a law to cut down on ewaste.

There are quite a few good phones with a user replaceable battery, but that is just not what consumers want most of the time. The LG v20 is the most recent one that comes to mind

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

#218

Post by racl101 »

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…

> but Apple should probably have something in iOS that tells people their phone is running slow because the battery is 2 years old.

Or a disclaimer telling people the caveats (or cons) of upgrading their OS.

More transparency would be great instead of making people feel like the company is pushing them out of their, otherwise, perfectly functional smartphone which cost them a fortune.

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

#219

Post by acchow »

Yetanfou wrote: post #180
lisper wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's true, why was Apple being so cagey about it for so long? Why didn't they advertise it as a feature?

Because it is not a "feature". It is a band-aid for a design defect in the affected iPhone models, advertising it as a feature would only draw attention to those design defects.

It's not a design defect. It is intentionally designed this way - as thin and light as possible with a battery that's only sufficiently powerful for the first month.

And they get planned obsolescence too!

It's intentional.

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

#220

Post by davrosthedalek »

valuearb wrote: post #182
davrosthedalek wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the market know that their phone will be slowed down after a year? I don't think it was an informed decision. An informed decision might yield the same outcome though.

One of the reasons I upgraded to an iPhone X was that my 6 Plus was getting slow. I'm just now finding out that I could have replaced the battery for $85. Am I mad!? No, I'm not. 3 years is long enough for a smart phone, I probably would have replaced it anyways. And I like the X way more. My guess is most people plan to replace their phones after 2 years, and few have this problem before that. So disclosing probably…

Thank you for the your very informative message. I think messages like yours are somewhat lacking in this discussion.

I understand your argument. I think I would be somewhat mad, or maybe it's better to say, disappointed. While I most likely would have bought a new phone anyway, I would despise that Apple took away my ability to make this call. It also means that I could not refurbish the phone and pass it on to parents/friends.

In the last years, I am somewhat disillusioned by Apple. Instead of engineering a better overall package, the innovations seem to be based on cheats (I would the /undisclosed/ cpu down-clocking as such), cutting corners in QC and questionable design decisions (touchbar - why not with some touch feedback? No headphone jack for reasons already disproved by android phones.)

I didn't buy in into the ios eco-system, but like the mbp and mac os. But the number of advantages get smaller, and the number of disadvantages grows.

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