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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

#241

Post by nwndarkness »

the_gastropod wrote: post #109
LeoJiWoo wrote: post #25

Not a good implementation, this feature should be been far more explicitly stated in some sort of alert rather than buried. This is something that is burning the good will towards apple. Something that is in shorter supply since the days of Steve Jobs. You can see the polarization about it on social media. Again whether the feature was good/bad, there is clearly something to be learned from the shitstorm that it is c…

I'm not sure what the right move is here. Apple does have a notification once the battery reaches some threshold of "bad". But maybe it's too conservative? Clearly, notifying an iPhone customer that their battery is going bad when they're throttling CPU by 1% is too aggressive. 75% is too late. Where the right number lies, I don't know.

I ran the benchmark and my phone is affected (showed 1650 and 3000 when it the average for my phone is 2400 and 4000). I went into the battery menu people are saying that this notification shows up and there is nothing there about my battery needing to be replaced or serviced.

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

#242

Post by siquick »

sambe wrote: post #144
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…

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.

This was happening to me, resetting it solved the problem.

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

#243

Post by cjensen »

laurentoget wrote: post #41

I hope they will do the same with their cars. When the tires get old, just slow down the car to keep it safe. Having a light come up that tells me my car needs maintenance is so old school.

"A run-flat tire is a pneumatic vehicle tire that is designed to resist the effects of deflation when punctured, and to enable the vehicle to continue to be driven at reduced speeds" [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run-flat_tire

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

#244

Post by cjensen »

Mizza wrote: post #116

Much more importantly to me: Does this happen in MBP/OSX?

My 2008 MacBook Pro has a removable battery. Apple documents that without the battery (i.e. on AC Power) the CPU is underclocked because there is not enough power available.

So it wouldn't be unprecedented. And I wouldn't be surprised if other manufacturers do the same.

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

#245

Post by cjensen »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #34

Sounds to me like Apple didn't factor the degradation of battery into the design of the phone and instead focused solely on their relentless push for thinness.

All modern batteries degrade past the point of usefulness. It doesn't matter how big the battery is if you leave it in the Sun long enough it will die. The question is, "what then?"

Many people are reasonably asking that they be made aware of the problem instead of quietly kneecapping the phone.

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

#246

Post by cjensen »

starky wrote: post #235
jtbayly wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been anti-confirmed by me. My iPhone 6S continues running at 50% CPU speed, even when charging from the OEM adapter. Only thing that makes it run (a little bit) faster is if the battery charge gets above 97%. (Also worth noting that the battery in my phone still holds 87% original capacity.)

That this is happening when the cell is still at 87% capacity is really the problem here. How do you justify degrading your system's performance when the cell is still soundly in the healthy region?

Capacity is not power. Old batteries produce less power (volts times amps) no matter how full they are.

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

#247

Post by Fnoord »

epistasis wrote: post #177
calibas wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is kinda of a gray area, if they really wanted to treat their customers well, they'd have easily-replaceable batteries and a notification that lets people know their phone is slowing down because they need a new battery. Still seems like planned obsolescence, or at the very least, encouraged obsolescence.

>if they really wanted to treat their customers well, they'd have easily-replaceable batteries It's an extremely infrequent service, but it's not difficult. Certainly much much easier than an oil change on a car, which is a frequent service. Instructions, third party supplies, and third party services are abundant for it. I don't think it's fair to call it anything but "easily-replaceable."

> I don't think it's fair to call it anything but "easily-replaceable."

Yeah? Well that is peculiar. Here [1] [2] it says: "Difficulty: Moderate". I guess someone is wrong on the Internet, and I don't think its iFixit.

You see, the battery in my phone can be replaced in literally under half a minute. Without any special tools. Without any guide. The only thing is, I gotta buy the battery from the vendor, for 20 EUR.

That is, according to my reference point, "easily-replaceable" indeed (I could even do it whilst I'm hiking without any special tools), while the circus act you're going to have to put up (which includes all kind of non-standard tools (with additional price tag) which you can read about at [1] and [2]), clearly -without the shed of a doubt- makes it a lot more difficult to replace the bloody thing.

And let us be honest: that is entirely intended. Because else, Apple would use standard screws, and wouldn't use all kind of acts to use more obscure screws.

Fun fact: my mother, in her 60s, has changed oil numerous upon numerous times in her life. She's never replaced a battery in a phone though. Some people are scared opening up hardware. Heck, I bet she was scared refreshing oil the first time as well but my father guided her (he became blind, so couldn't do it anymore). Another one: the other day I was replacing a battery and reapplying thermal paste on my partner's MBP and my partner's sister complimented that I was doing that, even though it was my first time doing that and I was just using iFixit's guide. (I still managed to kill the iSight camera, even though the guide said I shouldn't worry about that connector. GG). That guide said Moderate difficulty as well IIRC. And I screwed it up. So... easy? Give me a break. Its tedious. And that, too, is way more difficult than opening up a ThinkPad T61.

Ergo, my point is that calling it "easily-replaceable" completely and utterly ignores how easy it used to be to replace your cellphone's battery. Call it a reality distortion field if you must.

So your reference point is yours, and mine is mine. We can call it there. I won't though; I want other people to take iFixit's reference point more serious than randomers because they are experts at defining the difficulty and their guides have been proofread and used. By many eyes.

[1] https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+6+Battery+Replacement/29...

[2] https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+6+Plus+Battery+Replaceme...

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

#248

Post by horatiocain »

chrislomax wrote: post #221
valuearb wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"she only updated because someone sent her some emojis that her phone didn’t understand and now is it’s running like crap" is like basically the state of the art for code running in 2017

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

#250

Post by davidzweig »

kregasaurusrex wrote: post #112
TrainedMonkey wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"The problem isn't specifically Apple's batteries; it's with current Lithium-ion battery chemistry in general." - I'm not a battery expert, but at least according to this page [0], if you were to fit a 30% larger capacity battery, and only charge to a maximum of 4.0V instead of 4.2V, you'd apparently get the same day-to-day battery life, but the overall life of the battery would be extended 4x (ie from 1 years to 4 years)

[0] http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_li...

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