futuremark Does Apple throttle performance for old iPhones? Futuremark settles the question

[Hayabusa1989]

25 minutes ago, hey_yo_ said:

I actually wouldn't mind if Apple reduced their support duration from five years to just four years just to keep their devices running smoothly. 

Well the reason why the iPhone 5 will no longer receive the iOS 11 update is because iOS 11 stripped off 32-bit compatibility and the A6 chip in the iPhone 5 is a 32-bit SoC. But yes, I can tell that I hated iOS 7 when it arrived on the iPhone 5 the same reason I detest iOS 11.0.2 on my iPad Air. I think Apple should at least add more RAM to their iPhones and iPads for future proofing.

Yeah but that's not the way to get icultist dummies Apple Users to buy more devices. Truth is Apple are only interested in becoming the first $trillion Company. If Steve Jobs were alive he would have Tim Cook shot for giving too much to charity. 

[captain_to_fire]

20 minutes ago, Hayabusa1989 said:

Truth is Apple are only interested in becoming the first $trillion Company.

Isn't that what private corporations want? Businesses are built for profit, not for charity.

20 minutes ago, Hayabusa1989 said:

Yeah but that's not the way to get icultist dummies Apple Users to buy more devices.

I prefer the iPhone than Android for a lot of reasons but I wouldn't mind switching to an Android phone as a a lot of the services I use are cross platform for music, email, cloud storage and productivity. I just wish there's a way for Android phone to back up app data to Google drive like game scores and progress as well as built in backup for text messages when I switch from one Android phone to another because iCloud backs up my text messages so changing from an old iPhone to another is very easy.

[DrMacintosh]

2 hours ago, tsk said:

It's turning into a resource hog.

Pat I checked iOS could run on a phone with 1GB of RAM and a dual core SoC  granted Apple makes some of the most powerful dual core SoCs. 

[captain_to_fire]

7 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Pat I checked iOS could run on a phone with 1GB of RAM and a dual core SoC  granted Apple makes some of the most powerful dual core SoCs. 

It's a good thing Apple made quad core (A10 Fusion) and hexacore (A11 Bionic) SoCs. I just wish they could've added more RAM for future proofing.

[DrMacintosh]

There was a story that recently broke online somewhere that documented the slowdown of iOS devices overtime......

 

What it found was that since the 5s, iPhones have had the rate at which they slow down year over year decrease since the iPhone 5s.

 

in reality iPhones have not been slowing down when they get updates because of planned obsolescence, they have been slowing down because the hardware inside them where incapable of supporting being updated so massively year over year. 

 

Now a days we have phones like the iPhone 6s and iPhone SE which are now 3 generations old but they have 2GB of RAM and the A9 SoC which means they are more than capable of running iOS 11 and probably beyond for the next few years. 

 

This can can also be proven by looking at Apples Linueup in 2017. Apple only sells what they feel is a “acceptable” user experience and they still sell the iPhone SE, iPhone 6s, iPhone 7, in addition to the iPhone 8 and X. 

 

They have never kept this many phones in the lineup! 

 

 

[DrMacintosh]

2 minutes ago, hey_yo_ said:

just wish they could've added more RAM for future proofing

2GB is really solid, that’s what I have with my 6s Plus. 

 

And tbf, when 1GB of RAM was the standard it was because iOS was piss poor basic ?

[captain_to_fire]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

2GB is really solid, that’s what I have with my 6s Plus. 

 

And tbf, when 1GB of RAM was the standard it was because iOS was piss poor basic ?

When the A7 chip in the iPhone 5s was announced to be the first 64-bit ARM SoC, I was skeptical thinking that iOS 7 will hog that 1 GB RAM  but iOS 7 ran smoothly on the iPhone 5s. While I do think anything above 4GB of RAM for a smartphone at the moment is an overkill, it doesn't hurt if Apple decides to make it 3 or 4 gigabytes of RAM in the iPhone since iOS is becoming more and more feature rich, hence more memory hogging processes even though iOS will often kill running apps and processes that aren't in use when RAM usage is high.

[DexterSmythe]

2 hours ago, mrchow19910319 said:

iPhone 6 and below only has 1GB of ram or less. 

That is a huge deal today. 

That’s actually why I upgraded to my new phone. For better multitasking and ram. 

[Hayabusa1989]

1 hour ago, hey_yo_ said:

Isn't that what private corporations want? Businesses are built for profit, not for charity.

I prefer the iPhone than Android for a lot of reasons but I wouldn't mind switching to an Android phone as a a lot of the services I use are cross platform for music, email, cloud storage and productivity. I just wish there's a way for Android phone to back up app data to Google drive like game scores and progress as well as built in backup for text messages when I switch from one Android phone to another because iCloud backs up my text messages so changing from an old iPhone to another is very easy.

I'm not actually attacking the Users as such but more the practises of slowing devices. 

[captain_to_fire]

1 minute ago, Hayabusa1989 said:

I'm not actually attacking the Users as such but more the practises of slowing devices. 

If you read the OP, Apple is not deliberately throttling performance for older devices but more of a result of older hardware being incapable of running new features of iOS. It's like having a Core 2 Duo with 2GB of RAM + Windows 10.

 

And also, I wasn't insinuating that you are attacking users. 

[Hayabusa1989]

1 minute ago, hey_yo_ said:

If you read the OP, Apple is not deliberately throttling performance for older devices but more of a result of older hardware being incapable of running new features of iOS. It's like having a Core 2 Duo with 2GB of RAM + Windows 10.

 

And also, I wasn't insinuating that you are attacking users. 

but i disagree with the OP, the decline starts from the first update all the way to the new device. Surely optimization would slightly Improve Performance ? 

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Since when did we trust Futuremark about mobile device performance?

 

On Mobile, Futuremark's products in my experience have been almost as bad as Geekbench.

Do you have something better we can use?

[captain_to_fire]

19 minutes ago, Hayabusa1989 said:

Surely optimization would slightly Improve Performance ? 

That's what succeeding updates are for to improve performance. 

[Dylanc1500]

25 minutes ago, Hayabusa1989 said:

but i disagree with the OP, the decline starts from the first update all the way to the new device. Surely optimization would slightly Improve Performance ? 

It's more than just optimizations, as they have increased the size and complexity of the OS to add built in features that newer hardware can use. Older hardware can still run it but it will be harder as the hardware will not have quite the available resources that the newer hardware could have.

 

I think a better example of this could be when people with XP tried updating to Vista. (I know many people have a perception of being a terrible OS but it was packed with built-in features that most pre existing hardware didnt have the resources for.)

[Hayabusa1989]

2 minutes ago, Dylanc1500 said:

It's more than just optimizations, as they have increased the size and complexity of the OS to add built in features that newer hardware can use. Older hardware can still run it but it will be harder as the hardware will not have quite the available resources that the newer hardware could have.

 

I think a better example of this could be when people with XP tried updating to Vista. (I know many people have a perception of being a terrible OS but it was packed with built-in features that most pre existing hardware didnt have the resources for.)

but from ios 10 to ios 10.1 the performance should not decrease if their is only security updates surely ? 

[captain_to_fire]

2 minutes ago, Dylanc1500 said:

I think a better example of this could be when people with XP tried updating to Vista. (I know many people have a perception of being a terrible OS but it was packed with built-in features that most pre existing hardware didnt have the resources for.)

Aero, Flip 3D, translucent glass windows, fancier animations, etc... 

Just now, Hayabusa1989 said:

but from ios 10 to ios 10.1 the performance should not decrease if their is only security updates surely ? 

My iPhone and iPad didn't have that much performance hits with iOS 10.1 but it improved greatly with iOS 10.3 when Apple transitioned iPhones and iPads from HFS+ to APFS.

[Dylanc1500]

21 minutes ago, Hayabusa1989 said:

but from ios 10 to ios 10.1 the performance should not decrease if their is only security updates surely ? 

It depends greatly on what was updated. Do we know with upmost certainty what those security updates are and what they did, also do we know that it was ONLY minor security updates as major security updates can patch vulnerabilities in hardware. Security updates can cause issues. They have to weigh pros vs cons.

 

22 minutes ago, hey_yo_ said:

Aero, Flip 3D, translucent glass windows, fancier animations, etc... 

My iPhone and iPad didn't have that much performance hits with iOS 10.1 but it improved greatly with iOS 10.3 when Apple transitioned iPhones and iPads from HFS+ to APFS.

Thank you.

[Hayabusa1989]

Just now, Dylanc1500 said:

It depends greatly on what was updated. Do we know with upmost certainty what those security updates are and what they did, also do we know that it was ONLY minor security updates as major security updates can patch vulnerabilities in hardware. Security updates can cause issues. They have to weigh pros vs cons.

 

Thank you.

I think apple do a great job of dressing up their intentions when really they are plotting something much darker. 

[Dylanc1500]

1 minute ago, Hayabusa1989 said:

I think apple do a great job of dressing up their intentions when really they are plotting something much darker. 

I'm not in to making assumptions as that can cause more issues than anything. As that argument can be used on anything that is unknown or has limited information. I prefer to not voice assumptions due to it leading to possible misinformation and people believing something that isn't what it seems.

 

That is as far as I going with that as that isn't the topic at hand.

[Hayabusa1989]

Just now, Dylanc1500 said:

I'm not in to making assumptions as that can cause more issues than anything. As that argument can be used on anything that is unknown or has limited information. I prefer to not voice assumptions due to it leading to possible misinformation and people believing something that isn't what it seems.

 

That is as far as I going with that as that isn't the topic at hand.

Im not really making assumptions as Apple had camera inserts in the IPAD 1 but did not put a camera in ... its the sorta thing they like to do. 

[tsk]

1 hour ago, DrMacintosh said:

There was a story that recently broke online somewhere that documented the slowdown of iOS devices overtime......

 

What it found was that since the 5s, iPhones have had the rate at which they slow down year over year decrease since the iPhone 5s.

 

in reality iPhones have not been slowing down when they get updates because of planned obsolescence, they have been slowing down because the hardware inside them where incapable of supporting being updated so massively year over year. 

 

Now a days we have phones like the iPhone 6s and iPhone SE which are now 3 generations old but they have 2GB of RAM and the A9 SoC which means they are more than capable of running iOS 11 and probably beyond for the next few years. 

 

This can can also be proven by looking at Apples Linueup in 2017. Apple only sells what they feel is a “acceptable” user experience and they still sell the iPhone SE, iPhone 6s, iPhone 7, in addition to the iPhone 8 and X. 

 

They have never kept this many phones in the lineup! 

 

 

I doubt Apple is doing planned obsolescence with iOS updates.  My own testing has also show slow down in app loading times and navigating through the OS,  and I don't think anyone is denying that fact, it just means iOS is no longer the lightweight OS it once was. One would think the iPhone 8 would be much faster in aforementioned tasks than Android, yet several S835 devices are comfortably beating it. 

 

Arstechnica did a quick test on iOS 11.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/ios-11-on-the-iphone-5s-slower-but-not-quite-slow/

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Teddy07 said:

That is true but I have to spend money

Well I mean yeah you do know that don't you?

[DrMacintosh]

47 minutes ago, tsk said:

One would think the iPhone 8 would be much faster in aforementioned tasks than Android, yet several S835 devices are comfortably beating it. 

In all these cases is pretty much due to animations. iOS has become very “dainty” in that regard. It can still beat the 835 when the time for lifting weights comes around. Remember the A11 is a hex core with 4 high efficiency cores and 2 High Power cores. The A11 is using its high efficiency cores for pretty much every app that isn’t rendering. 

 

The Apple A11 beats the SnapDragon 835 handedly. In Geekbench well over 4,000 points. 

 

 

[ScratchCat]

2 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Do you have something better we can use?

App launch times of the top N number of apps in the app store, web browsing performance ,multitasking behavior and stability of a 60fps UI. 

Those are the things which the user will notice and care about.

These is an app called Discomark which automates the app launch time measurement and to an extent the multitasking performance.

 

11 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

In all these cases is pretty much due to animations. iOS has become very “dainty” in that regard. It can still beat the 835 when the time for lifting weights comes around. Remember the A11 is a hex core with 4 high efficiency cores and 2 High Power cores. The A11 is using its high efficiency cores for pretty much every app that isn’t rendering. 

 

The Apple A11 beats the SnapDragon 835 handedly. In Geekbench well over 4,000 points. 

 

I would agree, however these are two different OSs, most apps built for android have a rather impressive ability exploit parallelism while most iOS apps rely on single threaded performance. Both ways have their benefits.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/9518/the-mobile-cpu-corecount-debate

[DrMacintosh]

2 minutes ago, ScratchCat said:

most apps built for android have a rather impressive ability exploit parallelism

Doesn’t really matter if their parallelism can’t even compete with the A11 on any level. 

 

Performance, efficiency, or graphics.