Apple does slow down your iPhone.....but its not what you think....

[Valentyn]

4 hours ago, mrchow19910319 said:

but on the other hand... if you think about android.... how many people claim that after 1 year of usage their phone pretty much gone into shit... and become irresponsive... and slow... and stopped receiving latest android update.. 

 

Sounds like my experience with the One Plus One. Was awesome for that first year, and started going downhill after that.

The most frustrating is the darn Dialer constantly "not responding"; couldn't answer or make calls until I rebooted the device. Happened near daily.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Sauron said:

If it causes malfunctions then the LEAST it should do is warn me. If you just ignore it eventually it will fail outright and you will be without a phone at that "crucial moment". Then they can have some measures to prevent shutdowns, but it's not a substitute for knowing it needs to be fixed. And it's not about "a few MHz", otherwise nobody would have noticed. Clearly the slow down is significant.

Except the reason many repair shops don't have the right parts is that Apple doesn't sell them, or allow third parties to produce them. If you have a care package I don't think there's any reason to go anywhere but to Apple and get a replacement, if you don't Apple will just replace your phone with a refurbished unit at 75% of the original price or give you a small discount on a brand new phone - so since Apple won't fix your device they really have no right to complain if you go to a third party. Aside from the fact that they WANT you to just give up and buy a new one of course...

It doesn’t cause malfunctions. Any Apple Service Provider can fix your device. You can actually send your device to Apple to fix as well. 

 

If the slowdown is significant then your first port of call is an Apple Service Provider. It’s common sense. 

[Guest]

On 12/22/2017 at 12:24 AM, grimreeper132 said:

This explains why iphone 4s are now terrible as they can barely run apps now that they could previously. I don't a bad battery either they have still do it, don't get me wrong I don't think it's just apple that do it, but apple is the first one to properly admit it. I get that it's an issue the battery but the same time the iphone batteries (or the iphone 4 and 5 don't know about newer ones) were replaceable so it shouldn't be an issue of these phones should not be slowed down

I’m actually so mad about this. The iPhone 4S is slow because it was made in 2011. No phone can run software designed 5 years into the future. You can’t expect it to run flawlessly. 

[Sauron]

43 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

It doesn’t cause malfunctions. Any Apple Service Provider can fix your device. You can actually send your device to Apple to fix as well.

But they don't tell you what the problem is, so you can't take it in for a repair... I mean, NOW we know, but up until now we didn't and I think a lot of people won't have seen this whole debacle. The phone itself should warn you. Sending it to Apple often just means getting a refurbished unit by the way, they take your phone to fix (or scrap) on their own time and give you someone else's fixed unit.

44 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

If the slowdown is significant then your first port of call is an Apple Service Provider. It’s common sense. 

Is it? Or would you just assume it's too old as you did in the post right above this one? This would be true if the phone suddenly tanked its performance from one day to the next, but I doubt it's that quick. It probably slowly throttles in proportion to how worn out your battery is.

42 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

I’m actually so mad about this. The iPhone 4S is slow because it was made in 2011. No phone can run software designed 5 years into the future. You can’t expect it to run flawlessly. 

I have a lightly used (therefore without artificial throttling) 4S right in front of me, it may not be the fastest thing ever, but it's definitely usable, especially if you're content with messaging, calling and browsing the web, which is all most people who still use a 4s do anyway. And quite frankly, if the hardware can't handle the update, don't port it to that device - stick to security updates for older systems. That should be common sense.

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, Sauron said:

But they don't tell you what the problem is, so you can't take it in for a repair... I mean, NOW we know, but up until now we didn't and I think a lot of people won't have seen this whole debacle. The phone itself should warn you. Sending it to Apple often just means getting a refurbished unit by the way, they take your phone to fix (or scrap) on their own time and give you someone else's fixed unit.

Most people take their phones in when they break. Sending it to Apple gives you a fixed phone. So the problem is fixed. Apple Service Providers get told how to fix problems like these, that is why they are Authorised Service Providers.

13 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Is it? Or would you just assume it's too old as you did in the post right above this one? This would be true if the phone suddenly tanked its performance from one day to the next, but I doubt it's that quick. It probably slowly throttles in proportion to how worn out your battery is.

I

There is a big difference between the 4S and 6 (or newer). I didn't assume, I know that the 4S is too old. Of course no one can speak for everyone but usually people go to a servicer or an Apple Store to see what the problem is. Its a small cost compared to the large cost of a new phone.

[Sauron]

16 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

There is a big difference between the 4S and 6 (or newer). I didn't assume, I know that the 4S is too old. Of course no one can speak for everyone but usually people go to a servicer or an Apple Store to see what the problem is. Its a small cost compared to the large cost of a new phone.

And the cost of telling the user is 0.

[Spotty]

Up until a few days ago if you walked in to an Apple store and told them that you felt your iPhone 6s was feeling a bit sluggish and wasn't keeping up with your day to day tasks, the Apple store employees would not have known that Apple was throttling CPU on devices with older batteries and would not have known that a battery replacement would fix the customers issue. Instead of offering an actual solution to a known problem, they would have simply attempted to sell you a new model iPhone stating how much faster and more advanced it is than the older iPhone model.
 
Personally I don't think this wouldn't have blown up for Apple as it has done if they were transparent about the issue, offered to replace faulty batteries for customers still under warranty (instead of nerfing the device to hide the fault), and/or made the CPU throttling a transparent option in settings that users can enable and disable, eg.

Battery Optimisation: On/Off
Enabling this may provide improved battery life and stability on older devices. WARNING: Enabling this may impact performance


---------

It's going to be interesting to see how this fiasco plays out in Australia. Under our Australian Consumer Laws we have a statutory warranty period for purchases that cannot be undone by a manufacturer or sellers own [lesser] warranty. This covers the basics of the item you purchase such as:

• The goods will be of acceptable quality.
• The goods will be fit for a particular purpose.
• The goods will match their description.
• The goods will match the sample or demonstration model.
• You have title to the goods.
• You have undisturbed possession of the goods.
• There are no undisclosed securities on the goods.

Different periods of length apply for different items. For smart phones, the warranty period is 2 years. This 2 year period means that it is considered reasonable for a consumer to expect their phone to last a period of at least 2 years. (You can read more about this from Apple's own website: https://www.apple.com/au/legal/statutory-warranty/)

The iPhone 6s is only 2 years old (September 2015 release in Aus) so a large number of these phones will still be covered by this consumer protection.

Apple knew that due to a design flaw [in the batteries] the devices would not be able to last a reasonable period of time at an acceptable level of quality. At the time Apple were made aware of this, they should have, as per the Australian consumer laws, offered customers at least a repair or replacement. Instead of doing this, Apple committed to taking measures to conceal the problem from customers, which in effect prevented consumers from accessing their consumer rights and having their devices repaired/replaced under the warranty period.


I would not be surprised if we end up seeing Apple Aus being forced to recall the affected iPhones for free battery replacements as well as an iOS update on the devices that removes (or changes, see example above) the CPU throttling 'feature'.

 

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

And the cost of telling the user is 0.

They haven’t told the user about other modifications to the system I don’t see why they should have told then about this. It’s not that major. 

[maizenblue]

I have an iphone 7 plus. Im not THAT annoyed over apple throttling phones with poor battery life, although i think it shoukd be up to consumers to choose power saving mode, or not. 

 

I AM annoyed at the fact my battery life has gone to shit since ios 11. I dont know if ios 11 is optimized to the a11 chip and as a result older chips drain the battery more, or if me year and 2 month old iphones battery just started to show its age around the same time. I suspect a little of both.  

 

For the first time im thinking i might give android a second look when my phone contract is up in late october 2018. Im not ready to blame apple or conclude its planned obsolescence by apple, but it might be that they simply dont give a shit about older phones with ios 11, and figure if 11 runs down tgeir batteries more thatll just help spur upgrades. 

 

Im also pissed off the iphone 8 plus has a smaller battery than the 7. They could have kept the same size battery and gotten even better life with the a11. Instead its the same as the 7 and will degrade even faster. 

[Yongtjunkit]

My iPhone 5 doesn't seem to scale back performance but instead, it keeps auto restart when opening apps like snapchat unless you plug in to a power source 

[8uhbbhu8]

On 12/18/2017 at 9:58 PM, DrMacintosh said:

I mean, what flagship today has an easy to replace battery? 

 

I can replace any iPhone battery in 10min for only the cost of the battery itself. 

lol

 

 

Anyone else find it kinda hilarious that it can now be easier to self replace a battery in an iphone then an android phone?  

[mrchow19910319]

8 hours ago, Valentyn said:

Sounds like my experience with the One Plus One. Was awesome for that first year, and started going downhill after that.

The most frustrating is the darn Dialer constantly "not responding"; couldn't answer or make calls until I rebooted the device. Happened near daily.

former nexus 6p user. stock camera instant crash after 7.0 update. 

Yup. Google's stock android brick a phone that is designed to use stock android. 

 

Noped the fuck back to iOS. Not being a dick, but all of people that used android device around me keep saying this: after a year a two, the phone itself is basically unusable. So they either endure, or thinking of purchasing new phone. 

[8uhbbhu8]

8 hours ago, NumLock21 said:

a class action lawsuit has already been filed because of this.

https://www.macrumors.com/2017/12/21/apple-lawsuit-slowing-down-old-iphone-models/

lol. Yeah I don't think that's going to get anywhere lmao.

[Zodiark1593]

21 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

former nexus 6p user. stock camera instant crash after 7.0 update. 

Yup. Google's stock android brick a phone that is designed to use stock android. 

 

Noped the fuck back to iOS. Not being a dick, but all of people that used android device around me keep saying this: after a year a two, the phone itself is basically unusable. So they either endure, or thinking of purchasing new phone. 

My LG G2 was still quite smooth when I passed it on to Dad a few months ago. It was quite usable too with no lag while internet surfing, until the display went into pieces that is. That Snapdragon 800 was quite the monster.

[spartaman64]

On 12/18/2017 at 10:05 PM, DrMacintosh said:

No, they will just turn off randomly during use.......

 

Not sure that is better in any way........

 

So don't say Apple is bad for doing x when no Android Flagship does any different and take no measures to keep the phone usable when the batteries do degrade. 

why would they just turn off randomly? no other phone does that sure the battery life degrades but they turn off when they reach 0% not randomly

[DrMacintosh]

8 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

why would they just turn off randomly? no other phone does that sure the battery life degrades but they turn off when they reach 0% not randomly

Yes they do. When an SoC demands a power spike that the battery cannot deliver the device should shut off if the manufacturer has any sense. In the case of the iPhone this happens when the battery has degraded past a certain point. 

 

Its not Apple, it’s physics. 

 

It’s not “random” as to why the phones will shut off, but the average user might perceive it as random. 

 

 

 

 

[spartaman64]

46 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Yes they do. When an SoC demands a power spike that the battery cannot deliver the device should shut off if the manufacturer has any sense. In the case of the iPhone this happens when the battery has degraded past a certain point. 

 

Its not Apple, it’s physics. 

 

It’s not “random” as to why the phones will shut off, but the average user might perceive it as random. 

 

 

 

 

then they should design the battery to compensate for that without having to lower performance. and even with apple's performance degradation my friend's iphone 6 randomly turns off at times when he has 15% battery but my note 4 has never done this despite being significantly older and i use my phone more heavily than my friend 

[DrMacintosh]

4 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

then they should design the battery to compensate for that without having to lower performance.

This is not physically possible. 

 

4 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

my friend's iphone 6 randomly turns off at times when he has 15% battery but my note 4 has never done this despite being significantly older

iOS and Android do not report battery usage in the same way. Whatever your battery percentage says is most likely not true no matter what platform you use. 

[Dethac]

I don't think throttling the device is a bad thing on its own. Hell, a few other OEMs (I believe) have it as an option. Samsung, for example, has different power saving modes that limit (or throttle) the CPU. That's fine. 
What isn't is a few things: The lack of transparency on this issue from Apple (bad), the hardlining of the devices or the poor design of the battery (slightly less bad but still very bad), and the fact that a lot of people probably bought new iPhones to try and get a faster phone (really bad). 

 

The lack of transparency on Apple's part is a significant flaw that makes Apple's justifications just a tiny bit harder to believe. No notification is given to the user that the battery can't deliver the power necessary for the system. Instead, the processor is throttled silently without the user's knowledge. Apple already gives a notification when the battery reaches a level that Apple deems to be too poor to continue using: 80%. Evidently, Apple's phones can't degrade that far before facing performance issues, and since APPLE THEMSELVES are creating the notification, what harm is there in adding a second one when throttling becomes necessary to keep the phone operating as it should? Apple isn't telling its users that there's an issue with their device when there is, and that's really bad. 

 

The design is also pretty sketchy. The battery isn't at 80% capacity yet, and if we assume it hits 80% after 2 years of pretty constant usage, then after 1 year it should be around 90% give or take. How is it that Apple's battery design can't power the system effectively with a 10% decrease in battery capacity?

 

The battery in the iPhone is too small to deliver the amount of power necessary, or, if it is an issue with the current being delivered, the wiring of the battery is poor and... basically, the iPhone's battery is built right to the edge of what's necessary to save either weight (hence size) or cost. If we look at the size of the battery, this doesn't seem unreasonable. The iPhone 6 has an 1810 mAh battery, while the S6 has a 2550 mAh battery. Apple's power efficiency improvements in iOS work well with a smaller battery because black box magic, but longevity is clearly affected because the size of the battery has such a narrow margin of acceptable decay that after a year and at most 10% loss of battery capacity, the processor has to be throttled. What? How can this be fixed? Easy. Have a larger battery. Even if you lock the battery to only charge between certain values (say 10% and 90%, which of course shows up as 0% and 100% to the user), this results in a much larger margin for which the battery can degrade without it impacting performance. If you charge it normally with that extra capacity, the same effect. It gives more "breathing room" for the system to draw from the battery, which means that the battery can degrade more without impacting performance. 

 

Third, as a culmination of the previous points, what happens to MOST PEOPLE when their technology starts slowing down? They sure as hell aren't going to try to troubleshoot; that's for nerds and geeks and techies (/s). Instead, they're probably going to go buy a new phone because, hey, their phone is slowing down so technology is clearly getting too much for them. Sure, the battery replacement is given as an option, but Apple doesn't inform you until your battery reaches 80%, and at that point you've suffered through a throttled processor for quite some time already. Anecdotally, when I tried to replace my battery at an Apple store when it was at about 90% a few days back when this first hit Reddit (I benchmarked, yay! This was my second iPhone 6. My first had been replaced a while back for connectivity issues and the battery dying at 27% randomly), I got turned straight around by the Apple store employees. Inconclusive, but it shows that simply bringing it in to a store isn't going to fix all your issues. The issue here is that Apple doesn't inform you that there's a defect in their product and that they built their phones (and especially their batteries) too close to the limit until its far too late. 

 

So what does that mean for the consumer? Nothing good, that's for sure. It's not conclusive, but we can say that Apple is building their devices far too close to the THIS IS VERY BAD line and that after as little as a year preventative measures are necessary to insure the device continues operating, albeit slower than at purchase. This on its own isn't that bad. However, the lack of communication with customers and the hiding of the fact that the hardware can't keep up with the demands of the system makes this whole shebang suspicious. 

[spartaman64]

5 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

This is not physically possible. 

 

iOS and Android do not report battery usage in the same way. Whatever your battery percentage says is most likely not true no matter what platform you use. 

but when he presses the power button his phone turns back on and he can continue using it 

and why would it be impossible? just start the battery at a higher voltage and have a voltage regulator or something. and that still doesnt explain why iphones has these problems but my note 4 doesnt

and why cant they have it be an option that the consumer can turn on 

[DrMacintosh]

7 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

but when he presses the power button his phone turns back on and he can continue using it 

Because the SoC requested more power than the battery could physically output

 

7 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

why would it be impossible? just start the battery at a higher voltage and have a voltage regulator or something.

You mean every smartphone ever? A old battery can't just "output a higher voltage", that's not how this works. 

 

7 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

still doesnt explain why iphones has these problems but my note 4 doesnt

My iPhone 6s Plus doesn't have the problems documented in the findings either. So not really sure what significance your Note 4 has.....

 

7 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

and why cant they have it be an option that the consumer can turn on 

I'm going to just come out and say it. The consumer in this case is wrong if they would even think to choose to let the phone run as if its battery were not old and degraded and not lowering the clock speed would actually be hurting the consumer not helping them. 

[spartaman64]

12 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Because the SoC requested more power than the battery could physically output

 

You mean every smartphone ever? A old battery can't just "output a higher voltage", that's not how this works. 

 

My iPhone 6s Plus doesn't have the problems documented in the findings either. So not really sure what significance your Note 4 has.....

 

I'm going to just come out and say it. The consumer in this case is wrong if they choose to let the phone run as if its battery were not old and degraded and not lowering the clock speed would actually be hurting the consumer not helping them. 

lets say hypothetically the SoC needs 4 watts of power and the battery starts at 5 watts but in 3 years it drops below 4 watts so why not start it at 6 watts so it takes 6 years. and apparently even after apple slows down their devices they still have shut down problems. and apple should put it as an option because they dont know if the device will have problems and they could be degrading the performance of a device that would have been perfectly fine. or even they can have some sort of data log that detects whether the device is having such problems and toggle it on then. my note 4 is relevant because its an old device with old batteries and it doesnt have these problem and i dont hear lots of other note 4 users have problems with this either so its probably a fairly rare occurrence so either apple has vastly inferior batteries or they are doing this when there is like 2% of iphones actually have this problem

[DrMacintosh]

13 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

lets say hypothetically the SoC needs 4 watts of power and the battery starts at 5 watts but in 3 years it drops below 4 watts so why not start it at 6 watts so it takes 6 years.

Do you not see the flaw in your logic? 

 

13 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

and apple should put it as an option because they dont know if the device will have problems and they could be degrading the performance of a device that would have been perfectly fine.

Uhhhh, no. That is not how this works either. Its applied dynamically to all devices and is dependent on each device and its battery health. 

 

13 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

or even they can have some sort of data log that detects whether the device is having such problems and toggle it on then.

Why would the user need to see this data log? The OS collects it on its own. 

 

13 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

my note 4 is relevant because its an old device with old batteries and it doesnt have these problem

My iPhone 6s Plus is an old device with an old battery and it doesn't have these problems either. 

 

13 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

so its probably a fairly rare occurrence so either apple has vastly inferior batteries or they are doing this when there is like 2% of iphones actually have this problem

Lol thats a cute way to look at this. Unfortunately it has no basis in anything so there is no real way I can respond to that other than to laugh. 

[spartaman64]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

Do you not see the flaw in your logic? 

 

Uhhhh, no. That is not how this works either. Its applied dynamically to all devices and is dependent on each device and its battery health. 

 

Why would the user need to see this data log? The OS collects it on its own. 

 

My iPhone 6s Plus is an old device and it doesn't have these problems either. 

 

Lol thats a cute way to look at this. Unfortunately it has no basis in anything so there is no real way I can respond to that other than to laugh. 

whats the flaw? the problem is that the battery's power output decreases to the point it cant give the SoC the power it needs right? so make the battery be able to output more than needed at the beginning to it takes longer to degrade to that point. and the impression i got is that when the battery reaches a certain age the OS applies the degradation. if it actually waits until the phone is having problems then i wont have any problem with this but the person didnt say his phone has having any trouble with shut offs before the degradation and i would think thats something relevant to mention

[mrchow19910319]

Another @DrMacintosh vs the world thread... 

 

how are you doing buddy?