Apple Admits Slowing Down iPhones

[Guest]

Original Article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42438745

 

"Apple has confirmed the suspicions of many iPhone owners by revealing it does deliberately slow down some models of the iPhone as they age.

Many customers have long suspected that Apple slows down older iPhones to encourage people to upgrade.

The company has now said it does slow down some models as they age, but only because the phones' battery performance diminishes over time.

Apple said it wanted to "prolong the life" of customers' devices.

The practice was confirmed after a customer shared performance tests on Reddit, suggesting their iPhone 6S had slowed down considerably as it had aged but had suddenly sped up again after the battery had been replaced.

"I used my brother's iPhone 6 Plus, and his was faster than mine? This is when I knew something was wrong," wrote TeckFire.

Technology website Geekbench then analysed several iPhones running different versions of the iOS operating system and found some of them did indeed appear to have been deliberately slowed down."
- BBC's Chris Foxx

 

The article states that from last year it was introducted a feature to prevent battery life degradation in the iPhone models above the iPhone 6 (6, 6+ and SE), now introduced in 11.2 to the iPhone 7 (Note that this was an unneccessary change last year so it was introduced later). Apple will continue to roll out this feature to devices as they age. The feature downclocks the CPU to a degree to prevent excess strain and power consumption on the battery. If your phone is slow (and is a supported model of the feature) you may be intrested to replace the battery.

 

This is pretty inconsistent with the hypothesis that iPhones are being slowed down deliberately due to Apple wanting users to upgrade. In the analysis by Rory Cellan-Jones he discusses the proposition that the two are linked but with a pretty shoddy argument. This would assume the iPhones to be unuseable even with a battery replacement, prompting a neccessary phone upgrade, whilst the phones run fully well with a replacement battery. Keep in mind this is only for the iPhone models >=6. In the past there has been evidence on contrary to this urban myth (I can't cite myself for this, but have a search on Quora), so do not think that this slowdown - which is due primarily to battery life, is Apple really expecting you to upgrade.

[Guest]

p.s oops for double post deleting it now

[Oshino Shinobu]

Bit late to this one

 

 

[Guest]

I don't think I can delete a post but I expect a mod can help me soon.

[W-L]

As mentioned the topic has been previously posted. 

 

-Locked-