Apple admits to intentionally slow down your iphone

[mrochester]

Well because they are selling something with a certain description. You dont get to change that description after the sale. I dont remember Apple ever saying that they would half the performance of your phone if your battery wore down, I'd be happy for you to pull something up by them saying so if I'm wrong.

But that means every manufacturer would have to offer free battery replacements forever as all batteries from all manufacturers degrade in time.

Apple didn't say anything about the performance of your phone reducing when the battery wore down. It's just one of the side effects of a worn out battery, much like not being able to use your phone for a long as you used to is a side effect of a worn out battery.

 

[WelshBloke]

But that means every manufacturer would have to offer free battery replacements forever as all batteries from all manufacturers degrade in time.

No, because not all manufacturers clock the SOC a lot slower when the batteries age.

 

[mrochester]

No, because not all manufacturers clock the SOC a lot slower when the batteries age.

But that's not what you said. Manufacturers advertise phones with certain capacity batteries and certain battery lives. Over time, those performance metrics will deteriorate. You seem to want manufacturers to maintain the same battery capacity forever, and expect free replacements when the batteries do start to lose capacity.

You don't seem to understand that batteries deteriorate over time and it's not possible to maintain the same performance of the device that relies on said batteries once they have deteriorated. A replacement battery will fix things.

 

[WelshBloke]

But that's not what you said. Manufacturers advertise phones with certain capacity batteries and certain battery lives. Over time, those performance metrics will deteriorate. You seem to want manufacturers to maintain the same battery capacity forever, and expect free replacements when the batteries do start to lose capacity.

Nope. Batteries wear out. That's fine. What doesn't happen normally is that the speed of your CPU drops.
Your advertising a device with a certain performance. At no point should you be deliberately be lowering that performance after a sale to make up for a different deficiency.

 

[ChronoReverse]

There's something to keep in mind here and it's that Apple doesn't actually have the choice to not throttle because a good proportion of the phones will actually shutdown/reboot since the surge power usage is more than the batteries can handle after a certain amount of wear.

This is absolutely a design flaw because overprovisioning batteries to account for at least this much is a standard practice. Apple simply cut the corner too far here and there's really no excusing it.

 

[mrochester]

Nope. Batteries wear out. That's fine. What doesn't happen normally is that the speed of your CPU drops.
Your advertising a device with a certain performance. At no point should you be deliberately be lowering that performance after a sale to make up for a different deficiency.

Well here’s some new bit of information for you, it does effect the overall performance of your device as the battery degrades, including the CPU running slower at peak loads.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Well here’s some new bit of information for you, it does effect the overall performance of your device as the battery degrades, including the CPU running slower at peak loads.

This is not true in general actually. My Galaxy S4 is on the 4th year of its original battery and while battery life is definitely below 80% of new, full load tests are not any slower than 4 years ago. In fact, generally the battery is overprovisioned for what the CPU will need even after three years of wear.

Apple cut it too close to the edge in order to maximize battery life in this case.

 

[WelshBloke]

Well here’s some new bit of information for you, it does effect the overall performance of your device as the battery degrades, including the CPU running slower at peak loads.

I'm not saying that you are wrong here but I'm not accepting that you're right unless you can give a bit more than because you say so.

 

[mrochester]

This is not true in general actually. My Galaxy S4 is on the 4th year of its original battery and while battery life is definitely below 80% of new, full load tests are not any slower than 4 years ago.

Apple cut it too close to the edge in order to maximize battery life in this case.

But that doesn’t disprove that battery degradation doesn’t effect performance. It just means in the Galaxy S4 it doesn’t, just like it doesn’t in the iPhone 5S. Some phones will be effected, some won’t, because it depends on the hardware in the device and it’s power requirements.

 

[WelshBloke]

But that doesn’t disprove that battery degradation doesn’t effect performance. It just means in the Galaxy S4 it doesn’t, just like it doesn’t in the iPhone 5S. Some phones will be effected, some won’t, because it depends on the hardware in the device and it’s power requirements.

Yeah, well we obviously know that Apple is doing this. That doesn't mean that its expected behaviour.
I mean how many people before this week were saying this?

 

[mrochester]

Yeah, well we obviously know that Apple is doing this. That doesn't mean that its expected behaviour.
I mean how many people before this week were saying this?

Ignorance of something prior to this week does not mean it didn’t exist previously.

We can now safely add degraded component performance to the list of side effects of a degraded battery because it can and does happen (clearly).

 

[ChronoReverse]

But that doesn’t disprove that battery degradation doesn’t effect performance. It just means in the Galaxy S4 it doesn’t, just like it doesn’t in the iPhone 5S. Some phones will be effected, some won’t, because it depends on the hardware in the device and it’s power requirements.

Yes but this is simply basic chip behavior. Chips generally need a certain voltage to be maintained to continue to function and they're not analog in that they automatically work slower with less voltage (they only work less reliably and it drops off extremely quickly below the minimum threshold). It needs to be by design in order to account for the voltage drop and slow down enough to not have an issue.

Batteries have more and more internal resistance as they wear, this is the source of the voltage drop under load. There should be enough leeway to account for this but if your chips are cutting it closer to the limit you get more battery life. The downside is that after some wear, the internal resistance will drop the voltage below what the chips need and you'll need to throttle to reduce the load.


Apple only needed to do this because their newer phones are too close to the edge.

The most important thing here is that chips do not automatically run slower as the battery wears, it has to be specifically designed to do so

 

[WelshBloke]

Ignorance of something prior to this week does not mean it didn’t exist previously.

It certainly means that it was something that the consumer was unaware of during the purchase.

We can now safely add degraded component performance to the list of side effects of a degraded battery because it can and does happen (clearly).

So maybe in all those Apple reviews they should put a *subject to battery age and only if battery percentage is above 50%* on all the benchmark scores?

 

[MrSquished]

THere was that other guy in this forum who was a pretty delusional Apple guy, but Mr. Rochester is really working hard at besting him. Talk about obtuse.

 

[Elixer]

Apple didn't say anything about the performance of your phone reducing when the battery wore down. It's just one of the side effects of a worn out battery, much like not being able to use your phone for a long as you used to is a side effect of a worn out battery.

Nice red hearing.

You do realize that if Apple didn't O/C the phone in the first place, the delta between how it performs with a fresh battery vs a older battery wouldn't have been as big as it is?

In other words, they could have the same clocks all the way through a battery's life cycle, and people wouldn't notice a dramatic drop in speeds.

As I previously said, they purposely did this to make it perform better to reviewers / users, none of them would notice anything is "off" until way later in the phone's life cycle.

Does Apple say anywhere that "If you notice the phone getting slower, try replacing the battery?"
No.
Does the phone have a notification saying "performance is lowered because of the battery's age/use?"
No.
They wan't people to buy new units. It is as simple as that.

 

[AnMig]

another nefarious reason apple is doing this is to prevent the phones from shutting down suddenly when its 1-2 years old as this would lead to people returning the phones for warranty replacement. standard warranty is 1 year but I do believe warranty can be extended to 2 years. This would make the phone last longer than 2 years without suddenly shutting down.

Think about it people will not send their phones back for warranty if it slowed down a little after 1-2 years but they will definitely send it in for warranty is it starts to suddenly shut down. Brilliant plan actually.

Warranty info
https://www.apple.com/support/products/iphone.html

Battery replacement is covered under the warranty if it is less than 80% capacity

 

[mrochester]

Here's a post from a battery scientist for those of you who are still struggling to understand this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/7lorpo/battery_scientist_weighing_in_on_this_issue_of/

Good quote that describes a lot of posters in this thread
"We live today in a victim and outrage society always looking to see conspiracy in everything."

Apparently Google have been doing this for years in Android

https://android.googlesource.com/ke...mentation/devicetree/bindings/arm/msm/bcl.txt

No doubt it'll now be the best thing in the world and how dare Apple have copied Google.

 

[WelshBloke]

Here's a post from a battery scientist for those of you who are still struggling to understand this.

I understand what's going on, and it really looks like Apple have tried to squeeze too much out of their batteries. It certainly explains the performance advantage of Apple's SOCs (when the batteries fresh).

Good quote that describes a lot of posters in this thread
"We live today in a victim and outrage society always looking to see conspiracy in everything."

Hmmmmm. A conspiracy is doing something in secret and having it denied in public isn't it? Sounds a fairly reasonable description of events. Anyway how about sticking to the issue rather that discussing people posting about it in insulting or belittling ways?

Apparently Google have been doing this for years in Android

https://android.googlesource.com/ke...mentation/devicetree/bindings/arm/msm/bcl.txt

No doubt it'll now be the best thing in the world and how dare Apple have copied Google.

Can you give an example of an android phone that does this so we can test?

 

[mrochester]

I understand what's going on, and it really looks like Apple have tried to squeeze too much out of their batteries. It certainly explains the performance advantage of Apple's SOCs (when the batteries fresh).




Hmmmmm. A conspiracy is doing something in secret and having it denied in public isn't it? Sounds a fairly reasonable description of events. Anyway how about sticking to the issue rather that discussing people posting about it in insulting or belittling ways?



Can you give an example of an android phone that does this so we can test?

In fact this is the precise opposite of a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy is Apple deliberately slows old phones down to make people upgrade. Reality is, Apple slows down the processors of phones with worn out batteries to make them last longer.

 

[ashetos]

Surely laptops being 60+ Watt devices would have been doing that for decades, right? Li-ion and polymer batteries, same technology really. I'm pretty sure most laptops can survive 12 months on the original battery.

It's pretty clear that this is inexcusable and a design fault, and also an attempt of a cover-up. It is also convenient since it fits the planned obsolescence narrative. You could even argue that Apple have never tried to avoid any action that slows down the older devices for whatever reason.

 

[mrochester]

Surely laptops being 60+ Watt devices would have been doing that for decades, right? Li-ion and polymer batteries, same technology really. I'm pretty sure most laptops can survive 12 months on the original battery.

It's pretty clear that this is inexcusable and a design fault, and also an attempt of a cover-up. It is also convenient since it fits the planned obsolescence narrative. You could even argue that Apple have never tried to avoid any action that slows down the older devices for whatever reason.

Laptops don’t face the same level of charging/discharging.

 

[ashetos]

Laptops don’t face the same level of charging/discharging.

Many people keep them on the wall, true, but many people always use them on the move also.

 

[tynopik]

Nope. Batteries wear out. That's fine. What doesn't happen normally is that the speed of your CPU drops.
Your advertising a device with a certain performance. At no point should you be deliberately be lowering that performance after a sale to make up for a different deficiency.

You're advertising a device with a certain battery life. At no point should you be deliberately be lowering that battery life after a sale to make up for a different deficiency

get off your fucking high horse. batteries degrade, there is no way to maintain both battery life and speed. They made the decision they felt would be the most benefit to most customers. Better to have a slow device than a dead device no?

 

[mrochester]

Many people keep them on the wall, true, but many people always use them on the move also.

Yep but because they are much bigger to start with they will go through far fewer charging cycles so will last longer.

Come on guys you really need to understand this stuff before you comment as it’s just making you look uniformed and like a bunch of fanboys.

 

[ashetos]

Yep but because they are much bigger to start with they will go through far fewer charging cycles so will last longer.

Come on guys you really need to understand this stuff before you comment as it’s just making you look uniformed.

Laptops cannot survive 4 days on a single charge, in contrast to phones. It's the exact opposite of what you're saying. Also, calling me uninformed so quickly shows something I guess...