Apple Says It Slows Older iPhones to Save Their Battery Life

It&#x27;s not only to make them run longer - they&#x27;re reducing the peak demand on the batteries to avoid spontaneous shutdown when the aged battery can&#x27;t handle the load.<p>This seems like a good idea, and it appears to be well executed (ie it&#x27;s not apparently based just on age or milage like a crappy car maintenance reminder), but Apple should probably have something in iOS that tells people their phone is running slow because the battery is 2 years old.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;12&#x2F;20&#x2F;apple-addresses-why-people-are-saying-their-iphones-with-older-batteries-are-running-slower&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;12&#x2F;20&#x2F;apple-addresses-why-people...</a>

Had the battery in my iPhone SE replaced about an hour ago to test this out<p>Geekbench 4 benchmark before <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;invisiblea&#x2F;status&#x2F;943439761066397696" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;invisiblea&#x2F;status&#x2F;943439761066397696</a><p>And after <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;invisiblea&#x2F;status&#x2F;943891561661812736" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;invisiblea&#x2F;status&#x2F;943891561661812736</a>

I don&#x27;t get it. An old iPad 2 was running fine card games until we upgraded to IOS 9 a few weeks ago. Now it&#x27;s almost unusable. Pretty sure we had the same battery before we upgrade, so why wasn&#x27;t <i>cpu throttled</i> before we upgrade?<p>This looks more like Apple needed to slow down devices to sell new ones and found a really good excuse for it.

How come that the MASSIVE slowdown of my iPhone 6s occurred after upgrading to iOS11? TBH the spin that Apple is sending out to make us believe that this was all a clever implementation (which it still might be) does not match with the reality that iOS 11 was creating the slowdown of a device that was working &#x27;fine&#x27; before. And yes - this 6s is eligible for the battery replacement program and the Geekbench scores also indicate that this device has an issue. tl;dr: it seems that this is not the only explanation of the slowdown. Any thoughts?

My wife had a phone replaced off Apple about 6 months back because it was shutting down for no reason about 40% battery life.<p>She’s recently upgraded from 10.x to latest version. She’s noticed an actual decrease in performance to the point where she’s nearly punching the phone. It just locks up for no reason.<p>I’d like to blame this on the battery or age of the phone but I can’t. It is an iPhone 6 but it is only half a year old.<p>I believe that this phone should be able to handle the latest release just fine.<p>She’s now looking at upgrading the phone.

WOW. Conspiracy was real the whole time!<p>Devil&#x27;s Advocate to spark discussion (I&#x27;m not an iPhone owner so no dog in fight):<p>Apple did the right thing by not putting a switch in to toggle this slowdown[1]. For many iPhone users, the phone is a magic box that gives them videos and apps and (unlike our HN audience) don&#x27;t have a clue about how it works, nor do they care. If such a switch existed, these same people would see a twitter comment saying &quot;speed up yuor (sic) IPhone by turning off this setting~~~!!!!1&quot; and would just do it.<p>The result? iPhones dying at a faster rate. Even today, as Android phones are barely updated at all, it is still a desirable selling feature of an Apple iPhone that it will be supported for years. People turning that switch on without understanding the consequences would shorten the life of their devices and then &#x2F;&#x2F;still&#x2F;&#x2F; complain about how the device didn&#x27;t last that long.<p>I would think that a jailbreak-locked option would work IE you have to know enough about how your phone works to make the change, thus increasing your chances of making an informed decision on whether to shorten its life or not.<p>[1]Which is different than not telling people about it, which IMO is shady<p>Edit: remove italics

Remember it wasn&#x27;t until someone ran benchmarks before and after replacing their battery that apple decided to let the world know this was a thing.

Should be a switch in the settings. Prefer battery life or prefer performance. One more setting won&#x27;t kill anyone.

Not a good implementation, this feature should be been far more explicitly stated in some sort of alert rather than buried.<p>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.<p>Again whether the feature was good&#x2F;bad, there is clearly something to be learned from the shitstorm that it is causing. Something I hope Tim Cook learns quickly.

Dear one of the richest damn companies on the face of the earth:<p>MAKE . IT . EASIER . TO . REPLACE . THE . BATTERY !!!

Why doesn&#x27;t it run on normal speed when connected to the charger?

This isn&#x27;t a new thing with smartphones, nor limited to iOS&#x2F;Apple smartphones. Android does&#x2F;did it too:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;plus.google.com&#x2F;+YgorCortes&#x2F;posts&#x2F;CZ2GhoxgHk3" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;plus.google.com&#x2F;+YgorCortes&#x2F;posts&#x2F;CZ2GhoxgHk3</a>

Sounds to me like Apple didn&#x27;t factor the degradation of battery into the design of the phone and instead focused solely on their relentless push for thinness.

I&#x27;m somewhat impressed that such a detail hasn&#x27;t leaked through Apple&#x27;s walls in all these years. Tells a lot about secretive culture at Apple.

Let&#x27;s get real here, they did this to reduce battery related warranty claims.

Has it been confirmed whether Apple stops slowing the phone when the phone is plugged into AC power, i.e. the battery is not being used?

Alternative title: Apple uses crappy batteries

Planned obsolescence

The ability of HN readers to rationalize Apple&#x27;s consumer-hostile practices is nothing short of breathtaking.

Maybe, just maybe the batteries should be larger even if the case is slightly thicker.<p>It is one thing for Apple to compensate for weaknesses of current phones in the field. It would be another story if they plan to do this going forward without telling consumers at the time of sale. Car companies got in trouble over mileage...

Is it ALL old phones based upon aggregate statistics and a heuristic, or are they monitoring supply voltage. Apple have not, to my knowledge, provided any data to support their claim. And even if they did, batteries vary in quality, even from the same batch. Why not a setting you can override? It is a MASSIVE performance hit. This feels a lot like Epson or whoever blocking old or third party supplies to &quot;assure peak performance&quot;. People hate that but put up with this?<p>Edit: In case the subtext wasn&#x27;t clear, without battery wear data, evidence of these power related resets, or active opt-in to the throttling, this behaviour is identical to an artificial hobbling of old phones to encourage future hardware sales. Yadda yadda lawyers.

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.

Even if any of this is accurate and true, replacing a battery in my older phone did absolutely nothing for increase in performance. This is undoubtably planned obsolesce.

Is it widespread issue with other phones? I have a suspicion that either they have faulty batteries or they just got bitten by their tiny batteries. I think that battery should have some real life time (not one year, at least 3 years, preferably 5 years) and should be able to provide all the energy phone needed for functioning. Sure, capacity might be reduced, it&#x27;s understandable, but that&#x27;s all.

Does anyone know if any Android vendors are using a similar approach?<p>I have an Android phone which apparently has a 40% degraded battery (60% total capacity remains, at least according to a battery health estimation app that I used since Android does not appear to surface battery wear via API) that is always <i>painfully</i> slow, even if I&#x27;m careful to ensure that at least 10 gigs of free space to avoid storage slowdown.

My iPhone 6s had two iOS updates in recent months. After these updates the iPhone is significantly slower, occasionally the screen doesn&#x27;t respond to touch events, occasionally the screen is becoming black with little round loader in the center. Safari hangs. No other incident happened with the phone meanwhile, the only reason of the deteriorated behavior I could think of are these iOS updates.

So they started this with the Iphone 6, so I guess my Iphone 5s became slow for other reasons?

- Apple has disabled to check how many cycles the battery has. - Battery recall over shutdown issues - Software to slow down the phone to save battery<p>All these three should explain Apple&#x27;s behavior.

If the phone OS was open source there would be no need for all the conjecture, black box research and revelations, all of this would have been available knowledge

Maybe provide an option in settings is a better idea...<p>Or even better, provide a level of battery saving.

Much more importantly to me: Does this happen in MBP&#x2F;OSX?

do you recall &quot;low power mode&quot; in your iphone? This is exactly what it is. So, even your new iphone will operate slowly during low battery

...and this somehow coincides with new iOS updates.<p>After an explanation, everybody applauds this wise choice, protecting their phones from not working at all!

THIS MAKES SO MUCH SENSE. I always thought I was going crazy, thinking my increasingly &quot;old&quot; phone seemed slow. This is really irritating and disingenuous on Apple&#x27;s behalf - as said above, they should at least add a switch.

So this might be the largest scam, ever? We&#x27;re talking trillions USD. (Their yearly revenue is around $200B, most of it iPhone.)<p>(Wow, that was downvoted almost instantly.)

Seems like a good idea.

Well, that makes me want to upgrade.