A New Phone Comes Out. Yours Slows Down. A Conspiracy? No.

Megalith

24-bit/48kHz
Staff member
Joined
Aug 20, 2006
Messages
13,000
The phenomenon of perceived slowdowns is so widespread that many believe tech companies intentionally cripple smartphones and computers to ensure that people buy new ones every few years. Conspiracy theorists call it planned obsolescence, yet this writer claims it’s a myth. While slowdowns happen, he alleges they take place for a far less nefarious reason: the software upgrade.

“It’s software, and software has various degrees of production bugs and unintended things that happen.” The technical process of upgrading from an old operating system to a new one — migrating your files, apps and settings along the way — is extremely complicated. So when you install a brand-new operating system on an older device, problems may occur that make everything from opening the camera to browsing the web feel sluggish.
 
If there was no planned obsolescence then they would make phones upgradeable. But they not just don't do that. They make them impossible to repair. If that's not planned obsolescence then I don't know what is.

Apple makes your phone slow. Android manufacturers simply stop supporting your device 18 months after it hit the market.
 
I partially agree, and partially disagree with the article.

In most cases, developers are not intentionally sabotaging or slowing down your older device with some sort of poison update.

That being said, they are also likely not going out of their way to optimize a new version for older hardware. It would be costly, and they have no incentive to do so.

So, "not caring enough to optimize" may not be as bad as "intentionally sabotaging", but in the end it has pretty much the same effect.
 
Last edited:
I'm with the author on this. There are lots of things that can slow a phone down over time that are neither nefarious, nor a software update issue. When Android users put their apps on memory cards because they run out of phone RAM, it slows some operations down. When the gallery app has to process 5000 photos instead of 50 when the phone was new, that slows things down. A few crappy app updates that have nothing to do with the OS can slow things down when they misbehave.

Over time the battery loses capacity, not planned but just a fact of technology at the moment. Screens burn in or get dimmer, and people use higher brightness settings to compensate, that costs SOT.

So many things happen "naturally" by using the phone that have zero to do with the manufacturer. But who wants to go and completely reset the phone and Flash cards? Almost no-one. So instead you get conspiracy theories.

My S7 Edge is almost 2 years old. It performs exactly as I expect, with the quirks it always had. Actually some kinks removed through OS upgrades over time.
 
My galaxy S4 got slower after every update, even after doing a factory reset, which I did on the last update i did for it. My LG G4 got slower going from 5.1 to 6.0, so I went back to 5.1 and that's where I'll stay. Unfortunately the best advice I have for people is to never ever update their phone if they want it to stay fast - but of course this is not good from a security update standpoint.
 
My galaxy S4 got slower after every update, even after doing a factory reset, which I did on the last update i did for it. My LG G4 got slower going from 5.1 to 6.0, so I went back to 5.1 and that's where I'll stay. Unfortunately the best advice I have for people is to never ever update their phone if they want it to stay fast - but of course this is not good from a security update standpoint.


When I installed LineageOS on my 4 year old Nexus 7 (2013 model) it instantly felt like new again, and also got Nougat and newer security patches than even my Google Pixel has.

Definitely worth looking into.
 
Does this only apply to companies other than Apple?

My iPhone 5 still works pretty well, no slowing down that I've noticed even with the latest update. I'm just one example though.
 
The other "problem" is forced updates. If they're not going to optimize for older hardware, then don't force me to update. It's also stupid that "UX" updates are in the same distro package as security updates. Well what if I know performance will tank because of the new features so I only want to update for security? Nope, it's all or nothing. And nowadays it's even more ridiculous with devs taking away the option setting to not update. I've only been able to "trick" the system by claiming metered connection.
 
I wonder if there is anything I can install on my old Galaxy S1.. I still like the formfactor. Would be nice to have it as a backup, or at least functional. but it still has android 2.2something.. towards the end of it's life, I was going to use a cyanogen mod on it, but the jailbreak for it wouldnt work since it had recently had a software update and the jailbreak app I had wouldn't work on the newer version.. these days no idea how to get into that old thing.. But I thinnk it would be a fun project :)
 
When I installed LineageOS on my 4 year old Nexus 7 (2013 model) it instantly felt like new again, and also got Nougat and newer security patches than even my Google Pixel has.

Definitely worth looking into.
Locked bootloader, so no custom roms for me.
 
Conspiracy I say, my g3 slowed down and the battery drained way faster after the "upgrade"

Prolly running a battery.drain.bat
 
Planned obsolescence is real. Apple accomplishes it by not putting enough RAM in their phones and not optimizing new versions of iOS for older phones. They want slightly older phones to run poorly so people will upgrade.

The thing is though, we're getting to a point where phones are good enough for what most people do with them. There haven't been any big advances in smartphone tech that most people would care about for about 4-5 years. The planned obsolescence model is getting tiresome and is making people throw away what would be perfectly good phones if not for them getting hamstrung with crappy OS updates.
 
The other "problem" is forced updates. If they're not going to optimize for older hardware, then don't force me to update. It's also stupid that "UX" updates are in the same distro package as security updates. Well what if I know performance will tank because of the new features so I only want to update for security? Nope, it's all or nothing. And nowadays it's even more ridiculous with devs taking away the option setting to not update. I've only been able to "trick" the system by claiming metered connection.

This x100000

Yes I need these security updates but PLEASE don't force me to update to newer OS full of stuff that I don't care about. Perfect example is the iphone 4s on ios 4 and the iphone 5 on ios 6 they ran buttery smoth of these version but after that they were sluggish and not really the same phone anymore.
 
The other thing I have noticed is that once the phone is a year or two old, the cellular connection generally starts getting poorer and poorer with each update.

I am not imagining it either. It has happened to pretty much every single phone I have owned over the past 10-12 years.

My current iPhone 6 used to have excellent signal strength. About 6 months ago, after one of the updates, it went to crap. So much so that I can barely get enough signal in my office to receive a call and the reception at home is not near as good either.
Other people where I work that have the iPhone 6 have noticed the same thing.
 
Futuremark did testing on this for iOS devices: https://www.futuremark.com/pressreleases/is-it-true-that-iphones-get-slower-over-time

The answer they reached was, no, they don't slow down, however
futuremark said:
That said, there are some factors that might affect people's perception of performance after updating an older device with a newer version of iOS. An update might add new features that use more resources or require more processing power. New apps developed for the latest models might not run as smoothly on older devices. Conversely, apps designed for an earlier version of iOS might not take full advantage of optimizations in the latest version. And then there is always the psychological effect of knowing that there is a new and improved model available, which can make your own device seem outdated.
 
My Nexus 6 started slowing down and the performance was just terrible toward the end, which was just recently when it all came to a head and I couldn't stand it a day more. It was so slow over a gradual period of time that I just took it as my phone was getting older/outdated and needed replaced. After all, I've had the phone 28 months. But with features that still stand out even today at the end of 2017 it was not a mobile phone I was ready to give up. Anyways, with the boot loader being unlocked on all Google Nexus devices and I'm assuming the Pixel line as well you still have to root your device if you want to make any real changes, which I did.

After installing Pure Nexus 7.1.2 on my Nexus 6 and a handful of root based apps my phone is super buttery smooth and extremely quick. Battery life has never been better. Just a night and day better experience. No latency or slow down, One of the apps I'm using that requires root actually ads additional memory buffers to the UI along with other tweaks that give the phone such an incredible response time that using the word shocking wouldn't be too far from the truth.

I'm going to assume people just need to reinstall their phone OS from scratch. Like a real wipe prior to a fresh install. Or if you're adventurous and bold enough, a new custom ROM if you own an Android. I would not recommend people install over their old OS.

If any of you have a sluggish Nexus 6 which I sure a few of you have still, do what I did. You will absolutely stop thinking you need to replace your phone.
 
That stinks.

IMHO, it ought to be illegal to sell anything with a locked bootloader.

They are mobile internet service providers, and I should be able to connect any hardware I want with any software I want to their networks, just like with my home ISP.
I'm honestly happy enough I was able to at least get root with the G4, at least on 5.1. No root for 6.0 on it was ever developed. I've already had it repaired to fix the bootloop problems, so I hope it will last me another few years. I'm actually still using my old Galaxy S4 as my daily drive still, haven't had the time to bring the G4 back to fully daily viable yet!
 
I wonder if there is anything I can install on my old Galaxy S1.. I still like the formfactor. Would be nice to have it as a backup, or at least functional. but it still has android 2.2something.. towards the end of it's life, I was going to use a cyanogen mod on it, but the jailbreak for it wouldnt work since it had recently had a software update and the jailbreak app I had wouldn't work on the newer version.. these days no idea how to get into that old thing.. But I thinnk it would be a fun project :)

I had an old Sprint Epic which is basically the same phone, that I gave to my son about a year ago. I rooted it and flashed it with Odin using a ICS ROM from Cyanogen.
IMO it wasn't worth it. Gingerbread was the last OS update it received and it was some what usable on the phone albeit with hardly any app support, but Ice Cream Sandwich turned it into a useless piece of shit.
It was too much for the single core Hummingbird to cope with. I would stop at 2.3 and go no further with that hardware.
 
I just got a Lenovo Moto E4. Good enough for me, and probably flying way under the radar.
 
Author says it's a myth manufacturers are slowing down your phones, then goes on to explain how the software that is put on your phone slows it down. Kind of lost me there.
 
My phone doesn't slow down in the sense of hardware as I have an unlocked bootloader and custom rom..As such no upgrades happen that I don't do myself. However the one thing I don't have control over is internet speed and there is absolutely something fishy going on there. I've been out of contract for years and my phone does support 4g. Further on wifi my phone is as snappy as any device I have and maxes out its radio speed. However my 4G speeds just absolutely aren't. Even with full signal no matter where I'm at these days I'm lucky to get 2mb down. Every single year that has gone by that I've been off contract my speed gets a little worse and a little worse. Doesn't matter what version of android I run, it doesn't change a thing. Yet the phones on my account that are in contract run super fast. So there is nothing on my device slowing it down and it isn't a bad service area...my phone is absolutely being throttled somehow.
 
This seems like something simple to test if it is true.

Purchase a brand new older phone, connect to a network and do a variety of benchmarks, both for the phones processing and for data throughput. Then go and update it and test again. No new pictures, no ton of apps, nothing. If there is a measurable difference then it is the updates.

If not it just could be the ton of things that happen to a device as it ages. One of the ones I always try to warn people about is flash memory. Remember the days befor TRIM, and flash memory degredation and all that. Well I am pretty sure all that stuff took a lot longer for phones to adopt if they have even fully adopted it.

A lot of people make a lot of claims but I have never seen anyone provide anything but anecdotal evidence. No controlled experiments.
 
This is why I stayed at ios 7 on my 1st generation ipad Air.

Its HTML rendering is kind of crap (it breaks pretty badly with some sites) but it's still nice and fast like when I got it.

With later ios versions, Apple is downright militant about getting you to upgrade. Constant nagging every time you turn on the screen after you charge it, until you either give in or delete the upgrade (and then it re-downloads it the next time you charge). I eventually gave up on my ipad pro (got it since I needed a bit more CPU for media). It's probably only a matter of time until it slows down to the point of uselessness. Heck, the interface already feels a bit slower than my original air.
 
I partially agree, and partially disagree with the article.

In most cases, developers are not intentionally sabotaging or slowing down your older device with some sort of poison update.

That being said, they are also likely not going out of their way to optimize a new version for older hardware. It would be costly, and they have no incentive to do so.

So, "not caring enough to optimize" may not be as bad as "intentionally sabotaging", but in the end it has pretty much the same effect.

I disagree. By knowing that releasing software intentionally that does not have optimization but calling it compatible upgrade is a lie and deception for the purpose of going though the effort without really wanting that effort to be worthwhile. It's just for the sake of looking good at press conferences etc. This is fully intentional and purposeful. It's truly shameful how slow a 1 year old phone will be after a few "upgrades".

People actually believe that hardware gets "older" and slows down due to it breaking down with age.
 
The planned obsolescence comes in when the manufacturer of a new device forces a software update designed primarily for the new device out to ALL devices. Of course, the older devices won't perform as well. They are being saddled with a bunch of code for hardware they either don't have or have a more limited version of. If the device makers instead offered long term security/bug support for the original OS that came with the older devices, it is likely the older devices would perform normally. Most don't because they know that the newest OS WILL be sub optimal on the older devices, providing incentive for folks to buy the newer hardware.
 
I don't see it. I buy a phone outright and I plan to use it and sweat that asset for a minimum of three years. I do not look at other phones until that three years is up and then I take my time picking a replacement.

I don't even care about not getting Android updates on my phone after 8 months from release. Just not important anymore. As long as it makes calls, does texts, has a pretty good camera and runs the dozen apps I use. Golden.

My LG G4 is up for renewal from September 2018. It's been a great phone so far. No issues.
 
Author says it's a myth manufacturers are slowing down your phones, then goes on to explain how the software that is put on your phone slows it down. Kind of lost me there.


Yeah I bet you look at those phones and every single one has not had a hard reset since it was bought and has 178 apps on it of which only 18 are used.

It's like when you see people here talking about how slow their PC is and you see a screen shot and the taskbar to the right has 34 mini icons in it.

I was given a Hudl2 Android tablet from 2013 this week to do some data recovery on. It had a busted screen. This was a $150 tablet.

I asked the customer what to do with the tablet after and they said dump it. I then found a replacement screen was £20. So I put a new screen on it, did a factory reset and rebuilt it. The thing is, it works just fine. It has a 1920x1200 8" IPS screen, decent speakers and a 1.8Ghz Intel quadcore CPU. No lag or slowness. Okay its running Lollipop but I don't care. It will now be my coffee table browser for News360/IMDB/BBC and Twitter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesco_Hudl_2
 
Last edited:
Planned obsolescence is real. Apple accomplishes it by not putting enough RAM in their phones and not optimizing new versions of iOS for older phones. They want slightly older phones to run poorly so people will upgrade.

The thing is though, we're getting to a point where phones are good enough for what most people do with them. There haven't been any big advances in smartphone tech that most people would care about for about 4-5 years. The planned obsolescence model is getting tiresome and is making people throw away what would be perfectly good phones if not for them getting hamstrung with crappy OS updates.

I agree. I'm running a Nexus 5X and while I have a little voice in my head telling me to get a fancy new phone, realistically there is no incentive in the hardware for me to upgrade. It might look nicer and have a slightly better screen but so what? I suppose if I spent my entire day on my phone I might care more about upgrading but I end the day with only 50% of the battery life used so I'm hardly a user that has his face in his phone all day long.
 
That stinks.

IMHO, it ought to be illegal to sell anything with a locked bootloader.

They are mobile internet service providers, and I should be able to connect any hardware I want with any software I want to their networks, just like with my home ISP.

completely agree, i have a verizon s5 with a locked bootlaoder as well. im saving up my money and when i find a smartphone that interest me im just going to flat out buy it since getting it though the carrier is so so terrible.
 
Yeah I bet you look at those phones and every single one has not had a hard reset since it was bought and has 178 apps on it of which only 18 are used.

It's like when you see people here talking about how slow their PC is and you see a screen shot and the taskbar to the right has 34 mini icons in it.

I was given a Hudl2 Android tablet from 2013 this week to do some data recovery on. It had a busted screen. This was a $150 tablet.

I asked the customer what to do with the tablet after and they said dump it. I then found a replacement screen was £20. So I put a new screen on it, did a factory reset and rebuilt it. The thing is, it works just fine. It has a 1920x1200 8" IPS screen, decent speakers and a 1.8Ghz Intel quadcore CPU. No lag or slowness. Okay its running Lollipop but I don't care. It will now be my coffee table browser for News360/IMDB/BBC and Twitter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesco_Hudl_2

I totally agree. From friends and family to co-workers I've seen the same behavior with a crap load of junk running unnecessarily and they complain either about slowness, or battery. Show 'em how to turn things off and they either are amazed by the improvement or are annoyed their device has limitations in running the universe.

I've got a Galaxy note 2014 edition(actually came out 3 years ago this week) and it run's great. Still get's occasional OS updates too.

My dad is still rocking a Sony Vaio I gave him 5 years ago.

Old expression, 'the more you complicate the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain'
 
If a software upgrade slows a phone down, it is not an upgrade. They spend little time optimizing changes for older phones. They want the older phones to perform slower. They want us buying new phones.

Yep. And unlike a phone, a PC can be upgraded without replacing the whole thing and thereby, making it faster. :)
 
I do however agree slightly that there's some planned obsolescence in that most mobile devices are not hardware upgrade-able outside of possibly their SD cards. That's my biggest complaint against them, but if you buy smart then most will last 3-6 years no problem and operate well.

Bottom line is that the most manufacturers are not prepared for a sustainable business model with upgrade-able mobile devices. The desktop market has the better part of 40 years of infrastructure for this. Sadly even then it usually falls to either the enthusiasts or family hand-me-downs to keep it going.
 
Locked bootloader, so no custom roms for me.
This. Its the sad story of my LG V10. A dang expensive phone when purchased. It was loaded with crap ware apps that I was able to disable. A update comes down the pike and I find the junk apps are re-enable and I CAN'T turn them off. The phone itself is great; but with the Draconian Verizon overlords I've felt like tossing it in the lake more than once. Phone has all the right features giving me reason to hang on to it. But I've been hoping for an unlocked boot loader so I can put a clean OS on it but it has not happen. :(
 
Though I did run into this one my android phone this year: it’s cell signal was horribly slow where I work, so I bought a new one.

It turned out that it’s just Verizon that’s horribly slow here.
Same 0.01 mbps speed test results and dropped calls just off the freeway in this half-million person county.
 
I don't use my cell phone much. Just a cheapy ZTE from walmart. It started going massively slow and the power was draining like crazy. I totally reset the phone and set it to NOT allow updates unless I did them manually. The phone runs great now and doesn't have any problem with battery.
 
Back
Top