Apple Allegedly Throttles Older iPhones with Degraded Batteries

Megalith

Megalith

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There is speculation that Apple intentionally slows down older phones to retain a full day's charge if the battery has degraded over time. One tester claims: “Wear level was somewhere around 20% on my old battery. I did a Geekbench score, and found I was getting 1466 Single and 2512 Multi. After changing my battery, 2526 Single and 4456 Multi.”

Reports that the performance of iPhone 6 series models can be improved by replacing the battery aren't entirely new, but the suggestion that Apple is intentionally throttling the performance of older devices, for whatever reason, is bound to cause controversy. It's worth noting that DIY iPhone battery replacements or repairs performed by a third party will void any Apple warranty still covering said devices.
 
Wait a minute. Every iPhone user I have ever encountered rants and raves about how their phone never slows down like Android phones do. I am confused.

Just FYI: I own a dumb phone. No SMS. No Internet. No camera. No micrphone. It barely is able to keep track of a handful of phone numbers. Just saying, I have no pony in this race.
 
BSmith said:
Wait a minute. Every iPhone user I have ever encountered rants and raves about how their phone never slows down like Android phones do. I am confused.

Just FYI: I own a dumb phone. No SMS. No Internet. No camera. No micrphone. It barely is able to keep track of a handful of phone numbers. Just saying, I have no pony in this race.
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how does a phone work without a microphone....
 
Okay, I deserved that. Yes, I made a stupid statement. The wonder of it all will be when everyone can lay claim to never having made a stupid statement. :)

With that said, I am making a list. :D
 
It's plausible but the more likely issue is that a degraded battery degrades the service. Aka bad design.
 
Apple users complain about the strangest things. So the battery still lasts all day on your 2 generations old phone, but it's not as fast as brand new?
 
Honestly they should just have a toggle between battery saving mode or performance mode and be realistic to their customers.
I don't think anyone would give them crap over trying to make sure the phone lasts for a full day or whatever they're claiming it does.
For those people who care about performance, they can change it around to suit their needs.
Obviously all lipo or li-ion batteries degrade over time, and apple's battery's aren't immune to that.
 
viscountalpha said:
It's plausible but the more likely issue is that a degraded battery degrades the service. Aka bad design.
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I thought the opposite. They guaranteed continued function through software management of degrading hardware. If it was a business machine or factory tool that reported it's operation efficiency levels so management could evaluate cost benefit of replacements, management would love it.
 
viscountalpha said:
It's plausible but the more likely issue is that a degraded battery degrades the service. Aka bad design.
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As in can't feed the cpu proper power hence is throttles? Makes sense.. apple could very well double battery capacity for little more bulk.. but then the phone will last forever, and no one wants that. Apples batteries are surprisingly small.
 
Seems like the best option would in fact be to let the device owner choose. Then again, that may not be in keeping with "just working."
 
don't think this is degraded batteries, just specificaly optimised by apple to save as much power as possible, switching batteries probably reset all the optimizations in place, the phone might be faster but my guess it runs out of juice alot faster also.
 
So you're not denying the soundboard then? Hmmm

BSmith said:
Okay, I deserved that. Yes, I made a stupid statement. The wonder of it all will be when everyone can lay claim to never having made a stupid statement. :)

With that said, I am making a list. :D
Click to expand...
 
Perhaps their telemetry shows that Apple users dont like to charge much and therefore getting more hours out of the day trumps performance.
 
Wait a minute. Someone thinks Apple is letting the owner chose something? Hehe....I can see it in now, in the dark corner of a room sits an Apple marketing executive rubbing his hands together and doing his best Mr. Burns,..."Eeeeeeggggggseelent!".
 
Apple became the screen on the wall and their users the crowd in the 1984 commercial.
 
Dayaks said:
It does in everything else in the world... laptops.. cars... ect. ect. This has to be the most worthless article I've ever seen.
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a prius is not 80% slower when the battery gets old. It's range is compromised. The phone should perform normally with less battery life rather than last all day and run slow. Or there should be a setting.
 
I dunno, I still use an iPhone 5S. Last all day, performance is just fine even with 11.1.2 on it. I'm not doing 3D modeling or trying to get every last FPS out of some first person game on this thing. I read, surf, do email, and of course use it as a phone. I have a few games I fire up, but I've had those for years, some from back when I had a 3G, and of course those all work just fine.
All these years and I still haven;t seen noticeable drop in battery life.
 
mnewxcv said:
a prius is not 80% slower when the battery gets old. It's range is compromised. The phone should perform normally with less battery life rather than last all day and run slow. Or there should be a setting.
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A Prius very very noticeably runs slower when the battery is lower rather than full.
 
Dayaks said:
It does in everything else in the world... laptops.. cars... ect. ect. This has to be the most worthless article I've ever seen.
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Are you reading the same article?

Does your laptop CPU get slower because the batter loses some charge potential? Doubtful. Will it not run as long? Sure, but that's not changing the CPU Benchmarks.
 
Guarana [BAWLS] said:
Are you reading the same article?

Does your laptop CPU get slower because the batter loses some charge potential? Doubtful. Will it not run as long? Sure, but that's not changing the CPU Benchmarks.
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I'd be curious to know why the benchmark was lower. Is there a way to limit performance without dropping clock speed?
 
Dayaks said:
A Prius very very noticeably runs slower when the battery is lower rather than full.
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I've been driving a Camry Hybrid for over 4 years and there is no noticeable slow down when the battery is low.
 
nutzo said:
Except with my Note 4, it only takes about 10 seconds to swap in a new battery.
Really hate that most new phones don't come with user replaceable batteries.
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It's because they want metal/high quality covers. I liked my note 4, and yes it takes 5 seconds to swap a battery. It takes about 5 minutes to swap a battery in my nexus 5 (non removable battery). I did this just this past weekend because the original battery was getting old.
There are no such thing as a non removable battery, just a harder to remove cover.
 
Gigus Fire said:
It's because they want metal/high quality covers. I liked my note 4, and yes it takes 5 seconds to swap a battery. It takes about 5 minutes to swap a battery in my nexus 5 (non removable battery). I did this just this past weekend because the original battery was getting old.
There are no such thing as a non removable battery, just a harder to remove cover.
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well now you went and did it. theyre going to start gluing the battery to the back of the LCD so that you cant remove it without destroying one or the other. They'll show you 'non removable'
 
mnewxcv said:
well now you went and did it. theyre going to start gluing the battery to the back of the LCD so that you cant remove it without destroying one or the other. They'll show you 'non removable'
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They did glue the battery in there actually. You have to pry and rip it off. It make it really exciting that the old battery was starting to swell, but no problem in the end.
 
This is happening to my work issued iPhone 6. The CPU frequency is progressively throttles down from 1400 MHz to ~1100 MHz, then 839 MHz, and then 600 MHz by the time the battery is at 80% charged. Actually my phone rearely will run at the rated 1400 MHz anymore.

This is a relatively new "feature". It was added either in one of the later iOS 10.x releases or in iOS 11. Previous iOS versions did not do this. The phone is horrific to use @ 600 MHz.

Why is Apple doing this? I don't know, but possibilities include:

(1) A misguided but well intentioned decision that assumes people would prefer lower CPU performance to only getting 70% of the original battery life.
(2) iOS 10 and 11 may be more susceptible to crashes and app quits when the battery voltage droops, and they are throttling down the CPU frequency in order to keep the voltage steady on older batteries. <--- This is my guess
(3) Conspiracy Theory: There were some defective batteries used and Apple wants to avoid the cost of a replacement campaign.

In any case, this is definitely not something that should have been done without user opt in.
 
No surprise as anyone with an older battery knows.

When a battery ages it might deliver a good peak reading for power. However theability to deliver that over the long term is questionable.

So as a battery ages you might see 40% battery left. Then you go to turn on your camera and the phone shuts down.

Apple is likely trying to prevent this scenario by limiting max sustained current.
 
Dayaks said:
A Prius very very noticeably runs slower when the battery is lower rather than full.
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Cars make an extremely conservative use of batteries to prolong their life. The pwm unit dictates a maximum current usage which is figured out ahead of time by engineers. If the battery cannot deliver that plus 20% more, then the battery is marked as empty. That 20% buffer is to prevent premature wear on the battery.
 
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