Apple CEO Tim Cook Says Power Management Feature in Older iPhones Will Be Able to Be Turned Off in Future Update

[deanthedev]

So you are trying to tell us that a 100 % healthy battery that is at 100% capacity, can be defective and therefore be throttled?

If that is the case, the Battery is not the problem here, its the design of the device that cannot handle fluctuations of power delivery which you are telling every battery has. The design tolerances are wrong. Hence why its not just throttling under x% . This is not difficult analysis, people just blaming batteries are missing the point here.....

Sigh. There are additional "ratings" applied to batteries besides capacity or health. I even gave you a huge clue in my last post (the C rating).

For those interested, this will be a longer post as I try to explain battery terminology (and why a battery that is supposedly at 100% capacity could still be defective).


Let's say you have a battery with a rating of 10V and 1AH. Simply put it means this battery has a nominal voltage of 10V and can supply 1A of current for a period of 1 hour before it reaches its cutoff voltage. Within reason this could be scaled up or down. For example: If you discharge the battery at 0.5A then it will last for 2 hours. If you discharge it at 2AH then it will last for 0.5 hours and so on.

Notice I said "within reason". You can't ask the battery to deliver 100A of current for 0.01 hours. Likewise, you can't use the battery to power a clock at 0.00001A and expect it to last for several years.

Another way to refer to batteries is their wattage capacity or watt/hours (WH). Watts is calculated by multiplying voltage x current. So our battery above, having a nominal voltage of 10V and a capacity of 1AH expressed as Watts would be 10WH. This means the battery could provide 10W of power for 1 hour (or 5W for 2 hours or 20W for 0.5 hours), again within reason.

We use the letter C to refer to the discharge rate (people who fly racing drones or RC cars will recognize this). Note that this is not the same as the capacity of a battery.

Let's look at two different batteries:

Battery A: 10V nominal voltage, 1AH capacity and 1C rating.
Battery B: 10V nominal voltage, 1AH capacity and 5C rating.

Both of these batteries would have the same 10WH rating, as they both have the same nominal voltage and AH capacity. If both of these batteries were installed into devices that consume 0.5A of current they would both power that device for 2 hours. So what's the difference?

Battery A was discharged at a rate of 1A for a period of 1 hour to get its 1AH rating.
Battery B was discharged at a rate of 5A for a period of 0.2 hours to get its 1AH rating.

Battery B, although having the same capacity as Battery A, is capable of delivering 5x as much current. If your application requires brief periods of high current consumption then Battery B would be a better choice than Battery A.


So how does this affect the iPhone?

Lets say the C rating for the battery in the iPhone is 5C. This allows the battery to deliver enough current for short periods of time when the processor is at 100% usage. Let's say this battery has an internal flaw which has reduced its C rating to 2C. It still has the same capacity as before, but now it can't provide the short bursts of higher current without the voltage dropping too low. This is where the throttling kicks in.

So even though the battery might still have the same capacity (100%) and be fully charged (also 100%), it could still be incapable of providing the required current.

And this is why using capacity and charge status to try and find out when throttling occurs is completely useless.

 

[tdar]

I have tried to stay out of this debate because it's stupid, but after the interview here are my thoughts.

Apple did nothing wrong other than make invalid assumptions about what customers want and fail to communicate as well as they should have. For all of you that think that Tim should have just said that they did not communicate well,that he should not have said "Maybe", I say grow up. You know that in today's world he is not allowed to do that. "Maybe" is required corporate speak and he expects you to be smart enough to read between the lines. Sadly not every customer is.

Regarding assumptions, Apple decided that ALL customers want them to manage the phone as the battery degrades (because that IS what they do) by slowing the phone to make sure it is reliable. They were wrong. Not all customers want the same thing. Some do want what Apple provided, some want max speed at all times-even if that reduces reliability, and some want to be in control and decide themselves. The new software will provide all of that. Should they have done it this way from the beginning, Yes. Lesson learned (We Hope). They should have offered a battery upgrade program from the beginning, again lesson learned (We Hope). But it is unrealistic to expect them to just know all of that. One has to learn before there is knowledge.

One other thought, One of the reasons that this battery thing became the problem it did, is because, people were keeping their phones longer. If you look at the 5,5s,6,6s,7 iPhone cycles (5 years -half the time we have had iPhones) it was a period of innovation plateau. I would suggest that the only major changes in those years were Touch ID and Plus phones. Sure the camera got better each year, sure the processor was faster each year, But those are not things that most customers even notice. OK maybe the camera. I noticed during that time, that the number of people who I saw and talked to with older and older phones was increasing with each new version. As I talked to these people (and I talk to a lot of them -when they find out I can help them with their phones they WANT to talk) they told me over and over that they had not upgraded because they saw no reason to upgrade. Their phone did everything that they wanted it to. In some ways Apple was paying for making the iPhone 5 and 5s SO good. This left a lot of users with old phones and old batteries. As things changed (smaller designs, faster GPU's and Processors, tapic engine, new iOS- Things that it was thought EVERYONE wanted) You needed more battery and the design did not allow for that. So when you combine how things were changing and older phones and older batteries, something had to give. It did. And Apple made choices. You might not now agree with them, but that is unfair. Because YOU are looking at them with the benefit of hindsight. Apple did not have that superpower.

.

 

[Defthand]

Here’s a wild idea, and I know this is just crazy, but let’s entertain it just for moment: what if TC is telling the truth?!

What if... now, hang with me here... Apple’s strategy was to, actually, help users, and make their devices last longer?

What if... crazy as it sounds... the people at Apple really are thinking of all the ways to make the best devices be most useable for the most amount of people?

What if we start thinking this way toward Apple’s efforts?

Good intentions don't necessarily equate with wise decisions. And the Law doesn't consider good intentions, only the harm caused by bad ones. Ultimately, the scales of Justice try to restore and preserve balance. How do you compare good intentions with monetary losses?

As for giving Apple the benefit of the doubt, you'd have to ignore their initial, carefully worded, denial that they throttle customers' devices. You'd have to ignore their battery replacement policy that denied even out-of-warranty phones service. And you'd have to ignore the nature of business and the deceit that large companies were historically capable of.

Sure, you can give a business the benefit of the doubt, but you forfeit any claim you might eventually have against them if you purposely ignore their missteps.

 

[Luiz TMS]

If after a couple of years they have to do it, their hardware is not that good!

 

[dumastudetto]

You don’t think it’s wrong to slow down iPhones without telling the user? I wouldn’t mind if they were upfront and told us they were doing this to avoid unexpected shutdowns, but they were so deceptive about it.

Apple did tell people when they delivered the first software update.

Apple also spent an entire afternoon briefing journalists too.

 

[kemal]

Next time I read "....power management" from Apple I will assume it means "We'll speed up the CPU and motion co-processor to the point your battery drains instantly and you think you need a new phone."

 

[Baymowe335]

If after a couple of years they have to do it, their hardware is not that good!

Yes, it is.

You're still failing to understand that the number affected is unknown. Any power management software doesn't impact healthy phones. For the few it STILL does, Apple can handle case by case. If power management affected all phones, new phones would be throttled. It ONLY throttles when there is a problem.

How many have problems? NO ONE knows, but even if it's 1%, that's a lot of people.

 

[deferredAnon]

Apple did tell people when they delivered the first software update.

Apple also spent an entire afternoon briefing journalists too.

Blame the people for not being able to read Tim Cook's mind! I mean, even the Apple Geniuses who said nothing was wrong with the battery had trouble reading his mind.
[doublepost=1516292844][/doublepost]

Next time I read "....power management" from Apple I will assume it means "We'll speed up the CPU and motion co-processor to the point your battery drains instantly and you think you need a new phone."

I will never think of 'power management' the same way again.

 

[Jesse Waugh]

You need to learn about batteries before spouting anymore BS. And stop with the “either or” logical fallacy.

A battery could be brand new, have 100% capacity, yet still get throttled because it’s defective. Capacity has nothing to do with throttling.

Except that your logic fails you, as my iPhone is throttled solely due to its reduced capacity. Stop spouting BS terms that you barely understand like "logical fallacy".

 

[OllyW]

Apple did tell people when they delivered the first software update.

This is what you saw when you updated and the iOS 10.2.1 Release Notes made no mention of possible slowdowns due to changes to the power management.

 

[Seth Matthews]

An unhealthy battery should be covered by the warranty.

Only if the phone is still under the one year warranty or AppleCare+. If the phone is out of warranty like many of the iPhones affected, then it shouldn't be covered.

 

[Dominicanyor]

I think that the new tax reform has a lot to do with all the changes tim is making. Yeah don't expect cheaper iphones either. Someones has to pay for the 38 billion check!!

 

[cmwade77]

Except Apple isn't the only company that does this. Laptop manufacturers having been doing this for decades. Where was everyone's outrage over that? Oh, I forgot. It's because it's Apple. xD

Honestly, I work in IT and I have NEVER once had a single laptop slow down because the battery degrades. I have had it last a shorter amount of time on a charge, but not slow down. I have had computers, even desktops slow down due all of the garbage people put on their system, but not because a battery degraded.

 

[avanpelt]

Phone can crash. Or phone can keep running.

I'm still mystified that people got all bent out of shape that the phone does what it needs to do to keep running. My son's phone was experiencing this (the phone crashing when it had 20-25% battery), until he upgraded to iOS 11, then the crashes stopped.

Seems to me if your option is a crashing phone, or one that keeps running, most people would opt for the latter. People must really be looking for things to turn into causes.

The crux of the problem is that Apple didn't inform the user what was going on with the battery and what they were doing with software to mitigate the effects of the battery's degradation. They should've informed the user that the battery health was poor and that battery service was recommended. macOS has done this for many years and iOS should've too. Unfortunately, it took this debacle for Apple to consider adding battery health information to a future iOS update.

 

[csurfr]

The battery would have to be on fire to fail their test!

Or, you know, under 80% capacity.

 

[KPOM]

And naturally you can prove you were not going to buy a new phone anyway, right? That's the kicker - all the folk who brought new phones may well have to prove they did it only because of this issue. Good luck with that one!



Makes perfect sense - that'll be why the iPhone 8 Plus battery (a device developed in the same timeframe as the X) has much the same battery as the iPhone 7 Plus. And that initial reviews seem to indicate that the X seems to hover along between the 7 Plus and the 8 Plus in terms of daily longevity due to the massively increased demands placed upon it by FaceID etc. and that Apple are going to need to work on this for the X+1 if they want to increase functionality such as the True Depth sensors etc.

Next time, you ever thought of, I dunno, actually investigating this nonsense before you post it?





They do\It's not. My Android Nexus 6 suffered from it - it's why I'm now using Apple.



Having experienced EXACTLY what Apple were trying to avoid on my Nexus 6 - I totally disagree.

Batteries is what batteries are. There's a very very fine balancing act involved here between power, performance and longevity. My Nexus 6 crashed out at 50%, Samsung 8's blew up.

Why do people kid themselves that somehow battery technology is a real simple thing that that the risks are zero. Ignorance perhaps?

The 8 Plus uses the same body as the 7 Plus. Not much they could do about the battery. The X was a full redesign.

 

[DevNull0]

So no, I don’t think it would’ve been a huge leap for an Apple engineer with basic knowledge of how their power management works.

Once again....you are saying that it takes an insider knowledge of Apple's engineering design to be able to actually interpret what the marketing-speak people really mean.

In other words, the notes aren't just vague, they are unreadable to a non-Apple-employee.

 

[chucker23n1]

Once again....you are saying that it takes an insider knowledge of Apple's engineering design to be able to actual interpreter what the marketing-speak people really mean.

In other words, the notes aren't just vague, they are unreadable to a non-Apple-employee.

I don’t disagree that they did a terrible job communicating what they were doing, if that’s what you’re getting at.

 

[JCandle]

Apple haters out in full force today, sad!

Fake news, right?

 

[DevNull0]

For those interested, this will be a longer post as I try to explain battery terminology (and why a battery that is supposedly at 100% capacity could still be defective).

I actually did take the time to read this post, and it is something I am quite knowledgeable of.

What you say is basically right but extremely superficial and doesn't say anything about what is really happening. It is the internal resistance of the battery that limits the about of power the battery can output "C" in this case. It is a simple matter of Ohm's Law (Voltage = Current times Resistance) where in this case the resistance is basically the sum of the battery's internal resistance and the load (the power draw of the iPhone).

For any given current draw, part of the voltage will drop across the load and part will drop across the battery in direct proportion to the resistances (this is Kirchoff's voltage law). So, when the internal resistance of the battery is near zero, most of the voltage drops across (is supplied to) the device. When the internal resistance of the battery is higher, a larger proportion of the voltage drops across the battery and the device sees a lower voltage being provided to it.

You can see from Ohm's law that the higher the current, the higher the voltage drop for a given resistance, so the higher the current the more voltage drops across the battery and the lest voltage is supplied to the device. When the voltage to the device gets low enough, the device doesn't work any more and in the case of an iPhone, you have your shutdown.

This concept of "C" you're talking about is not any intrinsic property of the battery but a very, very rough guess that the battery has a low enough internal resistance to supply that much current without the voltage dropping too much.

Now back to the iPhone specifically. The internal resistance is affected by a lot of factors, the particular chemistry and the surface area of the electrodes (limited by the size and shape of the battery) being major ones. Internal resistance also goes up as the battery ages.

The battery int the iPhone 6 an later is too small to provide a enough power the phone. The small size means the internal resistance is too high and it is unable to provide a sufficient voltage at sufficient current. When the battery is brand new, it can sort of do the job, but even slightly aged (slightly higher internal resistance) means too much voltage drops across the battery.

A physically larger battery with larger electrode area and lower internal resistance would have solved all of these issues.

now, tl;dr....Apple chose the wrong battery for their iPhones and every iPhone since the 6 is defective by design.

 

[kdarling]

Apple did tell people when they delivered the first software update. Apple also spent an entire afternoon briefing journalists too.

Then would you please show us a link to where Apple or journalists said that 10.2.1 throttled the CPU/GPU as a battery aged. Because they said no such thing. Instead they vaguely talked about power management:
___________________________

___________________________

And they didn't even mention the power management in the only notice that most users saw:

 

[I7guy]

Of course not. The whole reason they exist is that we customers paid them upfront, their salaries, bonuses, budgets, R&D expenditures, outrageous real estate, development, inordinate luxury.
Why? To be rerouted to Samsung after seeing the competitive advantage we financed fade away ?

Thats' s like some undergrad stud that ruined his study and tell his father "Well, don't like it, go find someone else to pay for"

I’m going to say my assertion is bolstered with careful wording such as:”outrageous real estate “ or “inordinate luxury”.

And I paid them the same as you. If you are not in agreement with the management, policies or products there are alternatives. If you want Apple to be run your way start a shareholder revolt or cough up a few billion spare dollars and buy some stock.

 

[Woodcrest64]

Hey Olly, it wasn't mentioned there at all like you say but it is mentioned over here https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1893?locale=en_US

It was poorly communicated to people. It should of been right in front on that Software Update information on the phone like you indicated.

This is what you saw when you updated and the iOS 10.2.1 Release Notes made no mention of possible slowdowns due to changes to the power management.

 

[mayhem416]

While visiting the Apple data center located in Reno, Nevada this afternoon, Apple CEO Tim Cook did a quick interview with Rebecca Jarvis of ABC News, where he discussed Apple's economic announcements and touched on the ongoing controversy over power management features in older iPhones.

According to Cook, when the power management features were first introduced in iOS 10.2.1, Apple did explain what was going on, but following the controversy, he believes Apple should have been clearer.

The company did indeed mention that the shutdown issue was caused by uneven power delivery and explained that its power management system had been tweaked, but there was no clear notice that it could cause devices to operate more slowly at times. Cook says Apple "deeply apologizes" to customers who thought the company had other motivations.Apple previously apologized for the misunderstanding over the iOS 10.2.1 update and has since implemented a battery replacement program that allows all customers with an iPhone 6, 6s, 7, 6 Plus, 6s Plus, 7 Plus, and SE to replace their batteries for a reduced $29 fee through the end of 2018.

Apple is introducing better battery monitoring features in a future iOS update, and Cook says Apple will also allow customers to turn off the power management feature, which is new information that the company has not previously shared. Much of the rest of Cook's interview focused on the announcements that Apple made today. The company plans to repatriate a large portion of its $250 billion in overseas cash thanks to a change in U.S. tax policy, which will result in Apple paying $38 billion in taxes. With the tax bill, investments, the creation of a new campus, and more, Apple believes it will directly contribute $350 billion to the U.S. economy over the next five years, along with 20,000 new jobs.

​

When asked about whether Apple would have been able to make these announcements without the tax policy changes, Cook said there are "large parts" of the announcement that are "the result of the tax reform" and "large parts" that Apple "would have done in any situation." He went on to explain that the corporate part of the recent tax bill has the potential to bring a faster growing economy.When asked about whether Apple would introduce a cheaper iPhone due to the new policies, Cook said it was unlikely, telling interviewer Jarvis that "the phone costs what the innovation inside of it costs."

​

The final bit of the interview touched on where Apple might open its new campus, which was announced by the company earlier today. Cook said details will be shared later in the year, but it won't be located in Texas or California, where Apple already has campuses in Austin and Cupertino, respectively.

Article Link: Apple CEO Tim Cook Says Power Management Feature in Older iPhones Will Be Able to Be Turned Off in Future Update

No mention of using better quality batteries for future phones so these issues dont happen after a year?

 

[ignatius345]

Batteries are consumable. Life-long lasting batteries using Li-ion do NOT exist. It is unreasonable to expect Apple to keep footing the bill to replace a battery that ages like Li-ion batteries do. Apple can detect a failing battery and a consumed battery. If it's failed, it's covered under warranty. If it's consumed, you have to buy another battery. Batteries don't last forever and they never have. Every one is hell bent on blowing this whole fiasco out of proportion because it's Apple. Get over yourselves. /rant

Nobody in their right mind is arguing that batteries should last forever, or that Apple is on the hook for unending battery replacements, and by focusing on that, you are entirely missing the point.

People are angry because they thought their phones were just generally "getting old" or "slowing down" or "not capable of running a new iOS version as smoothly" when in fact they were being deliberately slowed down.

I'm sure there's a sound engineering reason to do the throttling but since Apple didn't notify users, people may well have remedied the situation by buying new iPhones -- when in fact paying for a new battery would have made their phones perform faster.

The lack of transparency is what people are angry about. If there was a place in the UI where battery capacity was visible, and an alert explaining that the processor is being throttled to compensate for a dying battery (and maybe explaining service options), we wouldn't be talking about any of this.