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

[deanthedev]

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.

Of course my post is simple. I have to consider that not everyone reading is an engineer.

Strongly disagree that the iPhone 6 battery (or later batteries) are defective by design. You have literally zero proof of this.

A few people online with throttled devices doesn’t mean the design is defective. The only way you could come to that conclusion is if you know the total number of devices in use and what percentage of them are functioning normally and what percentage are being throttled due to defective batteries. Since you don’t have this data, your conclusion that the batteries are “defective by design” is nothing more than a fabrication.

 

[Tozovac]

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.

They communicated any performance-slowing with the same clarity and obviousness as their iOS UI since 2013...minimalist...just the very minimum required, even if it takes guessing and reading between the lines to get the clear message. Why any surprise?

 

[ignatius345]

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

Do you honestly think Apple is not as eager as anyone to be able to provide a battery that endures more usage cycles without being degraded? Or is there some new battery tech out there that you are aware of? If so, I think you should bring it to market because you'll make a fortune off every single company in the world that puts rechargable batteries in their devices -- because they are all limited by the current technology.

 

[mayhem416]

Do you honestly think Apple is not as eager as anyone to be able to provide a battery that endures more usage cycles without being degraded? Or is there some new battery tech out there that you are aware of? If so, I think you should bring it to market because you'll make a fortune off every single company in the world that puts rechargable batteries in their devices -- because they are all limited by the current technology.

Have you seen the depletion rate of battery after a certain number of cycles for apple vs the other manufacturers?
You sound as if i am saying something bad here. I mentioned bettery QUALITY and not better technology. Wouldnt everyone want a better quality and improved battery, screen, camera etc in their phone? If something is not perfect (which it isnt) it can be improved in quality.

 

[Sefstah]

Tim just said none of you were paying attention! So basically, it’s all of your fault.

 

[Dethklok]

Hopefully this gets the message across that we want bigger batteries and we want them to be user removable. Even if it makes the device thicker and removes waterproofing.

 

[Kal-037]

Because of those who 'complain about it and jump to conclusions, judge, and grab a lawyer to sue for good measure', your iPhone X/10 won't be throttled this September. You should be thankful!

You are very, very welcome.

Don’t be “that” guy who acts annoying because I disagree with the entitlement era. Despite your comment being sarcastic... The social justice entitlement brigade have DONE NOTHING to help me or anyone.
If my iPhone X was ever throttled I wouldn’t care because it would last longer, (oh but wait... processing a video would *gasp* take an extra 2 minutes to be created.)
Again they’ve done me no favors, ... Unless, they emailed, called, or talked to Tim Cook and Co. personally on my behalf? If so, wow yes thank you so very much to you and those people!!!


I’ve actually had my iPhone 6s, 7, and iPad OS’ throttled before (and i didn’t give a crap about it cause it was (minuscule) especially now that I know it was to help my devices last longer, and that Apple actually WAS doing something above board... My opinion is people overreacted like they always do, cause everything is first world problems these days, and everyone needs to jump on that entitlement spoiled bandwagon.

 

[smacrumon]

I'm afraid this really isn't news but presents more as an advertorial.

 

[deanthedev]

Have you seen the depletion rate of battery after a certain number of cycles for apple vs the other manufacturers?

Waiting eagerly for your statistics comparing Apple batteries to other manufacturers.

 

[I7guy]

Hopefully this gets the message across that we want bigger batteries and we want them to be user removable. Even if it makes the device thicker and removes waterproofing.

Who says “we” want bigger phones. I don’t. Of course a bigger battery is always welcome.

 

[mayhem416]

Waiting eagerly for your statistics comparing Apple batteries to other manufacturers.

You can google it with various links on how for example Samsung's battery now maintain 90-95% of their capacity after two years of charges and discharges.

Heres a link

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Samsu...ain-95-capacity-after-two-years.244370.0.html


Im not knocking anyones phone or battery here but i am sure everyone would want a better battery in their phones.

 

[ronno]

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.

Mystified?
What if you were one of the millions who had gone out and bought your son a new $800 phone because it was "crashing/dying/slow as hell," only to find out later that it was deliberately throttled but Apple had not mentioned that to you?

re: "Seems to me if your option is a crashing phone, or one that keeps running"

Eh? There are more than two options...

Option #3: Apple tells people who come to the store with a slow/dying phone that a simple battery replacement would fix the problem - thus saving them $800.

If your son doesn't mind a phone which is 50% slower than when it was new, then god bless him.

 

[DevNull0]

Strongly disagree that the iPhone 6 battery (or later batteries) are defective by design. You have literally zero proof of this.

I never said the batteries are defective by design. I'm sure they are perfectly fine batteries.

But they're too small for the device they're installed in. Therefore the device (ie the iPhone) is defective by design (ie it was designed with the wrong battery for the screen/CPU demands.)

You're right I don't have proof the batteries are defective by design, I don't believe they are and never claimed it.

A few people online with throttled devices doesn’t mean the design is defective. The only way you could come to that conclusion is if you know the total number of devices in use and what percentage of them are functioning normally and what percentage are being throttled due to defective batteries. Since you don’t have this data, your conclusion that the batteries are “defective by design” is nothing more than a fabrication.

Right, the problem is limited to a few people online with throttled devices. This interview where Timmy is trying to explain himself and apologizing is because only a few people online are whining.

Even Apple acknowledges it's a heck of a lot more than a few throttled devices. Why are you trying to pretend this isn't happening when even Apple says it is?

Again, I didn't say the batteries are defective by design you're claiming I did. The only fabrication is you putting words in my mouth. Apple has admitted they put in code that throttles pretty much all iPhone you're claiming this isn't true too. You seem to be ignoring what is being said on all sides and just going on with your own thing.

It must be hard to have blind devotion to Apple when even Apple says you're wrong.

 

[I7guy]

Mystified?
What if you were one of the millions who had gone out and bought your son a new $800 phone because it was "crashing/dying/slow as hell," only to find out later that it was deliberately throttled but Apple had not mentioned that to you?

re: "Seems to me if your option is a crashing phone, or one that keeps running"

Eh? There are more than two options...

Option #3: Apple tells people who come to the store with a slow/dying phone that a simple battery replacement would fix the problem - thus saving them $800.

If your son doesn't mind a phone which is 50% slower than when it was new, then god bless him.

You can’t delve into the mindset of why a customer decides to buy a new phone. People trash the iPad 2 under 9.3.5 yet I find it more than usable and would never update due to “slowness”. I don’t buy a new desktop when the invariable happens. People can say what they want about why the updated. Don’t think that holds water in a court of law.

 

[RickInHouston]

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

Apple also spent an entire afternoon briefing journalists too.

Maybe this should be like the tobacco industry and apple should have to display on the side of the box, "this device will be slower in about 1 to 1.5 years because we've engineered it that way."

 

[StephanD88]

Complaining people are not reasonable and they don't know what they actually want. They want the cake, but not the sugar. Impossible!

 

[5105973]

You know it's not just that simple. Before you can switch you had better have a answer for this: https://arstechnica.com/information...e-with-never-before-seen-spying-capabilities/

From that article it appears there had been a parallel spyware operational on iOS. I want to know how widespread this threat actually is.

 

[spacemnspiff]

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.

Great post, nicely articulated and very happy to read a somewhat long post.

I guess for the reason stated above, many of the lawsuits will be thrown out of the court.

 

[bmark]

Apple now talks about transparency, lmao. I guess the 30+ class action suits and government official inquiries finally made them change their tune. I can't wait to see their financials in Early Feb. Of course they won't disclose how many iPhone X's are sold because they badly under-performed in sales.

 

[ChrisChaval]

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

This post is so wrong on so many levels ...

MR , where is the option to downvote?

 

[s15119]

Why would I move to Samsung if I would rather get a Pixel 2 XL?
[doublepost=1516243494][/doublepost]
.

"or other website" I should have known reading comprehension is the issue. Have a nice day.

 

[ChrisChaval]

"and Cook says Apple will allow customers to turn off the power management feature in a future update, which is new information. " the most important part of this story

Right, 12 months and a couple of days after buyin your shiny new iPhone, you, the customer, will have the freedom to choose between sudden shutdowns or throttling

 

[DevNull0]

Great post, nicely articulated and very happy to read a somewhat long post.

I guess for the reason stated above, many of the lawsuits will be thrown out of the court.

Aside from the post being extremely simplistic and missing the point for the reasons I posted a few after the one you quoted, the plaintiffs could use his post to make their case exactly.

Apple chose a battery with too small a C for the screen/CPU demands. This caused fairly new phones to shut down whenever they tried to crank up the CPU. Then rather than admit the mistake, Apple secretly sent an update which prevents the CPU from cranking up as much therefore not giving the advertised performance because the battery has too low a current handling capability to deliver the promised performance.

That post is exactly why Apple has a huge problem on their hands and the lawsuits will be *very* expensive for them..
[doublepost=1516300716][/doublepost]

Right, 12 months and a couple of days after buyin your shiny new iPhone, you, the customer, will have the freedom to choose between sudden shutdowns or throttling

Wrong.

You as the customer will have the freedom to choose between throttling or paying $29 to have no throttling for another 6 months.
[doublepost=1516300793][/doublepost]

Apple now talks about transparency, lmao. I guess the 30+ class action suits and government official inquiries finally made them change their tune. I can't wait to see their financials in Early Feb. Of course they won't disclose how many iPhone X's are sold because they badly under-performed in sales.

Maybe they'll lump the iPhone X into "other" with the apple watch.

 

[eoblaed]

Ah, good.

So, now we can have a setting that reads something like: Crash? Or Keep Running?

Now all the people that want can select 'crash'.

 

[ChrisChaval]

Aside from the post being extremely simplistic and missing the point for the reasons I posted a few after the one you quoted, the plaintiffs could use his post to make their case exactly.

Apple chose a battery with too small a C for the screen/CPU demands. This caused fairly new phones to shut down whenever they tried to crank up the CPU. Then rather than admit the mistake, Apple secretly sent an update which prevents the CPU from cranking up as much therefore not giving the advertised performance because the battery has too low a current handling capability to deliver the promised performance.

That post is exactly why Apple has a huge problem on their hands and the lawsuits will be *very* expensive for them..
[doublepost=1516300716][/doublepost]

Wrong.

You as the customer will have the freedom to choose between throttling or paying $29 to have no throttling for another 6 months.

Wrong

The 29 bucks offer expires this year and will be history for any phone bought today or later