Apple Doesn't Deliberately Slow Down Older Devices According to Benchmark Analysis

[ezylstra]

The reality is, my iPhone 6 with IOS 11 is almost not usable.

My iPhone 6 with iOS 11 is doing quite well. Nowhere close to unusable.

 

[Mcmeowmers]

It never in my experience happened. Not a single time. I never had a genius suggesting a new device when I was asking for support.

The genius I spoke to actually tried to get me to opt for repairing rather than upgrading

 

[smokinjoe2122]

So here's the problem in a nutshell with having to already buy an upgrade to my 6s Plus:

https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone6s

You're telling me, you'll sell this phone for $450, but it's old and needs an upgrade to run even remotely smoothly?

 

[lexvo]

My iPhone 5s is running quite smooth on iOS 11. The only thing that is slower is switching between apps when I have several apps open. I think it has to do with having not so much internal memory.

 

[eoblaed]

No, that's not it. I get notified of a new message or email on my iPhone 6+, and I take my phone out of my pocket to view the message. I tap a few times on the screen and place my finger on the Touch ID. Then I see a blank white screen (sometimes it's black) for several seconds. Several seconds is long enough for me to wonder if the OS has frozen. Sometimes I have to switch from portrait to landscape to get anything to show up on the screen. Or maybe I didn't have to do that. It's hard to tell. Maybe if I waited 15 seconds the messages app would have started working all on its own. It didn't work that way when I got the phone new three years ago. Then I marveled at how instant it seemed. I never remember seeing a blank screen, or having nothing happen for several seconds when I tapped a notification.

Do the new phones do that? I have been planning to upgrade to the iPhone X, but if it's not going to improve the UE, I probably won't bother. Someone with an 8: How many seconds (3, 5, 8, 15?) does it take for the mail app or the messages app to open when you click on a notification? Do you have to change the phone's orientation to get the white or black screen to go away? It would help me to know if I'm better off staying with my 6+.

My son’s 5S doesn’t do that. Might wanna wipe the phone and do a restore from backup.

 

[mebehere]

I just got an email from Apple telling me to update to 11. They are definitely trying to screw up my phone, and the average person wouldn't know any better.

 

[rootee]

My iPhone 6 feels about the same on iOS 11.0.2; very little keyboard lag, app switcher comes right up, Swiping up for Control Center seems a bit slower but it’s a busier CC in 11 so that makes sense that it would be slower. Some apps, take a bit longer to startup (Plex takes like 10 sec to start now!), but that may be due to the app itself not yet being optimized for 11 yet.

The only way to know if Apple intentionally slows devices is to see their source code! I do wonder how many peeps would jump ship if we had proof of #slowgate.

 

[MDiddy]

Yeah this report is nonsense. I have an iPhone 6 and there was an immediate adverse impact to the performance of my device after upgrading. Any reasonable person would know it’s not a deliberate cpu throttling in the sense that they are affecting a CPU benchmark test. That would obviously lead to a class action lawsuit.

But there are other ways to choke a CPU’s performance and poor software design is right up there. The root cause is that Apple does little to nothing to tune the UI performance to legacy devices. They know dumping those new transitions and animations are going to choke out the main thread on older phones. They could have the more instensive animations NOT happen but they choose to ignore it.

So part of it is absolutely related to the fact that they make your device feel slower thus prompting you to upgrade sooner. In my book willful omission is the same as deliberate action.

 

[EdT]

The reality is, my iPhone 6 with IOS 11 is almost not usable. My iPad Pro sees no slowdown at all with IOS 11. On the iPhone 6, if I try to use Siri, it takes maybe 15 seconds for Siri to respond... trying to take a photo is almost impossible as there is about a 5 second delay. A processor benchmark may not show the true experience. IOS 11 killed my iPhone 6 to the point Apple is forcing me to buy a new phone.

I also have an iPhone 6 with IOS 11 and I am not having any of these problems. I had intended to replace my phone this model year but now I'm thinking of waiting another year.

 

[JTCGiants56]

Regardless, it still sucks that my iPad 2 is utterly useless on the current IOS it can go up to, and previously IOS versions it was very useable. Right now I can barley do anything besides watch a YouTube video without waiting minutes in between.

 

[soanis]

I say request a Poll or a Yes/No question on here, saying "Is your device LESS enjoyable to use after the latest iOS update?",
see what happens

 

[mmaggion]

Yes, but this is raw performance in a specific task. People are generally complaining of GUI slowdowns in new versions of iOS.

Agreed - that is in fact the whole point. And once more fell for it by upgrading my iPhone 6 to iOS 11, and everything is painfully sluggish, compared to a smooth experience in iOS 10. It can take *seconds* for something as simple as a search box (e.g. after swiping down) to appear and become active.

 

[Williesleg]

My iPhone 6 feels about the same on iOS 11.0.2; very little keyboard lag, app switcher comes right up, Swiping up for Control Center seems a bit slower but it’s a busier CC in 11 so that makes sense that it would be slower. Some apps, take a bit longer to startup (Plex takes like 10 sec to start now!), but that may be due to the app itself not yet being optimized for 11 yet.

The only way to know if Apple intentionally slows devices is to see their source code! I do wonder how many peeps would jump ship if we had proof of #slowgate.

#slowghazi
FTFY. Nothing's gonna happen to Apple or Timmy Cook.

 

[ivassilis]

Our everyday experience says otherwise. The iOS is getting heavier by each new version. Users of older devices should decide for themselves if they need a newer version so much as to sacrifice UI speed.

 

[JosephAW]

Benchmark does not equal real world usage.

We know that iOS can be coded in a way to show good benchmarks but yet the user experience is very poor.

 

[Renegade72]

OK..So assume that a company produces simple tech devices with their own-designed processors and OS . The current gen devices have a certain number of operations they support in hardware (CPU instructions) that do not include integer multiplication , they have addition and subtraction among other operations but no multiplication, because they never needed multiplication in the implementation of the current functions the device performs , so no need to implement in the CPU raising the costs.

Now the company decides to work on a new device that supports additional functions , some of which could really benefit from hardware support for multiplication in the CPU - so they redesign their CPU to support a new multiplication instruction where two integers can be multiplied so that the result will be available within 1 CPU clock cycle - multiplication is natively supported in the hardware now and needs 1 clock cycle to complete.

BTW The code the developers write and understand is called "source code" ,typically it is run through a special piece of software called a compiler , that translates source code into machine code that references instructions supported in the CPU to produce a program the CPU can understand execute.


So the new CPU is developed , a new compiler that is aware of the new CPU changes is also developed, and source-code libararies that include "building blocks" for the new features are also developed.

The OS team in the company now starts from the old OS code base - adding new features that use those new "building blocks", and re-writing some/a lot of the old functionality that can benefit from those new libraries in terms of producing faster execution times or simply for making the source code cleaner and easier to maintain. So now not only code for the new features use multiplication in the CPU , but also old OS code is overhauled to use the new libraries, let's assume the scrollig functionality got re-written to use multiplication just for the sake of code consistency and easier code maintenence (=lower man hrs) in the future.

The new device with the new CPU and new OS version is released and works like it should . Now the company had also promised updates to the next version or two of the OS to people who bought the old devices when they bought them , but the problem is that the CPU of the old device does not support multiplication - the company comes up with two options :

A- Redesign those features using different implementation that does not rely on multiplication - can be done for the most part but may not match the performance of the newer device and will require major cost and engineering resoures . and also they will be maintaining several versions of their OS source code this way.

B- Use the new source code but change the compiler so that when a multiplication instruction call is referenced it is replaced by an appropriate number of addition instruction calls - potenially resulting in big delays in execution - say for the new CPU to work out ( 10 * 4 ) it requires 1 clock cycle , but on the code compiled to the old CPU it will require 3 clock cycles ( ( (10+10) + 10 )+10 ) to perform the same operation (actually maybe 4 cycles if an additional cycle is needed to determine the operand to use (the max of the two numbers) - in this case 10 and not 4 to reduce the number of addition operations required for the result - if the compiler itself is optimized = more man hrs ).

With option B the new OS will still work on the old CPU but is not optimized (things are taking more time than they could if implemented differently) .

Now this company fulfilled the promise to users who bought old devices but those devices are now slower than before..

This company may not be interested in providing a better experience for older devices even though they can affored it as their devices are expen$ive , also they happen to have a fan base that will rush to buy the new device anyway even if they optimized the old one.

There you have it.. Hope that helps with your question.

Partially that, but non only that.
The truth is this kind of threads come up every single year at the new iOS release. People complains and speak about planned obsolescence for a couple months. In the meanwhile Apple release a few minor update and a major one (typically X.1 version) and most of the slows down disappear. Until the next year.

Historically the first iOS release every year is quite buggy, especially performance wise.
On older devices it is worse.

 

[MjWoNeR]

My iPhone 6 Plus works OK with iOS 11. Sure it's not snappy but it's perfectly usable. I find the 1GB RAM more limiting than anything else really.

 

[Renegade72]

Yeah - like when my iPhone 5S takes 5-8 seconds to launch an application - to the point where I now hit the launch icon, then go do something else, then come back to the phone.

Ironically, I upgraded to a 6S primarily because the new OSes were unsusably slow on my 5S, only to find that iOS 11 is unusably slow on a 6S. . But honestly, Apple does more work than most software companies on making their OSes work well on older phones, so I hope this will improve as iOS 11 matures.

In my home we are using an iPhone 5S, an SE and an 8+. Not a single one takes 5/8 seconds to launch an app.
The slowest (5S) takes 1 sec for Maps, the slowest system app to launch.
As ArsTechnica highlighted, difference in launching apps on a 5S, the slowest supported iPhone, are marginal and below 1 second in every case.
[doublepost=1507401383][/doublepost]

Regardless, it still sucks that my iPad 2 is utterly useless on the current IOS it can go up to, and previously IOS versions it was very useable. Right now I can barley do anything besides watch a YouTube video without waiting minutes in between.

Do you understand that iPad 2 is awfully OLD ?
[doublepost=1507401508][/doublepost]

I say request a Poll or a Yes/No question on here, saying "Is your device LESS enjoyable to use after the latest iOS update?",
see what happens

I would answer YES because of two factors: affected battery life and a few frames drop in animations. And I'm sure Apple will address that in future updates.
But that has NOTHING to do with intentionally crippling older devices.
[doublepost=1507401601][/doublepost]

Benchmark does not equal real world usage.

We know that iOS can be coded in a way to show good benchmarks but yet the user experience is very poor.

So Apple is hiding malicious code in iOS to cripple older devices ?
It would be discovered in a few hours after release.
That' s a ridiculous conspiracy theory in my opinion.

 

[manu chao]

The reality is, my iPhone 6 with IOS 11 is almost not usable. My iPad Pro sees no slowdown at all with IOS 11. On the iPhone 6, if I try to use Siri, it takes maybe 15 seconds for Siri to respond... trying to take a photo is almost impossible as there is about a 5 second delay. A processor benchmark may not show the true experience. IOS 11 killed my iPhone 6 to the point Apple is forcing me to buy a new phone.

And do you really believe that every iPhone 6 (including in particular every one used by Apple during testing) has all these slowdowns? Do you really believe Apple tested iOS 11 on an iPhone 6, saw a 5-second delay when taking pictures and concluded that iOS 11 does just fine on it and added the iPhone 6 to the list of supported devices and for good riddance, the 5s as well?
[doublepost=1507402254][/doublepost]

In my home we are using an iPhone 5S, an SE and an 8+. Not a single one takes 5/8 seconds to launch an app.
The slowest (5S) takes 1 sec for Maps, the slowest system app to launch.
As ArsTechnica highlighted, difference in launching apps on a 5S, the slowest supported iPhone, are marginal and below 1 second in every case.

Everybody knows that computers can show weird behaviour that apparently strikes at random. But when it strikes you, it's no longer random. Suddenly, it's something the software engineers must have been aware off and that must also be widespread.

 

[ls1dreams]

Huh? I don't think anyone ever suspected apple of actually slowing down hardware. It's more that added bloat in new OS's with features that most people don't need will crush the older, slow cpus.

The single most crushing feature change I saw was the "siri suggestions" in spotlight search. Turning off that feature made old iphone 5 and 5s's feel way, way faster.

 

[coolfactor]

Well its obvious that Apple can build a lite version of iOS that can run on older phones smoothly but of course they don't want to.

Yes, then we'd have the same joyful choices that Windows Vista users enjoyed....

• Windows Vista Starter
• Windows Vista Home Basic
• Windows Vista Home Premium
• Windows Vista Business
• Windows Vista Enterprise
• Windows Vista Ultimate

Nope. I don't want to live in that world. Thank you very much.

 

[Sunshoopa]

Regardless, it still sucks that my iPad 2 is utterly useless on the current IOS it can go up to, and previously IOS versions it was very useable. Right now I can barley do anything besides watch a YouTube video without waiting minutes in between.

Psst you can downgrade it via jailbreak and make it useable again.

I tested a iPod Touch 5G with coolbooter, which allows you to dual boot 2 different iOS versions, and the difference between iOS 9.3.5 and iOS 7 is astonishing. Safari is useable again and all that kind of stuff.

While I think Apple doesn’t do it on purpose, it is an absolute fact that in my tests -that hardly any one does on the same exact device- it is slower on later iOS versions than previous.

 

[Moshe1010]

iPhone 6 Plus is just pure crap since upgrading. Everything is slow, apps are crashing and the overall iOS experience is horrible. There are lags on almost every app that I try to open, even stock apps (e.g. camera).

 

[littyboy]

It should, there is now indisputable evidence that these disgusting allegations made about Apple are completely untrue.

Conspiracy nutjobs will always look for a conspiracy even if the evidence is right in front of them. Can't win.

 

[JM]

For the conspiracy fans......iOS is a closed ecosystem. The 3dmark benchmark is on app store. QED Apple know all about the app and hence can spot its use, at which time they throttle up performance to fool the benchmark. If it was good enough for VW, it’s good enough for Apple!

I've always wondered if Time Warner Spectrum does that for Speedtest.net. Heh