Other Apple is slowing down older iPhones based on battery wear level [MERGED]

[newellj]

Bingo.
That's pretty much what I and many others experienced also.
The battery will be dead and won't hold charge and they will tell you it's fine and within specs and won't even let you pay to have it replaced.
Why would they? They want you to buy a new device instead.

It's pretty sad, but I've heard people I know personally report the same experiences with computers (not phones - so, actually a much larger expense). It'd be nice to have something more from the people in the stores. AFAIK, they're not even paid on commission, so what gives?

 

[rui no onna]

It's pretty sad, but I've heard people I know personally report the same experiences with computers (not phones - so, actually a much larger expense). It'd be nice to have something more from the people in the stores. AFAIK, they're not even paid on commission, so what gives?

While I've not experienced issues when it comes to getting warranty replacements, I also agree that Apple's customer service has been dropping (albeit still better than most of the competition).

Before, you can just walk into an Apple Store and get your device serviced. Now, you have to schedule an appointment and in my area, it's often the case that same-day appointments are not available. More often than not, it's a wait time of 2+ days.

 

[newellj]

On the "does battery charge level affect GB results" question, I have run GB4 at around 85%, 55% and 41% and the scores are essentially identical going from mid-80s to essentially 40%. I will keep running these into the 20% range. This is an iPhone 7 purchased in October 2016 running iOS 11.2.

While I've not experienced issues when it comes to getting warranty replacements, I also agree that Apple's customer service has been dropping (albeit still better than most of the competition).

Before, you can just walk into an Apple Store and get your device serviced. Now, you have to schedule an appointment and in my area, it's often the case that same-day appointments are not available. More often than not, it's a wait time of 2+ days.

Yes, and these days, when you do show up for your appointment, it always takes half an hour more, or sometimes more than that, for them to get to you.
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[C DM]

While I've not experienced issues when it comes to getting warranty replacements, I also agree that Apple's customer service has been dropping (albeit still better than most of the competition).

Before, you can just walk into an Apple Store and get your device serviced. Now, you have to schedule an appointment and in my area, it's often the case that same-day appointments are not available. More often than not, it's a wait time of 2+ days.

Is that dropping, or basically just perhaps more people coming in for things than before and perhaps than expected? I mean ultimately it's still basically on Apple to scale accordingly.

 

[HeadphoneAddict]

Today I’ve proven myself a controversy that iOS throttles down performance of your device when Battery dies. CPU in my iPhone SE couldn’t go above 900MHz for the past month. So I decided to replace battery and everything is back to normal. iPhone SE is very snappy on iOS 11.2 now!
Old Battery:
View attachment 741835 View attachment 741832 View attachment 741831
New Battery:
View attachment 741833 View attachment 741834

Waiting for someone to chime in with "that proves nothing". Wait for it.
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I expect battery is still too new so performance degradation as a result of poor batteries isn't readily apparent. I got my iPhone 7 upon release and according to the Battery Life app, capacity is at 97% (1900/1960 mAh)....

I think there are several issues at play here. Obviously the reduced capacity that leads to slower processor speeds. This mostly affects older phones. Then there's some reporting here that at lower charge levels the processor also slows down, regardless of the phones age (not planned obsolescence).

Either of these two issues would be excusable on the grounds that they did it to prolong the length of time the phone can operate during the day. But we should have been informed. Maybe this should have resulted in an alert that this was happening, that might recommend charging for optimum performance, or a battery replacement if it's worn out. Obviously if we can load an app to check battery wear, Apple could add that feature to iOS and not make us go to the Apple Genius (who then gives us optimistic numbers and won't do anything).

My 7+ that I picked on launch day last year has a battery life that's at 97% capacity as well. It still feels pretty snappy with iOS 11.2 and the Geekbench scores are all above expected according to the app. A 3% loss in capacity after a year isn't bad at all. I'm happy with that.

My iPhone 6 with a Batteries+Bulbs replacement battery from this past summer has capacity at 100% after 6 months, and it's Geekbench scores are above average as well, even with iOS 11.2. Before the new battery the iPhone 6 went through 10% battery each hour on standby, or 10% per 30 minutes when using it, and it was slow as molasses on 10.3.3 on the bad battery, and zippy with the new one.

And yet somehow after the 11.2 update from 10.3.3, the iPhone 6 with new battery became sluggish and laggy when loading apps, despite normal processor speed in CPUDasherX and great geek bench scores, and normal performance previously on iOS 10.3.3. THIS IS A WHOLE NEW ISSUE.

Instead of most built-in apps loading in 1-2 seconds like before, they now take 4-8 seconds on iOS 11. And Safari takes 22 seconds to open and load Macrumors, while my 7+ loads the same thing in 4 seconds. Yet the iPhone 6's newly installed battery life didn't suffer in the slightest with the update, just the responsiveness, but it will keep running like the energizer bunny for ages.

This is where I was previously claiming the planned obsolescence card, in that Apple doesn't do enough to optimize for old phones over a certain age, to ensure that apps load as quickly as before the update. So then the older iPhone feels sluggish, even with a fresh battery, and made me want to replace it with an iPhone X. It worked. They got me.

I've restored the phone in iTunes once before, but I'm going to do it again and see if I can't get this sucker to become more responsive and snappy again. Now that I know the battery is at full capacity and the geekbench is normal, I have to figure out what the other issue might be. If anyone already know, please share.

 

[brianjsw01]

Bingo.
That's pretty much what I and many others experienced also.
The battery will be dead and won't hold charge and they will tell you it's fine and within specs and won't even let you pay to have it replaced.
Why would they? They want you to buy a new device instead.

I think their diagnostics are only intended to diagnose normal loss-of-capacity issues.. They don't detect "fundamentally defective batteries that aren't consistently supplying adequate voltage". They would have to be smart enough to look at the system logs for unexpected shutdowns and then have the smarts to correlate that with what is probably a bad battery. In the rush of handling customers, that kind of careful analysis is hard to come by and not a built in thing a tool can detect.

 

[Applejuiced]

I think their diagnostics are only intended to diagnose normal loss-of-capacity issues.. They don't detect "fundamentally defective batteries that aren't consistently supplying adequate voltage". They would have to be smart enough to look at the system logs for unexpected shutdowns and then have the smarts to correlate that with what is probably a bad battery. In the rush of handling customers, that kind of careful analysis is hard to come by and not a built in thing a tool can detect.

We dont really know what they're diagnosing and how their parameters are set to pass or fail a battery.
Many including me went in with batteries way below holding less than 80% charge are still denied replacements.
Is it intentional?
Since the user cannot replace the battery whenever he wants shouldn't the manufacturer allow us to pay for a battery replacement?
Instead of getting turned away and either have to pay a 3rd party repair place or risking of opening it up and doing it themselves.

 

[jetlagged]

My iPhone SE with the latest iOS 11.2 battery life is awful now. Down to 41% with 2 hour 50 min usage with a standby time of 14 hours. 28% safari usage 21% Amazon 14% Instagram and 7% Facebook. I'll probably try switching to using chrome and see how that works out

 

[BigMcGuire]

We dont really know what they're diagnosing and how their parameters are set to pass or fail a battery.
Many including me went in with batteries way below holding less than 80% charge are still denied replacements.
Is it intentional?
Since the user cannot replace the battery whenever he wants shouldn't the manufacturer allow us to pay for a battery replacement?
Instead of getting turned away and either have to pay a 3rd party repair place or risking of opening it up and doing it themselves.

Even though I’m a huge Apple Fan - I have to say this seems intentional to me. My wife’s iPhone 6s+ had less than half the capacity (in terms of hours used) than my 6s+. Her phone would randomly shut off under 60% too - often times while doing Ingress as we walked in the park together. Her phone would skyrocket to 0% while mine would happily be chugging away to 80%. Apple did 3 diagnostics and told my wife that her battery was “green” - and they wouldn’t do anything about it. Really? Even coconutBattery showed, sometimes, that the battery was under 80% capacity (sometimes it would show 90%+).

May be intentional ignorance on their part... maybe their app isn’t that specific. Still, I lost $80 because of that crap. Sure, I got a brand new iPhone 6s+ for the wife due to them destroying the phone accidentally but I shouldn’t have had to pay $80 for a defective battery that was Apple’s fault all because their iPad diagnostic told the rep that the battery was “green”...

 

[Applejuiced]

Even though I’m a huge Apple Fan - I have to say this seems intentional to me. My wife’s iPhone 6s+ had less than half the capacity (in terms of hours used) than my 6s+. Her phone would randomly shut off under 60% too - often times while doing Ingress as we walked in the park together. Her phone would skyrocket to 0% while mine would happily be chugging away to 80%. Apple did 3 diagnostics and told my wife that her battery was “green” - and they wouldn’t do anything about it. Really? Even coconutBattery showed, sometimes, that the battery was under 80% capacity (sometimes it would show 90%+).

May be intentional ignorance on their part... maybe their app isn’t that specific. Still, I lost $80 because of that crap. Sure, I got a brand new iPhone 6s+ for the wife due to them destroying the phone accidentally but I shouldn’t have had to pay $80 for a defective battery that was Apple’s fault all because their iPad diagnostic told the rep that the battery was “green”...

Well they think that they fixed it by issuing a firmware update so they dont recognize those batteries as defective.
They slowed it down to a crawl and now the batteries wont turn off but the device is running at less than 50% of the original CPU capacity.
Instead of replacing the faulty batteries they figured they'd do it the cheap, sloppy and shady way.
And still no official response from this Trillion dollar company without offering some kind of reassurance or explanation of this fiasco to their customers.

 

[HeadphoneAddict]

Well they think that they fixed it by issuing a firmware update so they dont recognize those batteries as defective.
They slowed it down to a crawl and now the batteries wont turn off but the device is running at less than 50% of the original CPU capacity.
Instead of replacing the faulty batteries they figured they'd do it the cheap, sloppy and shady way.
And still no official response from this Trillion dollar company without offering some kind of reassurance or explanation of this fiasco to their customers.

Hope you contacted them some other way than in this forum or via the general feedback form. They don’t respond that way. Did you open a ticket with support?

 

[0014]

The text in CPU DasherX is almost all Chinese for me (literally Chinese characters). Not sure why or how. Is the version on the Irish store different to the US store? Now that we don't have the iTunes connection, we can't tell version numbers...

I had this happen with the latest update and it's the reason I have now deleted the app.

 

[Radon87000]

Yet another case. iPhone 6 Plus crippled by slowdowns now running fine after battery replacement

https://reddit.com/r/apple/comments/7joemu/replaced_battery_on_6_plus_instantly_back_to/

This is in your face planned obsolescence!

 

[chillip]

Taking my 7 in on Monday and see what they do. No doubt they will check the battery and it will pass.

 

[chillip]

I wonder why there has not been an official response from Apple? Also not much in the tech media.

 

[Radon87000]

I wonder why there has not been an official response from Apple? Also not much in the tech media.

Because they have been caught with their pants down. They are no doubt drafting an excuse at this point.

 

[Jmausmuc]

I’m also very surprised that there still is no statement.
I really want to know which devices are affected. I really want to know what I can expect from my X in the next year. I really hope it won’t slow down.

I still can’t believe that even after two retries, my 13 month old 6S is consistently reporting a lower Geekbench score than my 2.5 year old 6.

 

[I7guy]

Because they have been caught with their pants down. They are no doubt drafting an excuse at this point.

Their not going to say anything because they changed the power management algorithms since 10.2.1 and it’s been this way for many months (whatever way that is). They will just continue to have a quality program for defective batteries.
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Yet another case. iPhone 6 Plus crippled by slowdowns now running fine after battery replacement

https://reddit.com/r/apple/comments/7joemu/replaced_battery_on_6_plus_instantly_back_to/

This is in your face planned obsolescence!

Sure one anecdotal case and that’s proof. Now that everyone knows Apple engages In planned obsolescence has it slowed sales.? Repeating memes doesn’t make it true.

 

[newellj]

On the "does battery charge level affect GB results" question, I have run GB4 at around 85%, 55% and 41% and the scores are essentially identical going from mid-80s to essentially 40%. I will keep running these into the 20% range. This is an iPhone 7 purchased in October 2016 running iOS 11.2.

Ran again this morning with the battery at 32%. No change in values. I will keep running down to ~20% and see what happens, but there is no sign that the iPhone 7 throttles performance as the battery charge level falls.

 

[Jmausmuc]

Their not going to say anything because they changed the power management algorithms since 10.2.1 and it’s been this way for many months (whatever way that is). They will just continue to have a quality program for defective batteries.

I didn’t even know what was wrong with my 6S before reading this thread. My 6S has been very slow for a few month but I never attributed this to the battery.
If I had known about this before I would have asked for a battery swap while I still had warranty.

But since I didn’t know that this behavior was present I attributed the slowness to the new iOS 11 update and didn’t think about changing the battery.

I can’t see how this is a quality program. If there was an error message letting me know about the slowdown I would be ok but letting me guess about the reasons for the slowdown is not what I would have expected.

 

[Radon87000]

Their not going to say anything because they changed the power management algorithms since 10.2.1 and it’s been this way for many months (whatever way that is). They will just continue to have a quality program for defective batteries.

That quality program is only for the 6s, not the 6. If the power management algorithm has been changed then all iPhones should have lower Geekbench scores across the board which they don’t. There have

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Sure one anecdotal case and that’s proof.

A sale is a sale. More revenue is more revenue. Cost saved is cost saved. 100 cases on Reddit, you don’t know how many in the real world. But the way the phones were slowed down doesn’t seem to be a customer friendly move to me.

Now that everyone knows Apple engages In planned obsolescence has it slowed sales.? Repeating memes doesn’t make it true.

Why will it slow sales? The clever thing about planned obsolescence is it supports preconceived notions in the minds of customers. People expect older devices to be slow and as expected they are slow. The 6s is 2 years old. It’s expected to be slow.

 

[I7guy]

I didn’t even know what was wrong with my 6S before reading this thread. My 6S has been very slow for a few month but I never attributed this to the battery.
If I had known about this before I would have asked for a battery swap while I still had warranty.

But since I didn’t know that this behavior was present I attributed the slowness to the new iOS 11 update and didn’t think about changing the battery.

I can’t see how this is a quality program. If there was an error message letting me know about the slowdown I would be ok but letting me guess about the reasons for the slowdown is not what I would have expected.

I don’t believe the conclusion that has been finalized since it’s all tenuous. But if your battery is bad Apple should replace it.

 

[Radon87000]

I don’t believe the conclusion that has been finalized since it’s all tenuous. But if your battery is bad Apple should replace it.

It should be replaced free of cost out of warranty

 

[I7guy]

That quality program is only for the 6s, not the 6. If the power management algorithm has been changed then all iPhones should have lower Geekbench scores across the board which they don’t. There have

The defective battery quality program is for the 6s, but Apple is not that stupid. If they are engaging in a cover-up they would do it across the board.

A sale is a sale. More revenue is more revenue. Cost saved is cost saved. 100 cases on Reddit, you don’t know how many in the real world. But the way the phones were slowed down doesn’t seem to be a customer friendly move to me.

Since you believe this meme, you have to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, as in a court of law, someone who believes this actually bought another apple product. So far all there is, is some basic forum talk.

Why will it slow sales? The clever thing about planned obsolescence is it supports preconceived notions in the minds of customers. People expect older devices to be slow and as expected they are slow. The 6s is 2 years old. It’s expected to be slow.

Why would anyone want to buy from a company that engages in subtle nefarious practices? I definitely wouldn't. Of course you have to get everyone on your page to believe this meme. But if you did, I believe apple would go down the tubes. Since it hasn't all this talk of "planned obsolescence" is just that. Words on a screen without any substance.
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It should be replaced free of cost out of warranty

Mine was.

 

[chillip]

Ran again this morning with the battery at 32%. No change in values. I will keep running down to ~20% and see what happens, but there is no sign that the iPhone 7 throttles performance as the battery charge level falls.

I just ran mine again at 40% and here is my benchmark for iPhone 7.