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

[brianjsw01]

For anyone who might have forgotten how Apple got to this point I found this article (now almost a year old) to really bring things back into focus for me.

http://fortune.com/2017/01/25/apple-iphone-6-battery-recall/

 

[Black Tiger]

For anyone who might have forgotten how Apple got to this point I found this article (now almost a year old) to really bring things back into focus for me.

http://fortune.com/2017/01/25/apple-iphone-6-battery-recall/

It’s unrelated. And this is exactly why Apple and other companies do not try to explain tech to the general public. This a fix for degrading batteries that cannot supply enough charge to the processor to prevent random shutdowns. A gradual slowdown of experience is preferable to random shutdowns, and you would all be bitching about random shutdowns instead if Apple didn’t implement this change.

 

[bnmcj1]

May have bought my last iPhone. Cant accept this.

So what is fast processors worth when they cant be used to their maximum after short time.

This is principal. Of course i will never pay full price for a fast crippled top model.

Android for 1/3 of the price here I guess I come.

 

[Black Tiger]

May have bought my last iPhone. Cant accept this.

So what is fast processors worth when they cant be used to their maximum after short time.

This is principal. Of course i will never pay full price for a fast crippled top model.

Android for 1/3 of the price here I guess I come.

Android phones use batteries too and would suffer the same processor/battery voltage problem. It’s not unique to iPhone. If I recall correctly, the solution Samsung came up with was for the battery to explode. So of course there are many solutions.

 

[bnmcj1]

Android phones use batteries too and would suffer the same processor/battery voltage problem. It’s not unique to iPhone. If I recall correctly, the solution Samsung came up with was for the battery to explode. So of course there are many solutions.

I would like to see it before I believe it. Doubt that Android manufacturers are clocking their phone CPU’s to under half speed.

The Samsung battery thing is old now. We have heard of exploding phones from a lot of brands. And Samsung seems to have really put an effort into safe batteries especially since...

 

[anonymous guy]

It’s unrelated. And this is exactly why Apple and other companies do not try to explain tech to the general public. This a fix for degrading batteries that cannot supply enough charge to the processor to prevent random shutdowns. A gradual slowdown of experience is preferable to random shutdowns, and you would all be bitching about random shutdowns instead if Apple didn’t implement this change.

So essentially, the end user is too stupid to understand anything, so please save us.

Also, we won't tell you to buy a battery. Keep upgrading to the next model, everything will be fine.

 

[I7guy]

It’s happening after a year for some phones and customers are charged for a replacement. A $970 device shouldn’t throttle after a year. On top of that Apple states this is perfectly normal.

Apple doesn’t even state my battery is the reason the phone is slow. Heck I upgraded my phone because of delays and battery drain. There may plenty others who were deceived by Apple hiding this information.

What do you mean replacement? You have proof this is a happening as a matter of course and not to one customer out of 10,000,000?
[doublepost=1514125544][/doublepost]

Right, you're still giving them the benefit of the doubt but most of us lost faith and trust is out the window.
Reality is you'd have no idea when that slowing would happen to your device because Apple would lie to you and tell you the battery is fine.
That's until this whole thing got exposed and hopefully it changes some things down the road.
You are welcome, this shady practice getting exposed is good for the end user including you that thinks Apple does no wrong.

Well sir, I’m not telling you what to do. And if you’ve “lost faith” well ok. As I said I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt for now. And whether Apple “does any wrong” so now that I’m aware, I’m not updating any devices because they are slow. I’ll upgrade because of new feature/function.

 

[Radon87000]

Where are they saying that all devices will be throttled?

The statement they made was made as a general statement of fact.

“Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices. Lithium-ion batteries become less capable of supplying peak current demands when in cold conditions, have a low battery charge or as they age over time, which can result in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components.

Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions. We've now extended that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add support for other products in the future."

Factual statements apply across the board. This is going to happen on all iPhones at some random Wear level which Apple will not disclose to use. The best bet is to cross your fingers and hope you haven't gotten a subpar battery otherwise your phone will throttle in a year. If you are lucky it may happen in 2.

First priority is to install Geekbench and cpudasher to monitor the throttle over the life of the phone.

 

[Radon87000]

I would like to see it before I believe it. Doubt that Android manufacturers are clocking their phone CPU’s to under half speed.

The Samsung battery thing is old now. We have heard of exploding phones from a lot of brands. And Samsung seems to have really put an effort into safe batteries especially since...

Samsung's battery fiasco caused Samsung to adopt the most stringent battery testing the the industry. Samsung states the Note 8 battery will be at 95% health after 2 years of use which makes Apple's iPhone batteries which officially need to be replaced after 2 years look like absolute garbage. Heck my iPhone 6 battery is at 94% after just 80 charge cycles that's how garbage they are.

Apple will continue to cut costs on batteries unless it comes back to bite them in the ass like it did for Samsung. Same goes with Google. They tried to cut costs with the screen by going with LG which has ruined the Pixel 2 XL's reputation. I bet next year we get fabulous screens with the Pixel
[doublepost=1514129224][/doublepost]

May have bought my last iPhone. Cant accept this.

So what is fast processors worth when they cant be used to their maximum after short time.

This is principal. Of course i will never pay full price for a fast crippled top model.

Android for 1/3 of the price here I guess I come.

They should include a clause in the tech specs that the superior performance may be expected to be retained only for 1 year after which it may go down to A9 speeds.

 

[lordhamster]

Samsung's battery fiasco caused Samsung to adopt the most stringent battery testing the the industry. Samsung states the Note 8 battery will be at 95% health after 2 years of use which makes Apple's iPhone batteries which officially need to be replaced after 2 years look like absolute garbage. Heck my iPhone 6 battery is at 94% after just 80 charge cycles that's how garbage they are.

Apple will continue to cut costs on batteries unless it comes back to bite them in the ass like it did for Samsung. Same goes with Google. They tried to cut costs with the screen by going with LG which has ruined the Pixel 2 XL's reputation. I bet next year we get fabulous screens with the Pixel
[doublepost=1514129224][/doublepost]
They should include a clause in the tech specs that the superior performance may be expected to be retained only for 1 year after which it may go down to A9 speeds.

Ironically,
user replaceable batteries would have solved the issue in both instances. I HAAAAAAATE the non-removable battery concept.

 

[Altis]

It’s unrelated. And this is exactly why Apple and other companies do not try to explain tech to the general public. This a fix for degrading batteries that cannot supply enough charge to the processor to prevent random shutdowns. A gradual slowdown of experience is preferable to random shutdowns, and you would all be bitching about random shutdowns instead if Apple didn’t implement this change.

So why are batteries that Apple techs consider "Healthy" and not in need of replacement already causing CPU throttling?

And why are iPhone 4S, 5, etc not affected? Nor iPads...

 

[miragebg]

So why are batteries that Apple techs consider "Healthy" and not in need of replacement already causing CPU throttling?

And why are iPhone 4S, 5, etc not affected? Nor iPads...

My questions exactly!
Why the heck does my phone throttle, when my battery health is 93%???

 

[C DM]

The statement they made was made as a general statement of fact.



Factual statements apply across the board. This is going to happen on all iPhones at some random Wear level which Apple will not disclose to use. The best bet is to cross your fingers and hope you haven't gotten a subpar battery otherwise your phone will throttle in a year. If you are lucky it may happen in 2.

First priority is to install Geekbench and cpudasher to monitor the throttle over the life of the phone.

So basically they didn't actually say what you said they said.

 

[Radon87000]

So basically they didn't actually say what you said they said.

They did because nothing in their statement says only some iPhones are affected. Statements of fact that iPhones will throttle means all iPhones will throttle.

 

[C DM]

They did because nothing in their statement says only some iPhones are affected. Statements of fact that iPhones will throttle means all iPhones will throttle.

Nothing in their statement says that all devices are or will actually be throttled. Reality of many devices to this day not being affected while some have been is also consistent with that.

 

[bunnspecial]

I find it interesting that Apple is doing this with the iPhone but not necessarily other devices.

Apple started making Mac batteries "officially" non-replaceable starting with the first MBA in 2008, and I don't think any Macs have had a replaceable battery since 2009 or so. I've replaced my fair share of batteries in first gen non-replaceable computers, but forget it on the rMBP, post-2012 MBA, or anything newer. The batteries before then were a single unit that came out with a few screws, but the rMBP switched over to multi-piece batteries that were glued in place.

In any case, it was pretty well documented that Apple would seriously kill the performance with the battery removed or when it was dead(dead in the sense that it would no longer accept charge, not just at the 80% threshold).

Of course laptops are a bit of a different beast in that they are often used plugged in-the charger isn't enough to power the laptop running absolute full blast, and the computer needs to keep the battery "in reserve" to tide it over when the charger can't supply enough. As an ancient history example, a 1ghz Titanium PowerBook runs at 600mhz and disables the L3 cache without a good battery installed. Even a "bad" battery-one enough to run the computer for 10 minutes when unplugged-will restore full speed operation. I had a swollen battery in my 2010 MacBook and ran it for a few days until I could get a replacement, and it was unbelievably slow in that time(it's not exactly top of the line, but still plenty fast most of the time).

I have noticed my iPhone 6 slowing down appreciably in the last few months. I think Coconut Battery shows it in the high 80% of health. I'd rather deal with shorter battery life-just like I've been doing on my computers for years-than have it run slower.

BTW, Apple says that the pre-retina Unibody MBPs should have 80% health after 1000 cycles. In the last few months Applecare on my 8,1(late 2011 13") it wavered between 78% and 80% using a couple of different programs and had in the ballpark of 800 cycles. OS X(yes, it was still OS X then) showed "service battery" in the drop-down under the battery icon in the menu bar.

I took it in insisting on a new battery, and the genius did a "quick cycle" test and declared it good and that I'd need to pay for replacement if I wanted it(I think $130 on that particular battery). I should have pushed, but didn't as I already had plans in place to replace the comptuer. Still, I finished out my master's thesis on that computer and it would have been nice to have a good battery to carry me through that.

 

[Martyimac]

So essentially, the end user is too stupid to understand anything, so please save us.

Unfortunately, life has taught me that 95% of the general public fall under this umbrella. IMHO

 

[Martyimac]

Samsung's battery fiasco caused Samsung to adopt the most stringent battery testing the the industry. Samsung states the Note 8 battery will be at 95% health after 2 years of use which makes Apple's iPhone batteries which officially need to be replaced after 2 years look like absolute garbage. Heck my iPhone 6 battery is at 94% after just 80 charge cycles that's how garbage they are.

Apple will continue to cut costs on batteries unless it comes back to bite them in the ass like it did for Samsung. Same goes with Google. They tried to cut costs with the screen by going with LG which has ruined the Pixel 2 XL's reputation. I bet next year we get fabulous screens with the Pixel
[doublepost=1514129224][/doublepost]
They should include a clause in the tech specs that the superior performance may be expected to be retained only for 1 year after which it may go down to A9 speeds.

My 6S is at only 90% after only 82 cycles. But the battery will be 2 years old in May. Battery life also affects total capacity.

 

[macsrcool1234]

No, they really do lose power over time for various reasons. Efficiency also drops along with this. And manufactures do throttle back HP. Modern engines actually shut off cylinders. I’m not saying this is the same as what Apple did. But the original claim I replied to said simply engines don’t lose HP over time and that isn’t true.

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

 

[Martyimac]

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

Actually, everything he said was true.

 

[firewood]

Statements of fact that iPhones will throttle means all iPhones will throttle.

Quite false, since I have an iPhone 5s and 6s that seem to run just as fast as when new, even though they have been updated to iOS 11.2.1.
[doublepost=1514146302][/doublepost]

My questions exactly!
Why the heck does my phone throttle, when my battery health is 93%???

That's a very good question.

1. Have you rebooted your iPhone recently?
2. How full is your storage? More than 80%? Flash memory wear leveling can steal most of your memory cycles.
3. Have you checked in Settings under Battery Usage to see what's using your battery? Whatever is using up your battery could also be stealing CPU cycles.
4. You might also check Cellular Data usage, including under Systems Services. Whatever is downloading data could also be stealing CPU or memory cycles.
5. Do you have a huge amount of iCloud or iMessage data? Up and downloading that data can steal a bunch of CPU and memory cycles.

That's just for starters. Apple has diagnostics that can search for even more potential issues.

 

[Thierry ba]

Just run Geekbench on my 12 months old iPhone 6S (15% battery wear) and surprise, the results are already cut in half. This is ridiculous.

 

[Hieveryone]

Apple better listen up, DON'T TOUCH OUR CPU'S!

 

[macsrcool1234]

Actually, everything he said was true.

Prove it.

 

[Hieveryone]

And so it begins…

Well if Apple didn’t make iPhones slow maybe so many people wouldn’t be disgusted