Apple's Alleged Throttling of Older iPhones With Degraded Batteries Causes Controversy

[robrat13]

I have many clients that would attribute the iPhone 6 to just being too old and buy a new one.

 

[upandown]

What else do you expect from a company that swindles in paying taxes and let kiddies from 10 years old produce their products??
It isnt the first time these rumours are spread, and its starting to look more and more it's true!

I bet you have things in your house made from under age kids

 

[Spacedust]

My iPhone SE is showing 1848 MHz so it seems it's working well

 

[skadd]

2557/4408 Geekbench Score while at 100% battery life
1052/1758 Score while at 20% battery life...

Sporadically shows 1848, 1500 and 600 MHz in CPU Dasher

iPhone 6S. iOS 11.2

 

[madus]

Not sure I'm following this guy's logic. He owns a model of phone that has a known battery issue for a small number of units, experiences some issues, then replaces that battery and gets better performance. But his conclusion isn't that the battery was defective and fluctuating as a result of the known defect, but rather that Apple is throttling through software?

Issue is that the state of the battery should not change performance while the said battery has "juice". Even a poor battery that gets exhausted quickly be it for age or design flaw provides power to the system. Same, indistinguishable power as a brand new issue-less battery. Performance MUST be the same. If not the same Apple is software-throttling performance based on whatever parameters they receive from the battery. Health state of the battery can't affect performance on its own (except how long device can work on it). Software must do that. Question is whether Apple is purely benevolent, helping users with poor batteries squeeze more usable time from the device or malevolent-expecting older devices to start having poorer battery parameters and using that to hobble the performance under a guise of "help", hoping for users to buy new device. Knowing Apple practices-I'd say BOTH is the most likely answer.

 

[Macram]

iPhone 6s is 911 MHz at 80% battery here but has been down to 600mhz with iOS 11.2.

 

[ediks]

Whats up with that low geek bench scores? it looks more like 5s than 6s

 

[Starship67]

All I can say is that my iP7 still runs a champ.

 

[tipoo]

This whole thing rubbed me the wrong way. A lot of outlets never picked up on that the software band-aid for the 6S shutdowns just throttled back the SoC to not be as bursty, reducing performance quite a bit (I think I more than doubled time in Octane).

They did have a free swap program, but originally at least, not for the 6S Plus or 6, only the 6S, even though they all had similar issues.

And besides that, if the software could tell you had a bad batch battery and throttle down the SoC for it, instead of running silently in the background why could it not send a notification to get a swap, in the meantime while it dialed back the performance? If they can give us all U2 albums...


They may be making right now, but most users will just never figure out they clamped down the SoC to prevent bad batterys shutting down. A notification would do that, it would also cost them more...

 

[Jack Ryan]

CPU DasherX test

iPhone 6S 64Gb, 2 years of intensive use.
Battery: 16%
CPU: Frecuency: 1848 MHz

 

[tipoo]

Now that I think about it I made this thread on it back then:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/6s-benchmark-performance-fell-off-at-some-point.2039834/

 

[jujufreeze]

Come on man. That's a little unrealistic for a company to do. Im all about transparency but a company is not going to announce every compromise or error or change they make.

This is not directed at you but there is an overwhelming increase of an idealistic and unrealistic expectation from businesses and corporations. The customer is not always right, deal with it. These days everyone seems to be the victim.

Poor corporations, we customers have it too good.

 

[KingslayerG5]

It's Apple version of battery saving mode. On my HTC One M7, battery saving mode kept it at 1.2 GHz throttled when I checked AnTuTu when the Snapdragon 600 SoC it had would reach 1.7 GHz if battery saver was off.

If it's just another way for Apple to weasel their way for more money every two years, so be it. Just change platforms. I don't see it much of an issue. The issue already began because it is SEALED. If Note7's was removable, the recall probably wouldn't have happened. These companies want to create flawed products for you to keep coming back for more.

There are drawbacks to removable battery too but not so much compared to sealed ones that forces you to upgrade every two years. Loving my G5 and V20. Will keep them for as long as they turn on and there is a battery to keep them powered on. The last of their kind. The component that likely fails the fastest is usually the battery.

2014 - Find 7a, G3, S5, Note 4
2015 - G4, V10
2016 - G5, V20

 

[Paddle1]

Wow, that iPhone 6s scored lower than my iPod touch.

 

[Blaze4G]

Yeah it’s been out for what almost 4 years!???

Ahm 2 to be exact.

 

[souko]

So two points:
1) What is worse - to have phone turned off in 20% unexpectedly or not and have worse performance...
(Yes there were faulty batteries, but they will always be... They have two options what to do...) (But yes they could change much more iPhone batteries - but it will not solve this problem in really long run...)

2) Apple made decision, that worse is if the phone will turn off itself with 20% battery; than not have the same performance. And they added info about bad battery to setrings...

I don’t see Apple so bad in this...

On Apple’s credit some battery saving features are on macOS, but on Windows and Android too...

 

[justperry]

Crap, I just checked mine (6S), battery was at about 45-50%, CPU at 1515 Mhz, started to charge and it went all the way up to 1800+, it's just over 1 year old.
Not good.

 

[bodonnell202]

iPhone 6s is already an old phone now?

Nope, Apple is still selling the sucker now. Without the optimized stock iOS 9 though...

My 6s is still running great, despite passing 2 years old now. YMMV, but my experience was that it performed better with iOS 10 than the original iOS 9 and performance on iOS 11 is similar to iOS 10, but battery life was somewhat worse initially, but seems to be back to normal with iOS 11.2. I did have my battery replaced under the 6s battery replacement program about a year ago through. If my phone was sporting a 2 year old battery I would probably be looking at either a replacement battery or a new phone...

 

[Act3]

This is awful.

I tested a heavily used iPad Air 2 that was bought at launch, still original battery and it tested fine.

 

[upandown]

Poor corporations, we customers have it too good.

That's an extreme way to look at it

 

[christo747]

Omg. For years I was wondering about the speed of my devices. Now I "know", it seems. I don't know how my batterys health is but a score of 736 for an iPhone 6 seems like a disaster. Sad. :-(

 

[ArneK]

It stats my iPhone 6s is just 600MHz...!!!
Performance is awful, nearly bought a new phone...

View attachment 741477

Wow, even worse than mine with 900 MHz

 

[manu chao]

I don't get why Apple would do this (nor HOW they would do it). All slowing down someone's iPhone would do is make that person get frustrated and want to get a different phone -- and possibly not an iPhone. If, on the other hand, the person simply had a much shorter battery life, at least the iPhone would still be performing properly and perhaps encourage the person to either get it repaired or upgraded.

Since the shutdowns mostly only happened when it was both cold and the charge level below about 40%, Apple only needed to slow the phone down under those conditions. If the phone asked you whether you want a 50% chance of the phone shutting down or the phone continuing to work but more slowly, I think most people would choose the latter option.
[doublepost=1513021272][/doublepost]

I have no proof, and I know this was mostly related to the iPhone 6s, but my iPhone 6 "hit" the bed soon after iOS 10 was released. Basically it would randomly die after about 50% battery. No warning at all. It would just turn off. It was working perfectly find before then. I took it to Apple, they tested it, said the battery was fine.

I was in the same boat but shutdowns also required cold temperature. The colder the phone got, the earlier the shutdowns would happen. At room temperature, shutdowns only happened below a 10% charge level. Holding the phone long enough to get close to ambient temperature, shutdowns could happen at up to 40% when the temperatures were about freezing.

So it had to be an iOS issues.

iOS 10.2 significantly improved things for me. In cold conditions shutdowns only happened below about 15%.

 

[Neepman]

There is no way i will ever be convinced apple is not doing something to gimp older devices. This would be a genius way to do it because it has oodles of plausible deniability. No one ever said these people weren't smart!
[doublepost=1513021542][/doublepost]

What would be worse, a slow phone? Or a phone that the battery dies way too quickly?

Do you prefer black or brown boots to lick?

 

[ArneK]

Ok, looking through all these posts there seems to be a lot of affected iPhones and a few lucky ones who dont have this problem (even though same age of the phone). Question I am asking myself now: what is the proper cause of action? I dont have warranty anymore but there has to be some way of bringing this up with Apple. I mean selling an iPhone that after one year doesn't even deliver half of the promised speed can't be legal...?