FAQ: What to Know About Apple Slowing Down iPhones to Prevent Unexpected Shutdowns

[HallStevenson]

If that's true, then CPU Dasher X isn't working properly. The CPU isn't going to run at max clock speed all the time.

why do you think that?

CPUs never run at full-clock speed 100% of the time. If you've ever had your phone do something CPU-intensive for more than a few minutes, it will get hot (this applies to iPhones, Android phones, etc). It applies to computers as well. Now, your phone isn't noticeably hot all the time, is it ? Phones have no active cooling hardware either, so they run at different clock speeds as needed.

 

[Narcaz]

I think many people here still misunderstand what it going on

First, Samsung doesn’t have special battery technology. The chemistry is exactly the same. They deplete the same way. There is no way to change it except to use a different battery chemistry. It is very likely that Samsung and other manufacturers use similar power management methods.

Second, Apple uses batteries made in Japan.

Lastly, relax, most of the time it takes a seriously beat battery for power management to engage throttle. Get it replaced for $30. The amount of hyperbole on here makes it seem crazy that a heavily used battery cycled at least daily for three years should wear out... 500 cycles is a lot for a lipo battery.

Thanks to macrumors member mi7chy, who gathered all the models from the ifixit teardowns, we know that Apple uses chinese batteries with a low capacity (in comparison to most android oems). No high quality from japanese brands like Panasonic or Sanyo:

iPhone 8 - Huapu Technology (Changshu) Inc

iPhone 7 - Huapu Technology (Changshu) Inc

iPhone 6S - Huapu Technology (Changshu) Inc

iPhone 6 - Huizhou Desay Battery Co LTD

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...diagnostic-test.2098675/page-13#post-25662996

 

[sbailey4]

according to apple it was a feature added in 10.2.1 for the 6/6s

Exactly, The new power management was a new feature that was added to prevent the shutdowns. That's been said in pretty much every article on this subject to date.

[Edit] I think maybe you are referring to the last response regarding the statement about adding new features: "Throttling phones down in order to give new features"
That does not mean that the pwr management code was a new feature but that the devices are being throttled to add new features, as in iOS 11 added new features. So the power management was not added so new features of a new iOS version can exist.

 

[viperGTS]

What benefit does MacRumors have to act apologist for Apple? Because that's all I'm getting from this article.

 

[convergent]

Apple is getting away with something here if it ends with this. There is a reason they are quickly offering everyone a $29 battery replacement (for a year only) to get this to go away. Total speculation by me, but I believe there is a design issue here that is causing their devices, starting with the 6, to become unstable when the battery ages. I've never heard of a device needing to be slowed down when the battery ages. They are probably doing this to avoid a mass recall. Hopefully the court cases will do enough discovery to really find out what is going on. Apple is probably quickly fixing things in the newer devices so this isn't a problem, or isn't exposed. And by then, most of the older ones will start to reach end of life and this will blow over.

 

[gnipgnop]

Yes but they didn't TELL the users in ADVANCE of them updating so they could make an INFORMED decision...

There aren't really that many decisions to make.

Replacing an end of life battery removes the possibility of voltage problems due to the age of the battery. It doesn't remove the possibility of voltage problems due to low charge or cold. The version of iOS you use can only change whether or not the phone immediately shuts down as soon as it experiences a voltage problem. Does Apple prevent the end user of knowing when the battery is end of life? No. Could Apple have communicated what changes were made to iOS more clearly? Yes. Were those changes intended to mislead the customer? No.

 

[lankox]

Three 6s' in my house. All three reported 600MHz by CPUdasherx. Coconut battery showed the battery wear around 84%. Got battery replaced by Apple and all three are now showing 1848MHz.

Macrumors are you SURE the cpu is only being throttled at peak loads and not all the time? If so, what is your proof? Can someone explain the CPUdasherx results experienced by 6s users everywhere? I don't believe it is unreasonable to hold Macrumors to journalistic standards.

 

[gnipgnop]

This is particularly problematic. My wife's 5S is much faster than my 6. My phone started becoming slow around 6 months ago... just around the time the 10.2.1 update went out.

What troubleshooting steps have you followed since experiencing the slowdown?

 

[justperry]

I find this to be a redundant article If I am honest.
We've already had several over the last few day, with 1000's of posts, this should do.
If we as posters/users on MR start a thread but it's in more places it is merged, it (these articles about this issue) is already enough.
Nothing else to say or slow news week I guess.

 

[sbailey4]

why do you think that?

CPUs never run at full-clock speed 100% of the time. If you've ever had your phone do something CPU-intensive for more than a few minutes, it will get hot (this applies to iPhones, Android phones, etc). It applies to computers as well. Now, your phone isn't noticeably hot all the time, is it ? Phones have no active cooling hardware either, so they run at different clock speeds as needed.

Exactly! Also @Act3 you an download the app 'Status' as well and actually watch the CPU cycles real time (only in percentages tho) if you really think that CPU's run flat out all the time.

 

[ChrisCW11]

All this tells me are two things.

1) Apple uses ****** battery and power management technology, period. You can quibble all you like, but iPhones charge slowly, don't last as long as the competition, and apparently degrade over time unlike other competitive products. At the end of the day you are paying top dollar for ****** battery tech, period. I have an Android phone that charges, fully, in 20 minutes and lasts 2 days, my iPad Pro takes all night and barely lasts a day regardless of what I do on it. Apple needs to address this quality disparity in their products in 2018.

2) Apple would prefer to force all users to suffer slower performance through software updates rather then giving customers an option to turn on battery protection OR even if the phone needs it or not. Its not like iOS detect inferior battery performance and adjusts its performance, it just decides that if you have a certain model of the phone then it will cripple performance for everyone even if only, say, 5% of the market is impacted by unexpected shut-downs. This is a Trumped up reason to force obsolete into their products to force people to a shorter upgrade cycle. Wasn't it about a year ago Mac Rumors posted a story that suggests Apple iPhone users take the longest to upgrade their phones, like 24 months between upgrades on average? Obviously Apple would like to s e that upgrade cycle shorten and found a way to both ensure it AND come up with a plausible excuse why they do it.

At the end of the day, this is a huge blow to Apple in terms of both hardware and software quality myths that Apple fanbois think about their beloved company. On top of massive security issues and what is appearing to be a less then expected stellar product roll out for iPhone X and 8, Apple is going to have to prove to consumers why they want to charge the big bucks for their products while sitting on 300+ billion of cache reserves and near 1 trillion market cap and produce some of the worst products for battery and software quality released today.

 

[emulajavi]

Ashaming article!

How about the slowdowns of iPhone 4 or 5. Oh wait! There weren’t any slowdowns and nothing happened with their batteries making them, to suddenly turn off because of peak power requests....

Apple with the iPhone 6 found that their batteries had a fault and took advantage of this situation for the future as faulty batteries permitted them to throttle the iPhone’s speed thus making people think they needed to update. The damage has already been done.

 

[convergent]

I think many people here still misunderstand what it going on

First, Samsung doesn’t have special battery technology. The chemistry is exactly the same. They deplete the same way. There is no way to change it except to use a different battery chemistry. It is very likely that Samsung and other manufacturers use similar power management methods.

Second, Apple uses batteries made in Japan.

Lastly, relax, most of the time it takes a seriously beat battery for power management to engage throttle. Get it replaced for $30. The amount of hyperbole on here makes it seem crazy that a heavily used battery cycled at least daily for three years should wear out... 500 cycles is a lot for a lipo battery.

What you've said here is mostly incorrect. Samsung and other OEMs have publicly said they don't throttle their phones when their batteries age. And you are right, they all have the same battery technology available. Yet, for some reason Apple is the only one who's product becomes unstable when the battery ages. That is some design problem, or under-spec'ed components going on. The $29 replacement is a way for Apple to try and get everyone to forget about what is really going on. There are also accounts in this thread of people seeing slow downs with batteries that were not that old, so your "three years" theory is also completely wrong. Some of the effected phones haven't even been in production for three years. I've never owned any other battery powered device that became unstable when the battery lost some of its battery life.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

I find this to be a redundant article If I am honest.
We've already had several over the last few day, with 1000's of posts, this should do.
If we as posters/users on MR start a thread but it's in more places it is merged, it (these articles about this issue) is already enough.
Nothing else to say or slow news week I guess.

This article is designed to be a definitive guide to what's going on, so it will show up high on Google, as opposed to the numerous reddit/MR/etc posts. It's also written in a way that's very kind to Apple. Long story short, this wreaks of PR spin from Apple, so that they have an article that's written by a "neutral" party and doesn't make them out to be the bad guys.

 

[Act3]

CPUs never run at full-clock speed 100% of the time. If you've ever had your phone do something CPU-intensive for more than a few minutes, it will get hot (this applies to iPhones, Android phones, etc). It applies to computers as well. Now, your phone isn't noticeably hot all the time, is it ? Phones have no active cooling hardware either, so they run at different clock speeds as needed.

My phone does not heat up when running Geekbench with a new battery. Scores show normal for 6s phone now with new battery.

Maybe 1848 Mhz is the normal idle CPU frequency for the 6s.

 

[convergent]

Ashaming article!

How about the slowdowns of iPhone 4 or 5. Oh wait! There weren’t any slowdowns and nothing happened with their batteries making them, to suddenly turn off because of peak power requests....

Apple with the iPhone 6 found that their batteries had a fault and took advantage of this situation for the future as faulty batteries permitted them to throttle the iPhone’s speed thus making people think they needed to update. The damage has already been done.

Yep, and this should probably be a recall instead of a cheap battery replacement at the owner's expense, which will push the problem down the road until everyone has forgotten about it.

 

[cmwade77]

Very thorough and well-written article.

Not really and here is why:
If it is necessary to do this to prevent the phones from randomly shutting down, then why don't other phones (think Samsung, HTC, Sony, etc.) also have to have similar power management to prevent this?

Additionally, let's look at another product that also has Lithium-Ion batteries, electric vehicles. Can you imagine if a car company came out and said after your battery degrades to 80% of original capacity, we have to limit it to driving no more than 45 MPH or else it might randomly turn off while you are driving? Of course not, they would be the laughing stock of the automotive world and justifiably so.

Now yes, if the charge gets down to 5%, they will limit the speed to get you safely to a charger, but that is not the same as what Apple is doing here, they are limiting the phone's performance when it has high demand. It would be the equivalent of putting the 45 MPH speed limit on the car just because the battery is old.

 

[weup togo]

hahahaha "feature"
the absolute shill degeneracy of this place

 

[Ribitsch]

You forgot the following questions:

1. Why is the throttling being applied just last year, after 10 years of iPhones? What happened to the 5s for example?

2. Could there be a hardware issue/design with regards to quality/capability of battery Apple is using and this throttling is just a workaround due to the bad/cheap design?

3. Why isn't Apple aiming at higher battery quality like Samsung is now adopting for S8? A typical battery degrades to 80% after 2 years, Samsung's new design only goes down to 95%.

I can tell you something, maybe thats answering one of your questions, my iPhone 4s and 5S had shutdown, when it was very cold outside and the device temperature was too low.

My iPhone 6s (nearly 2 and a half year old) never shutdown once <3 btw
(But I have to admit my phone's not slow, because my battery got replaced through a repair program last year)

 

[IbisDoc]

Can't believe this propaganda was posted.

One of the author's claims:
"Whether a customer chooses to believe Apple is his or her choice, but there is no evidence to suggest that Apple's power management feature is designed for any other purpose than to prevent iPhones from unexpectedly shutting down."

Immediately followed by this in the next section:
"Given it didn't fully communicate the changes, some iPhone users with a suddenly slower device may not have realized that they could have simply replaced the battery to regain maximum performance consistently. As a result, some customers may have even unnecessarily purchased a brand new iPhone."


Are you serious, dude? Connect the dots and stop drinking the Kool-Aid.

 

[hauntvictim]

...

At the end of the day Apple could have let phones shut down randomly (which could cause customers to upgrade) or they could have implemented measurers such as they did which affects performance, at times (and which could cause customers to upgrade).
...

My iPhone 7 did random shut downs every hour or so, this was prior to me upgrading to the latest iOS. Before Apple Pay but I think prior to iOS 11. It was really bad and how odd that after my upgrade the shutdowns do not occur. Hmmm.

 

[Jsameds]

Yeah they could add a new switch and label it 'Random shutdown' off/on. Or just add the feature to the existing Low power mode and add to the description "Phone may also randomly shut down at any given time"

Or an “Unthrottled when there’s no risk of random shutdowns” option, like when there’s 30%-100% juice remaining.

 

[ColdShadow]

Apple should have told customers that they are doing this.
end of story.

 

[mdatwood]

Samsung and other OEMs have publicly said they don't throttle their phones when their batteries age. And you are right, they all have the same battery technology available. Yet, for some reason Apple is the only one who's product becomes unstable when the battery ages.

This is not true. I have had my Android phones crash/shutdown under load with older batteries. It happens to all phones. Apple attempted to address the issue by throttling down the processor because they think keeping the phone running is better than crashing. I agree with Apple here.

What Apple failed at was communicating this change with the why it was done.

 

[cmwade77]

I think many people here still misunderstand what it going on

First, Samsung doesn’t have special battery technology. The chemistry is exactly the same. They deplete the same way. There is no way to change it except to use a different battery chemistry. It is very likely that Samsung and other manufacturers use similar power management methods.

Second, Apple uses batteries made in Japan.

Lastly, relax, most of the time it takes a seriously beat battery for power management to engage throttle. Get it replaced for $30. The amount of hyperbole on here makes it seem crazy that a heavily used battery cycled at least daily for three years should wear out... 500 cycles is a lot for a lipo battery.

Actually, Samsung does use a different battery chemistry in their S8 phones and newer. Primarily, it was designed to be safer (don't want a repeat of the Note 7 issues), but it had the added benefit that it always degrades at a slower rate as a a result.

Honestly, 500 cycles is nothing for a lithium ion battery these days, seriously, how many phones even make it through an entire day on a charge, even brand new? But lets assume it does, you are looking at 365 charges a year, which means a 500 cycle would be about a year and a half. We know that there are batteries that can last longer because they are being used in electric vehicles and plugin hybrids, some of which, like Tesla are estimated to last 5,000+ cycles before degrading more than 10%. Yes, there will be outliers that degrade faster and slower, but this is the average.

So again, we know it is possible to get a better quality battery, the question is why can't Apple get it?