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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.
Honestly, I have phones that I have kept for many years with Lithium-Ion batteries and never have I had them crash like that unless there was a corrupt app, remove the app and they worked just fine.
 
Apple is lying.

A two-year old iPhone SE with a healthy battery (measured in an Apple Store) is throttled. After replacing the old battery in the store the speed comes back.

It's very likely that the algorithm only looks at battery charge cycles, and it's the easiest implementation. The magic number is around 500.

Not sure if using a new third-party battery would also work.
 
what we need is a version of cpuDasherX which will run in the background and periodically poll the cpu frequency. it's true that that when any modern device with frequency scaling is idle, the processor frequency (and perhaps voltage) will be scaled down to save power.

so depending on how frequently cpuDasherX reads the cpu frequency, it's possible that it's catching the the cpu when the frequency is low and misses when it scales back up.

but i will say this, on my iPhone6 with a 9-month old battery, i've never seen a cpu frequency higher than 1100Mhz. i think i can be reasonably sure i've been permanently throttled.
 
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So again, we know it is possible to get a better quality battery, the question is why can't Apple get it?

Part of that question is always going to be volume of production. However, if it's just overall capacity that doesn't degrade as quickly, that won't eliminate voltage issues related to low charge or cold.
 
Your blanket forgiveness is inspiring.
Just stating the facts. All lipo batteries use the same chemistry. It is inevitable that heavily cycled battery will deplete. Samsung doesn’t have magical solution either. They are likely using similar power management strategy as Apple.
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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
Might be Chinese company but battery clearly states “made in japan”.
 
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.

And these phones didn't crash or shutdown ever until the battery aged? I disagree with you, and my experience supports my view. If it were to happen to other devices, then I would say the same about them. There is a reason Apple jumped so quickly to a $29 upgrade offer... and it wasn't because they don't care about profits and are generous.
 
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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?
One thing that Tesla do to maximise battery life is very clever charge management. For example, a "full" charge might only be 80% of the total capacity, and "empty" might still have 30% remaining. What it does do though is change you 1000 cycle battery into one that now has 2000 "full charge" cycles. As long as they get their advertised mileage with that 50% of battery capacity, nobody cares. 2000 x 200 miles range is 400,000 miles, or for your 8 year warranty, expected to be good for 50,000 miles per year for 8 years before reaching 80% health.
Back onto Apple, there is no doubt in my mind that they have been cutting corners with battery tech with the knowledge that they would be throttling performance. When iPhones had 1700mAh batteries and the competition has 3000mAh and they are somehow comparable, we used to put it down to iOS just being the superior OS and it was so economical. Now I think they put the bare minimum they could get away with, which bit them on the ass when the 6S started shutting down on it's own. Rather than face facts and put in a bigger capacity battery that would allow the CPU to handle these spikes (that I'm still not convinced are the main problem, I've never had any other phone have these issues), they decided to just throttle everyones phone and put in a battery that isn't up to the job, but makes them more money.
 
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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.
Thanks for thoughtful reply. Samsung and other OEMs stated they don’t throttle when battery capacity is low? Source?
There are statistical outliers for batteries same as many other things. They can go bad after a few cycles or after hundreds. Should not be a shock.
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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?
Samsung does not have a “new” chemistry. They use less tightly packed battery so it is less likely to short. This also means less likely to explode... and also lower power density.
 
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Here's what you need to know: Just keep your phone plugged in at all times of the day, even if its charged.

The only time I let my phone off the charger is when I'm sleeping at night, or out and about.

whats interesting is that if my phone is less than 80% - even when plugged in - its throttled. When i am above 80%, its faster, plugged in or not. That makes no sense if they slow it down WHILE plugged in
 
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I have lost all trust in Apple.

-snip-
Steve Jobs - We really miss you man. You weren't necessarily a saint, but you never would have done this.

Are you sure? Did you have an iPhone 4? Steve Jobs pretty much laughed away the antenna issues and gave folks a free bumper as a token gesture. A low cost battery replacement isn't any better or worse than that.
 
Only slowing down the CPU during peak demands is like saying we only limit your car when you're trying to achieve top speed. Does it really matter the rest of the time?
 
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Mac Rumors ..... bad decision in printing this lick spittle drivel.

I have concluded I cannot trust Apple.
Now I conclude I cannot trust MacRumors.

That was your idea of objectivity? Calling this a conspiracy theory is shaming behavior targeted towards Apple's victims. People were screwed over. They know it.

I'm really sick of this gaslighting.
 
Just stating the facts. All lipo batteries use the same chemistry. It is inevitable that heavily cycled battery will deplete. Samsung doesn’t have magical solution either. They are likely using similar power management strategy as Apple.
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Might be Chinese company but battery clearly states “made in japan”.

I don't want to split hairs, but no. They are all labeled assembled in China. On the front there are labels from Apple South Asia (Thailand) Limited and Apple Japan, but afaik they don't have any manufacturing lines.
 
This is getting blown out of proportions.

First, if you lost all trust in Apple, move on. It's just a computer company and there are many other solutions on the market that will meet your computing needs. I doubt you'll find a company that provides better user experience. If you do and you're happy then more power to you.

We all know that this forum would blow up with people being angry at Apple if their iPhone 6 was shutting down. So, Apple slows down the phone during peak time. The synthetic benchmarks that people are posting are not reflective of real life usage. In reality that page you wanted to open or the app that you were loading took 0.03 second longer to load. Big deal. It's a pretty sweet trade off against having the phone shut down unexpectedly.

It would be nice to know what's happening. It's an awesome feature and Apple should have been more open about it, but that's the only complaint that I can find. Give users the option to service the battery or enjoy reduced performance to prolong the life of the product. Simple, really.

Steve Jobs told everyone they were holding the phone "wrong" when the iPhone 4 antenna design flaw was discovered. He would have done this and has done these kinds of things before. Don't be naive.

Say it with me... trans·par·en·cy
 
The story keeps changing and there are still holes.

People with iPhone SE were told recently at the store that they don't qualify for defective battery replacement but today Apple are admitting that they do throttle it.

Phones internally measure voltage, temperature and charge cycle count. Specialized external testers are required to measure internal battery resistance/impedance. Their claim that they measure internal resistance/impedance for throttling is questionable and need to be verified.

Not all batteries are created equal. Apple have switched to low-quality short-life $2 batteries the last several generations either to maximize BOM profit and/or design for obsolescence to force customers to upgrade phones more often.

Now that their batteries are under scrutiny let's see if quality and capacity significantly changes for the better going forward via iFixit teardown like how they they had to improve aluminum grade to fix bending, increase DRAM to fix excessive app reloads, etc. under scrutiny.
 
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Thus far this revelation has failed to trigger me in any meaningful way. I haven’t noticed any slowdown in my 7 Plus, but more importantly, my wife’s 6S Plus doesn’t appear to have slowed down to any appreciable degree either. That being said, I’ll probably avail myself of the opportunity to replace the battery in my wife’s phone, seeing as she tends to keep hers for so long.
 
Part of it probably depends on the volume of batteries that could be supplied using that newer technology. It may need special manufacturing processes that aren't widespread yet at factories that produce lithium ion batteries.

You also need to remember that capacity isn't the only thing that can effect voltage supply to the CPU. Does the new Samsung technology change the point that voltage goes below nominal during a standard charge cycle, i.e., 20% or lower with standard lithium ion? Is the new Samsung technology impervious to cold conditions? Will it still degrade more quickly when exposed to high temperatures? Or the wrong voltage charger?
Maybe it's just big enough.
 
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How does Apple's power management feature work?

Apple says it looks at a combination of an iPhone's internal temperature, battery percentage, and battery impedance, and only if a certain criteria is met, iOS will dynamically manage the maximum performance of some system components, such as the CPU and GPU, in order to prevent unexpected shutdowns.

Everyone does thermal limit throttling. That's usually handled by a separate watcher.

Everyone also does current limit throttling, which is the topic being discussed here in relation to Apple's code changes. However:

Apparently no other major phone maker arbitrarily uses battery age... especially what might simply be cycle count... to determine if such throttling should be enabled. Instead other phone makers only enable it when the present battery charge is low.

--
One possible conclusion is that Apple has found the batteries they use sometimes cannot supply enough current past a certain age, no matter what their charge state is.

Another is that perhaps some engineer was simply being very conservative in their method.

Or perhaps it's necessary because Apple's customized CPU has very strong power needs.

We need more info and more experimentation.
 
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.

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.

Maybe 1848 Mhz is the normal idle speed?
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Why do you think CPU Dasher X includes both 'Max Frequency' and 'Current Frequency' readings?

Because max frequency is the highest recorded for that CPU identifier. It is speculation on what the max is , its not like you can run geekbench in background to tax system and then check the real time clock speed using another app such as CPUdasherX.
 
Very good article - balanced and thorough.

In my opinion, the two key data points are:

1. Apple should not have implemented this without being clear, in public, about what they were doing, and Apple should not be surprised by the storm of outrage that has followed. To a lot of people, this feels like the moral equivalent of a cover-up, and we should all realize at this point that it's almost never what you do that gets you into trouble, it's what you do to try to conceal things afterwards that causes all the trouble.

2. Having said that, Apple customers should understand that Apple is only throttling the SoC when there is a significant power demand spike. In ordinary daily use, most iPhone users will see only milliseconds of throttling. The only people really affected in practical terms are full-time extreme uses (for example, some gamers) - or people who run GeekBench all day. This section is important:

Is my iPhone slowed down all the time?

Apple is not permanently or persistently slowing down older iPhones. Even if your iPhone is affected, the performance limitations only happen intermittently, when the device is completing demanding tasks.

The power management only occurs in spurts, when needed, and ensures a smoother distribution of system tasks, rather than larger, quick spikes of performance all at once, which was the root cause of shutdowns.​
 
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