We should keep in mind that throttling only impacts those with a battery that has obvious levels of wear. My iPhone 6S was throttled with a battery that had 30% wear. With a new battery the CPU stays planted at ~1850 mhz until the battery level gets very low and then it drops a couple hundred mhz. Also battery health and wear level is somewhat arbitrary, a battery that shows 50% "wear" isn't akin to having a new battery that is 50% smaller.
As a battery wears out its efficient discharge rate decreases. If you ignored the batteries health and maintained a healthy battery levels discharge rate the resistance of the worn battery causes an increase in current which could damage the battery or the phone. Once the phone detects this it will shut down due to over current. This is why even a calibrated battery will turn the phone off when battery level is higher than 0%. The obvious symptom of draining a battery faster then it should is heat, which is why you may notice an older phone heats up more doing task it didn't heat up when it was new.
This is just the physics of batteries, they wear out. At this stage (hardware in customers hands) Apples options are,
A. Ignore safe discharge rates and let the phone shut down due to over current (what they were doing prior to iOS 11)
B. Ignore safe discharge rates, remove over current protections and cross their fingers too many phones don't burn up
C. Throttle current (what they are doing now) via CPU frequency.
I guess I could through in another one but its dumb.
D. Throttle current via any other means required that doesn't affect performance like reducing screen brightness to near 0, reduce cellular, wifi, bluetooth power (reducing range or disconnecting), etc etc.
This is exactly like the wiring in a house. You have the load center with circuit breakers and wiring in the walls to outlets. If you plug something into the wall and it draws more power than the circuit it designed for the breaker will trip (over current). Without that breaker in place the resistance in the wiring/connections will cause heat, uncapped (not throttled) and the wiring will fail. The solution to the breaker tripping is YOU throttle the power being used (current) by using less devices on that circuit or run those devices at lower capacities.
"Power users" shouldn't care because say for example you are encoding a movie or something on your iPhone. If the power required exceeds what the battery is safely capable of delivering the CPU is throttled and you get worse performance but you still get
some performance. The alternative would be the phone shutting down prematurely and losing your project/progress.
Which was a rampant problem by the way (and still is depending on how worn out the battery is). Thread after thread of phones shutting down at 20%, 30%, etc and most of us noticing this with older iOS devices at one time or another. Yet when Apple institutes a remedy we get people complaining, whining, law suits, etc etc.
Personally I find the issue blown out of proportion because generally you wont even notice the performance difference. The basic task don't require 100% CPU performance. Many other task are bound by other variables like network speed. Other task are just slower but still work (iMovie for example). Things that are effected and you are able to notice, like certain games just keep in mind that you were discharging a lithium ion battery too quickly and holding it near your face and you should replace the battery for safety sake regardless.
If you wanted to be upset with Apple over this you should be considering the initial battery size. Discharge rate is directly affected (and even calculated) by the batteries capacity. A battery with a higher capacity (size) can be safely discharged at high rates. If Apple would have made the phone slightly thicker with a high capacity battery not only would you get longer run times (duh) but the batteries overall health (wear level) wouldn't effect the discharge rate as much and thus less throttling would be implemented. This is easily demonstrated with an iPad. My iPad Air 2 shows about 15% battery wear however CPU frequency is still pegged at ~1500mhz, this would not be the case with iPhone with 15% battery wear.
I know I sound like an apologist but trust me I'm not. I hate the fact of how difficult Apple has made it to replace the battery. I could replace the battery in my iPhone 4S in 5 minutes. Newer iPhones you run a lot higher risk of breaking the screen, mostly due to water proofing that people seem to require as a feature now. However I know how batteries work and how they can fail so I replace them every year or two anyway. Even without the aid of apps and programs to tell me battery health I know if I'm using an app that literally makes the phone uncomfortable to hold I should replace the battery. Just like if my car barely turns over in cold weather I don't just wait for a dead battery to leave me stranded.
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Since Tim Cook stated that you will be able to turn off the throttle if you want to. I'd like to see how many people actually do that.
Me too.
“If I’m not getting 100% CPU performance for my text messages I’d rather no phone at all!”