Apple slows your iPhone down "to conserve battery"

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There's a thread in the Apple forum here but as this affect anyone with an iPhone, not just the enthusiasts who visit the Apple forum, I thought I'd mirror it here.

Many of us have long suspected that phone companies slow down older phones to encourage people to upgrade. As someone who doesn't always need the latest phone, I've certainly noticed this too. Seems that Apple has admitted that it does this, however it's to "preserve battery life". Now call me cynical, but if that was true I reckon Apple would've found some fancypants way to turn it in to a feature which you can turn on and off whenever you want and market it, like iPreserve or something. I know for one that Samsung and LG have low battery modes, not sure if iPhones do.

Apparently replacing the battery will re-instate the phone's potential. I really hope someone tries this because I don't believe a word of it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42438745

So what to we think GD, is Apple being a golden angel and preserving our batteries for us, or trying to make us upgrade? I know what my suspicions are.
 
iPhones have a battery saver mode yes. So yep, definitely something fishy from the company you can definitely trust to look after your best interests :)
 
I don't agree with it but would be surprised if they didn't do something similar. The latest iPhone offers pretty much nothing over a 4 year old model to the average consumer, as they surely realise.
 
always late said:
Apparently replacing the battery will re-instate the phone's potential. I really hope someone tries this because I don't believe a word of it.
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I'd be amazed if it wasn't the case. The phone would know if the battery had been removed and replaced with a different one. A simple bit of coding to tell the phone to stop throttling performance when a new battery is fitted is all it would take, so it would back up their claim even if their intentions were dishonest.
 
Sounds like a sensible engineering solution. The battery is the weak-point in any modern phone's hardware.
 
danza said:
I'd be amazed if it wasn't the case. The phone would know if the battery had been removed and replaced with a different one. A simple bit of coding to tell the phone to stop throttling performance when a new battery is fitted is all it would take, so it would back up their claim even if their intentions were dishonest.
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I don’t think it’s to do with the phone knowing the age of the battery so much as it can measure the battery performance on the fly and adjust accordingly.
 
I wonder how the low-benchmarking phone scores compare between running just off battery vs plugged in? Not sure if the phone takes extra juice off the charger when it's plugged in.
 
danza said:
I'd be amazed if it wasn't the case. The phone would know if the battery had been removed and replaced with a different one. A simple bit of coding to tell the phone to stop throttling performance when a new battery is fitted is all it would take, so it would back up their claim even if their intentions were dishonest.
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exactly, and it has been tested already - I think some people are a bit overly keen to think there is a conspiracy here (obviously encouraging people to upgrade is a nice benefit but it doesn't seem to be deliberate sabotage)
 
Tunney said:
Sounds like a sensible engineering solution. The battery is the weak-point in any modern phone's hardware.
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It may be a sensible software engineering solution to the issue of older batteries not being able to reliably provide enough power for peak demand.

However Apple (and any other device manufacturer) should:
1: Make it very clear this is what is happening and why, if the phone is smart enough to start doing this, it should be able to display a warning at regular intervals*.
And possibly most impotantly.
2: Make it possible for the user to easily and cheaply get the battery changed to fix the issue.

It's insane that modern devices are routinely made so that they're as hard as possible to fix even the most basic issues without spending a small fortune or having some fairly good technical skills and tools, all in the name of getting a device that's 0.1mm thinner than the previous version or .5mm thinner than the competition (especially when we're meant to be trying to recycle more, and there is often no major reason to replace the unit other than the fact it's running slowly because something as basic as the battery is dying).

A battery issue should be something that is fixable by the end user with ease, not hidden by using software to throttle the performance to hide that issue.



*As opposed to apparently being hidden away in a menu that's rarely used.
 
Remember the good ol' days when you could simply buy a new battery in the shop and pop it in yourself :(
 
Moses said:
I’d like to be able to buy the batteries myself, too. I’d feel fairly comfortable changing the battery on my 6S+... it’s not particularly hard, although the average person would struggle. But it’s annoying I can’t get a legitimate Apple battery to put in.
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i miss the days when it was understood by companies that users sometimes like to keep a bit of tech longer than the life of a battery, or that being able to swap batteries in their device to keep it running on a long day was handy.

It's one of the key features I've looked for in my past mobiles, although I'm aware I'm probably not Apple's target market as I only really use my mobile for emergencies, and keep it for longer than the announcement of the next model up (I was still using a "feature phone" until about 3 years ago, and use my current one more for it's alarm clock and music player functions than as a phone).
 
danza said:
I wonder how the low-benchmarking phone scores compare between running just off battery vs plugged in? Not sure if the phone takes extra juice off the charger when it's plugged in.
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The Nexus 5X goes into a slower mode when the charger is connected. This helps it charge up quicker. It's noticeably slower when connected to a charger :)
 
Moses said:
But shouldn’t they tell the customer? It’d be as simple as having a pop up saying ‘your battery is now rubbish, do you want to have crap performance or crap battery life? We’ll apply the software setting you choose. Alternatively, you can change your battery at any Apple store for £x’.
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Apple's philosophy has always been 'It just works'. That means hiding as much of the complexity of technology as possible.

Telling the user that their phone is now **** would be a much bigger PR disaster for Apple too.
 
Terminal_Boy said:
Nothing to do with olde phones having to cope with later iOS versions designed to run on much more powerful hardware?
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Apparently not.

The Actual CPU clock speed is reduced from the normal to something that can be less than half the speed with a new battery, this is before you consider slowdown due to bloatier software.

It's like taking your PC and underclocking it from say it's normal 3ghz to 1.4ghz because your PSU is no longer able to cope at the higher speed, and everything has been araldited together.
 
I have a second gen ipad which works like a bag of crap (slow and stutters), considering there is nothing on it and I only use it for email and the web, this could explain it.
 
Tunney said:
Apple's philosophy has always been 'It just works'. That means hiding as much of the complexity of technology as possible.

Telling the user that their phone is now **** would be a much bigger PR disaster for Apple too.
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That's the biggest thing that overshadows all this. There's now huge press that Apple purposely slow down phones on degraded batteries, which people are reading as "planned obsolescence", but I don't see how Apple actually can notify a user without them thinking it's planned obsolescence or a corporate grab:

Slow down the phone = planned obsolescence
Battery is degraded and shuts the phone down = planned obsolescence
Pop up notification saying battery is now degraded = planned obsolescence/forced repair.
Pop up notification saying battery is now degraded and the phone will run slow (or give user choice) = planned obsolescence/forced upgrade.
 
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