Apple slows your iPhone down "to conserve battery"

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I'm guessing they must have because every time I've flattened a phone and plugged it in, it' been able to boot up almost instantly. Admittedly I haven't tried it on an iPhone as I don't own one

But if you’ve got a *really* flat battery in your phone, you can often not use it until it has at least charged a bit.
 
A worn battery just doesn't hold its charge for as long.

There is absolutely no need to try to fool the customer into thinking he needs a new phone when just a new battery would suffice.

This is just all sorts of wrong. No idea how they get away with it.
I think it depends on the battery design, from what I understand of what they've said the reason they slow the phone is because the battery can't necessarily provide the current required for full speed under load, which would result in an unexpected shutdown/crash.

I suspect it'll be something like the battery being designed with fewer cells or in such a way that the surface area of the cells is limited to save space/allow the battery to fit in.
 
Money grab, pure and simple. Letting the battery wear out at the normal rate and then charging the consumer a fortune for a replacemnt battery just isn't profitble enough for Apple. They'd rather you bought a brand new phone.
 
I think it depends on the battery design, from what I understand of what they've said the reason they slow the phone is because the battery can't necessarily provide the current required for full speed under load, which would result in an unexpected shutdown/crash.

I suspect it'll be something like the battery being designed with fewer cells or in such a way that the surface area of the cells is limited to save space/allow the battery to fit in.

That is correct, if the battery couldnt supply the current required the voltage would collapse due to the current limit. The issue is that it is charge carrying capacity is the issue with aging batteries not current supplying ability
 
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.

Yeah it's a good idea not to believe a word from Apple. They are lying experts and Steve Jobs is one of the biggest liars and manipulators in history. (Anyone remember that keynote where he smashed the digital camera because his Macintosh wasn't working properly and the brain-dead audience actually APPLAUDED the failure of his OS, haha that was my favourite).

If they slow down the old phone deliberately it's not just going to magically need LESS cpu time LMAO. :D they must think everyone is stupid. It will require the SAME cpu time regardless. If it's slowed down it the CPU will just need to work for longer lmao.

Anyway, it's not a degrading battery that's the issue. The problem actually stems from the software which runs on it.

If you look at any common base applications they all require more CPU time and memory to perform the same old functions. All apps including utterly basic ones like whatsapp and facebook now require up to 1000% more cpu and memory to perform the same basic functions.

https://sensortower.com/blog/ios-app-size-growth

So it's not simple basic battery degradation that's the issue, the issue is that the CPU in old phones will be at 80% usage, but for a new phone with more processing headroom it will be 30% cpu usage.



Remember the good ol' days when you could simply buy a new battery in the shop and pop it in yourself :(

Yeah exactly, even phone chargers these days are designed to destroy your battery as quickly as possible. You cant even find a normal 1amp USB charger any more. All decent brands seem to be minimum 2amps which charge batteries WAY too fast. Also all this nonsense with QuickCharge and whatnot, it's just designed to destroy batteries so you keep on buying new phones. Charging phones at 500mA increases total usage time by 30% but the industry doesn't want the consumer to know this.

Heck the phone industry is so out of control it has caused SSD prices to go up by 30% and stay there because these disposable phones need all the NAND chips lol. This nonsense phone industry is completely out of control and needs to get regulated as soon as possible.
 
Why do people think that it would be a case of making the phone half a mm thicker to include a removable battery. It wouldn't.

Why not?

My old Note 3 which was 0.6mm thicker than my current S7 Edge had a removable battery, the cover of which was thin plastic (I bet it was thinner than the glass back of the S7).

I realise that's obviously a simplistic way of looking at it, but if they weren't so obsessed with making everything out of metal and glass (which is so fragile that 90% of people end up covering with a plastic case anyway), then there would be plenty of space for a removable battery
 
Why not?

My old Note 3 which was 0.6mm thicker than my current S7 Edge had a removable battery, the cover of which was thin plastic (I bet it was thinner than the glass back of the S7).

I realise that's obviously a simplistic way of looking at it, but if they weren't so obsessed with making everything out of metal and glass (which is so fragile that 90% of people end up covering with a plastic case anyway), then there would be plenty of space for a removable battery

You can very easily get the battery replaced on an iPhone. A removable battery wouldn’t solve the problem of physics.
 
Apple are damned if they do, damned if they don't but everyone just loves to stick the boot in to them.
ANY manufacturer, no matter who they are, would get stick over this if they acted the way apple have. Apple arent a special case, fez. It's not any 'cooler' to hate apple than it is samsung.
 
Apple deserve to get a roasting over this. It's not the fact they did it (potential totally a good solution), but the complete lack of transparency that makes it seem like they have utter contempt for their customers.
 
Yes but the point is that a removable battery wouldn’t fix the issue. The removable battery will also degrade and eventually fail.

Well, it would, because instead of having to pay £80+ and have to make an appointment at the nearest Apple/Samsung shop or send the phone off to get the battery replaced by a specialist, you could go into your nearest <insert phone shop or electronics retailer of choice here> or go online and order a replacement for half the price (or less) and fit it yourself in 30 seconds at your convenience.
 
I know it's just a couple of strange coincidencea and not some massive conspiracy, but my PS1 went **** up on the day the PS2 was released and then my PS2 went the same way the day before the PS3 release.
 
Why not?

My old Note 3 which was 0.6mm thicker than my current S7 Edge had a removable battery, the cover of which was thin plastic (I bet it was thinner than the glass back of the S7).

I realise that's obviously a simplistic way of looking at it, but if they weren't so obsessed with making everything out of metal and glass (which is so fragile that 90% of people end up covering with a plastic case anyway), then there would be plenty of space for a removable battery

My old note 4 was 8.5mm with a removable battery. my s8 is 8.0mm without one. No reason why they couldn't release a flagship with a removable battery except that they assume everybody wants ip67/ip68. Given I had to replace my note 4's battery after 11 months, I'd rather stick with removable if there was a choice.
 
My old note 4 was 8.5mm with a removable battery. my s8 is 8.0mm without one. No reason why they couldn't release a flagship with a removable battery except that they assume everybody wants ip67/ip68. Given I had to replace my note 4's battery after 11 months, I'd rather stick with removable if there was a choice.

Even IP67 isn't an issue, the S5 was IP67 and 8.1mm with a removable battery
 
Yes but the point is that a removable battery wouldn’t fix the issue. The removable battery will also degrade and eventually fail.
It's about how they allow you to deal with that.

For me I want to know that the issue is the battery, and then want to be able to sort it quickly and cheaply without having to either travel to a specific store, or send my phone away.
That is what a removable battery allows, a fix that the end user can apply quickly and without losing the use of the device, whilst being clearly told it's the battery lets me make an informed choice about replacing just the battery or replacing the phone is the fix.
 
There are so many issues with older iPhones which Apple is trying to all broadly put down to older degraded batteries reducing clock speeds. I've never had an iPhone so can't attest to it but many people are saying that on installing a new iOS, usually launched with a new phone afaik, that all of a sudden their battery life drops through the floor. So with the same battery they can get 5 hours usage in the morning on the old OS and 2 hours usage from a full charge on the new OS later that day on the same battery.

Second is the issue of saying degraded battery makes it okay to reduce clock speed of the cpu. Stability isn't an issue, the chips are running at sub 1v in most cases, the battery on an iPhone 6/7 (just first link I checked https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/21/16803442/iphone-battery-old-slow-warranty-apple-care) is 3.82/3.80v, the battery output and chip voltage don't match, you have power regulation circuitry that produces the voltage required from an input power source. Reduced voltage from battery won't have any realistic effect on ability of chip to run faster until the battery is basically completely dead. Also pretty much the entire industry learned about the best power saving method for mobile devices, for a long time people made very low clocked chips but this wasn't the most efficient method, running under load with lower clocks for longer periods is more expensive power wise than running much faster for much shorter periods. IE it's more efficient to run at 2Ghz for 1 second than 1Ghz for 2 seconds, because everything on the chip is turned to max power for 2 seconds rather than 1, the memory controller, the I/O, everything is turned on and the only difference is the CPU core itself.

You aren't saving battery life by running lower clocks, you're just getting reduced performance, the only reason to do it is to slow down the user experience which pushes people to upgrade. Okay so they say put in a new battery, which apparently costs something like $70 in the states to get 'as new' performance, but aside from the fact you shouldn't have to it's $70 that they hope their customers will go, screw it, I'll just upgrade instead.

I think what is maybe most likely to be happening is Apple push out a new phone, a new iOS version and it's very much designed to drain more power than required on older phones which causes the battery to be cycling faster which exacerbates their bull**** slowing down the CPU due to battery performance nonsense. The real question is do they push out updated profiles with a new iOS that tell their old phones to more aggressively downclock. If the downclocking happened consistently with older Apple phones then heavy users you would think would run into downclocking more often than they have done. So I think there is a range of shenanigans going on here and Apple are trying to hide all of them behind battery performance.

My Moto g 4g is pushing 3.5 years old, the battery life is pretty dire now, I still get near enough exactly the same geekbench/antutu/Basemark scores as you'd expect for a brand new version of the phone. Anyone who accepts that Apple degrade CPU clock speed because of 'old batteries' is absolutely crazy.
 
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