14 ms·

Apple has admitted to purposely slowing down iPhones

50 points by uptownfunk 9y ago

xt00 9y ago
How does the iPhone know the battery has been replaced? Cycle counter? If the cycle counter is stored on the battery then fine but if stored on the phone then it seems like replacing the battery might not solve the problem..
- mankash666 9y ago
  It's simple voltage/current measurements. An iPhone 6s might start off with an effective capacity of 1800mah, that reduces to, say 1250mah in 2 years. If your iPhone requires 1350mah for peak performance, you're out of luck
  - xt00 9y ago
    Yea I’ve used a variety of battery charging circuits in designs I’ve done and measuring voltage and current are pretty easy but measuring capacity is not obvious instantaneously — you have to store a history of how voltage changed while charging or discharging. And sometimes you don’t get a full discharge or recharge and the person may use the phone while charging. As a result you have to save a history of multiple cycles to try to average and account for various situations like that. So the result is that you have some driver that saves a value or set of values someplace. And replacing the battery I would assume would not reset this unless there was some Id or value stored in the battery in an eeprom. So my assumption would be that simply replacing the battery may not immediately fix the problem, you may have to totally discharge and recharge your phone multiple times to essentially reset the low pass filtered history of your battery charge discharge cycles. So I guess my question would be if somebody tested if after replacing the battery they instantly had higher performance or not..
- mrmondo 9y ago
  As someone else stated it is the measurement of the totally battery capacity, NOT the number of cycles. While I don’t want to defend anyone here this is not planned obsolesce, it is a mitigation strategy to prolong the general use of a device as it degrades. However yes, Apple probably should have given a notification to users of degrading / worn batteries of their state and that performance may be affected.
mankash666 9y ago
Let's cut into Apple's bullshit. LiOn ageing is not unique to Apple. The problem is that their batteries are so horribly low powered (1800 mAh for iPhone 6s), especially for the price of the overall phone, that normal known ageing patterns would render the battery below spec of max power the iPhone draws at peak performance. It's BAD design. Note 8 ships with 3300mah and iPhone X with 2700mah. Both cost a $1000. Which one do you think will last longer if 2500mah were the max power threshold?
- narrowtux 9y ago
  Note 8 is also a lot bigger than the X.
- mrmondo 9y ago
  Android as an OS is far less power efficient than iOS, vendors combat this by supplying hardware with larger batteries while often sacrificing the quality of abilities of other components with the applicable space on the PCB / main board layout.
  - mromanuk 9y ago
    Indeed. Anyway, I hope that Apple release a thicker iPhone, with bigger battery. Maybe we are reaching a maturity level of the market, where they can differentiate the iPhone more.
    - mrmondo 9y ago
      If you want a thicker phone, why not put a battery case on it?
hguhghuff 9y ago
I want the option to turn this off.
- jandrese 9y ago
  I bet the Jailbreak community will come up with a workaround, assuming your phone has a Jailbreak option.
reacharavindh 9y ago
Two things could've made this situation better. 1. Make the damn battery user replaceable! If you know it is depleting resource and you designed the phone to last longer, this should be the case. 2. Be transparent to the user. Show in Battery Settings how the battery is doing and whether or not the OS is throttling itself. There is a third one, put in a bigger battery. I think Tesla does this with Model S. Be nice to customers. /rant - pissed off customer with a slow iPhone 6 that is probably affected by this.
- narrowtux 9y ago
  Replace kits cost $25 from iFixit and others. It's not as easy as just plopping a new one in but together with the excellent guide at iFixit, it works pretty well. Upgraded the battery in my 6 last week.
- cmsj 9y ago
  1. The battery may not be user replaceable, but it is replaceable. Apple will do it for you for like $80, which doesn't seem horrendous on a 3 year old $600 phone. 2. Agreed, the battery page in Settings should say "your battery is old, performance will be reduced in demanding situations" 3. FWIW iPhone X has a noticeably longer battery life than iPhone 7 had. Some of that may be down to the OLED screen (which sounds like it may be a standard feature across all 2018 iPhones), but is likely also due to the battery getting more space in the chassis. I'd be going to bed with the 7 in single digit percentages, where last night my X had over 50% left.
- jlebrech 9y ago
  i miss swapping batteries, or carrying more just in case. they could actually make phones with batteries just small enough to swap out a bigger pack
  - reacharavindh 9y ago
    Yes. If they could make a tray and flap to hold the nano SIM card and still make their phone water resistant, they can engineer the phones to have user swappable batteries. They just choose not to because it is not in their interest for their customers to keep the phones longer.
dirtbox 9y ago
If improving stability was the intention, why haven't they ever warned anyone that it would make their expensive, perfectly functioning phone relatively useless? Nothing about their reason rings true. If it were the case then why didn't the previous IOS installation have limited performance before the update?
workmandan 9y ago
I've used coconutBattery to check the health of the battery in my 6s and it reports the number of charge cycles and the maximum capacity. Is this data stored in the battery or the phone? Does replacing the battery reset the cycles counter?
Spivak 9y ago
I can attest that the problem Apple is describing happened to me on Android. After about 2 years of heavy my Nexus 6P started shutting off immediately at 15-20% battery. I poked around the internet found lots of other people with the same problem, almost always recommending calling support rather than any workarounds -- I give it a shot and two weeks later I have a new phone.
- SpikeDad 9y ago
  Except of course your Android phone SHUTS OFF when the battery is degraded. Apple has designed iOS to let you keep using the phone (perhaps at a slower speed) even with a degraded battery. Apple keeps your phone working longer. Why isn't this the story? Because this is exactly opposite to the agenda of people that want to knock Apple. The stories of how Apple designs devices to fail and require new devices is totally false.
- Veus 9y ago
  The Nexus 6P has a known battery problem which does shut off when it hits a lower percentage. I had a 6P and it was annoying, to say the least. The difference with this story is that this is software and intended, not a bug with a faulty phone/model.
jtbayly 9y ago
Short version: My 6S with a "healthy" battery is severely throttled. It normally runs now at 911Mhz and often less. It is practically unusable, and it happened suddenly, recently. Something about Apple's story doesn't add up still. Longer version: My 6S battery got replaced back when the sudden shutdown at 20% thing first started happening. (I actually got them to do it out of warranty for free.) One app says it is at 87% health 1500mAh vs 1715mAh original capacity. I've read that Apple won't even replace the battery for you until it drops below 80%, but my phone is unusable right now. Basic animations don't work right. (I might get two frames of an animation.) Siri is unusable, as another commenter described. Another app reports the speed the phone's processor is running at. The majority of the time, mine is throttled to 911Mhz. Sometimes it's a bit more, if my battery is at 99-100%. Other times it's even lower. This is a 1.8Ghz processor, according to what I've read online. Turning low power mode off and on doesn't change anything. Something just doesn't add up about this.
- coolwhhip 9y ago
  How cold is it where you live? What happens if you keep your phone at room temp for a few days?
  - jtbayly 9y ago
    It's starting to get cold, but I work inside, and my phone almost never drops below room temperature.
leowoo91 9y ago
Can't they just admit they retract support from old OS versions that works best with older hardware?
andrewmcwatters 9y ago
A big learning experience for me has also been that you shouldn't ever update an iPhone. Whatever version of iOS you got out of the factory, stick to it, because developers just don't give a fuck about performance. Between iOS updates, performance considerations aren't made for older models at all. Newer iOS versions are developed against higher end models. I don't give a fuck what the compatibility charts say, of course Apple's iOS team ensures that it works, that doesn't mean it works _well_. And it definitely doesn't mean it was intentionally designed to work against that model whatsoever. As a reminder, iPhone 6's original iOS version was 8. We're coming up on 12.
sreenadh 9y ago
Why not just have removable battery? It can be easily replaced.

50 points by uptownfunk 9y ago

xt00 9y ago

How does the iPhone know the battery has been replaced? Cycle counter? If the cycle counter is stored on the battery then fine but if stored on the phone then it seems like replacing the battery might not solve the problem..

mankash666 9y ago
It's simple voltage/current measurements. An iPhone 6s might start off with an effective capacity of 1800mah, that reduces to, say 1250mah in 2 years. If your iPhone requires 1350mah for peak performance, you're out of luck
- xt00 9y ago
  Yea I’ve used a variety of battery charging circuits in designs I’ve done and measuring voltage and current are pretty easy but measuring capacity is not obvious instantaneously — you have to store a history of how voltage changed while charging or discharging. And sometimes you don’t get a full discharge or recharge and the person may use the phone while charging. As a result you have to save a history of multiple cycles to try to average and account for various situations like that. So the result is that you have some driver that saves a value or set of values someplace. And replacing the battery I would assume would not reset this unless there was some Id or value stored in the battery in an eeprom. So my assumption would be that simply replacing the battery may not immediately fix the problem, you may have to totally discharge and recharge your phone multiple times to essentially reset the low pass filtered history of your battery charge discharge cycles. So I guess my question would be if somebody tested if after replacing the battery they instantly had higher performance or not..
mrmondo 9y ago
As someone else stated it is the measurement of the totally battery capacity, NOT the number of cycles. While I don’t want to defend anyone here this is not planned obsolesce, it is a mitigation strategy to prolong the general use of a device as it degrades. However yes, Apple probably should have given a notification to users of degrading / worn batteries of their state and that performance may be affected.

mankash666 9y ago

Let's cut into Apple's bullshit. LiOn ageing is not unique to Apple. The problem is that their batteries are so horribly low powered (1800 mAh for iPhone 6s), especially for the price of the overall phone, that normal known ageing patterns would render the battery below spec of max power the iPhone draws at peak performance. It's BAD design. Note 8 ships with 3300mah and iPhone X with 2700mah. Both cost a $1000. Which one do you think will last longer if 2500mah were the max power threshold?

narrowtux 9y ago
Note 8 is also a lot bigger than the X.
mrmondo 9y ago
Android as an OS is far less power efficient than iOS, vendors combat this by supplying hardware with larger batteries while often sacrificing the quality of abilities of other components with the applicable space on the PCB / main board layout.
- mromanuk 9y ago
  Indeed. Anyway, I hope that Apple release a thicker iPhone, with bigger battery. Maybe we are reaching a maturity level of the market, where they can differentiate the iPhone more.
  - mrmondo 9y ago
    If you want a thicker phone, why not put a battery case on it?

hguhghuff 9y ago

I want the option to turn this off.

jandrese 9y ago
I bet the Jailbreak community will come up with a workaround, assuming your phone has a Jailbreak option.

reacharavindh 9y ago

Two things could've made this situation better. 1. Make the damn battery user replaceable! If you know it is depleting resource and you designed the phone to last longer, this should be the case. 2. Be transparent to the user. Show in Battery Settings how the battery is doing and whether or not the OS is throttling itself. There is a third one, put in a bigger battery. I think Tesla does this with Model S. Be nice to customers. /rant - pissed off customer with a slow iPhone 6 that is probably affected by this.

narrowtux 9y ago
Replace kits cost $25 from iFixit and others. It's not as easy as just plopping a new one in but together with the excellent guide at iFixit, it works pretty well. Upgraded the battery in my 6 last week.
cmsj 9y ago
1. The battery may not be user replaceable, but it is replaceable. Apple will do it for you for like $80, which doesn't seem horrendous on a 3 year old $600 phone. 2. Agreed, the battery page in Settings should say "your battery is old, performance will be reduced in demanding situations" 3. FWIW iPhone X has a noticeably longer battery life than iPhone 7 had. Some of that may be down to the OLED screen (which sounds like it may be a standard feature across all 2018 iPhones), but is likely also due to the battery getting more space in the chassis. I'd be going to bed with the 7 in single digit percentages, where last night my X had over 50% left.
jlebrech 9y ago
i miss swapping batteries, or carrying more just in case. they could actually make phones with batteries just small enough to swap out a bigger pack
- reacharavindh 9y ago
  Yes. If they could make a tray and flap to hold the nano SIM card and still make their phone water resistant, they can engineer the phones to have user swappable batteries. They just choose not to because it is not in their interest for their customers to keep the phones longer.

dirtbox 9y ago

If improving stability was the intention, why haven't they ever warned anyone that it would make their expensive, perfectly functioning phone relatively useless? Nothing about their reason rings true. If it were the case then why didn't the previous IOS installation have limited performance before the update?

workmandan 9y ago

I've used coconutBattery to check the health of the battery in my 6s and it reports the number of charge cycles and the maximum capacity. Is this data stored in the battery or the phone? Does replacing the battery reset the cycles counter?

Spivak 9y ago

I can attest that the problem Apple is describing happened to me on Android. After about 2 years of heavy my Nexus 6P started shutting off immediately at 15-20% battery. I poked around the internet found lots of other people with the same problem, almost always recommending calling support rather than any workarounds -- I give it a shot and two weeks later I have a new phone.

SpikeDad 9y ago
Except of course your Android phone SHUTS OFF when the battery is degraded. Apple has designed iOS to let you keep using the phone (perhaps at a slower speed) even with a degraded battery. Apple keeps your phone working longer. Why isn't this the story? Because this is exactly opposite to the agenda of people that want to knock Apple. The stories of how Apple designs devices to fail and require new devices is totally false.
Veus 9y ago
The Nexus 6P has a known battery problem which does shut off when it hits a lower percentage. I had a 6P and it was annoying, to say the least. The difference with this story is that this is software and intended, not a bug with a faulty phone/model.

jtbayly 9y ago

Short version: My 6S with a "healthy" battery is severely throttled. It normally runs now at 911Mhz and often less. It is practically unusable, and it happened suddenly, recently. Something about Apple's story doesn't add up still. Longer version: My 6S battery got replaced back when the sudden shutdown at 20% thing first started happening. (I actually got them to do it out of warranty for free.) One app says it is at 87% health 1500mAh vs 1715mAh original capacity. I've read that Apple won't even replace the battery for you until it drops below 80%, but my phone is unusable right now. Basic animations don't work right. (I might get two frames of an animation.) Siri is unusable, as another commenter described. Another app reports the speed the phone's processor is running at. The majority of the time, mine is throttled to 911Mhz. Sometimes it's a bit more, if my battery is at 99-100%. Other times it's even lower. This is a 1.8Ghz processor, according to what I've read online. Turning low power mode off and on doesn't change anything. Something just doesn't add up about this.

coolwhhip 9y ago
How cold is it where you live? What happens if you keep your phone at room temp for a few days?
- jtbayly 9y ago
  It's starting to get cold, but I work inside, and my phone almost never drops below room temperature.

leowoo91 9y ago

Can't they just admit they retract support from old OS versions that works best with older hardware?

andrewmcwatters 9y ago

A big learning experience for me has also been that you shouldn't ever update an iPhone. Whatever version of iOS you got out of the factory, stick to it, because developers just don't give a fuck about performance. Between iOS updates, performance considerations aren't made for older models at all. Newer iOS versions are developed against higher end models. I don't give a fuck what the compatibility charts say, of course Apple's iOS team ensures that it works, that doesn't mean it works _well_. And it definitely doesn't mean it was intentionally designed to work against that model whatsoever. As a reminder, iPhone 6's original iOS version was 8. We're coming up on 12.

sreenadh 9y ago

Why not just have removable battery? It can be easily replaced.