4 ms·

No that’s because your battery is old. Swap the battery and that “slow old phone” suddenly has the exact same speed as the current flagship

jrochkind1 4y ago
Interesting! i would have expected old battery to lead to keeping a charge for less time, but can you explain how it leads to worse perceived performance?
- JanSt 4y ago
  It’s not perceived but actually worse. iOS reduces speed to improve battery-life
- pkulak 4y ago
  Once batteries get really old, I think they can start having trouble maintaining voltage and/or current, and Apple will start limiting performance to reduce fire risk. At least that's my understanding. Hopefully someone who knows more will also chime in.
- altec3 4y ago
  When the batteries get older, iOS throttles performance to ensure the device doesn't shut down unexpectedly. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208387 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208387
- mrtksn 4y ago
  I don't know if it's still the case but on my old iPhone 6s, the geekbench score would differ depending on how full the battery is. Apparently Apple was pushing these processors on the limits of what the battery can deliver and once the battery degraded they need to lower the CPU/GPU speeds to prevent the device shutting off suddenly. It even turned into a huge scandal of "Apple deliberately slowing down old iPhones" which was portrayed as if Apple is doing it to make you buy a new iPhone.
- isoprophlex 4y ago
  These mobile processors are very aggressive in lowering power demand when there is little computational load. Then, when you open an app or give it anything to do at all, power consumption jumps by orders of magnitude. An aged battery will show big voltage drops under load. What was looking like a fine and dandy voltage (voltage is used to infer state of charge) can suddenly plummet. It can get so bad that your phone might even shut down because it starts to undervolt. So, choosing between the lesser of two evils, iOS throttles down max. power draw, and thus max. processing speed, when the battery ages. The alternative would be random shutdowns, or your battery jumping from 80 to 8% suddenly. In settings -> battery -> health & charging you can check in which regime you are.
  - jrochkind1 4y ago
    A clear explanation, thank you!
- sliken 4y ago
  As a battery ages it's capacity decreases. That's noticeable in that it will carry a load for less time, and the voltage it can sustain decreases. On most phones you realize that when an old phone goes from 15%, you do something CPU intensive and the phone dies seconds later. So it's reasonable to lower the peak power use on older batteries to lengthen battery life and make it more stable. Generally battery life increases when you are gentle. Charge slowly (which results in lower temps), avoid charging over 90% or discharging below 10%, and decrease the peak loads.
brundolf 4y ago
iOS does have a feature that throttles the CPU on deeply worn-down batteries to save battery life, however, after it got some publicity a few years ago they made it user-toggleable from the settings menu (Battery > Battery Health & Charging) My XS is currently at 74% of initial capacity (it tells you this too, which is really nice), and I don't even have the option to enable throttling yet, so it must not kick in until things get really dire
- kaba0 4y ago
  That was only the case for a particular device afaik, that would otherwise just randomly reboot during usage (much worse then degraded performance).
MrGilbert 4y ago
Yes and no. Yes, iPhones get throttled when the battery is on the verge of going ex, but no for this particular device. I run an iPhone X with a new battery from November 2021 (serviced by Apple), with maximum capacity at 90%, and it really is slower compared to the old days. But! I'm not complaining. It's an almost 6 year old device. That means, for every year of usage, I payed roughly 200€, or 16€ per month. That's not too shabby, tbh.
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  90% is pretty degraded for a battery (if the battery health metrics work the same way as Androids do). By 80% it's usually almost completely unusable, in my experience Though I agree that battery health hasn't been super important to performance. But resetting the phone can do wonders
  - MrGilbert 4y ago
    Not on iOS though. Down to 80%, it still runs with "Peak Performance Capability"

jrochkind1 4y ago

Interesting! i would have expected old battery to lead to keeping a charge for less time, but can you explain how it leads to worse perceived performance?

JanSt 4y ago
It’s not perceived but actually worse. iOS reduces speed to improve battery-life
pkulak 4y ago
Once batteries get really old, I think they can start having trouble maintaining voltage and/or current, and Apple will start limiting performance to reduce fire risk. At least that's my understanding. Hopefully someone who knows more will also chime in.
altec3 4y ago
When the batteries get older, iOS throttles performance to ensure the device doesn't shut down unexpectedly. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208387 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208387
mrtksn 4y ago
I don't know if it's still the case but on my old iPhone 6s, the geekbench score would differ depending on how full the battery is. Apparently Apple was pushing these processors on the limits of what the battery can deliver and once the battery degraded they need to lower the CPU/GPU speeds to prevent the device shutting off suddenly. It even turned into a huge scandal of "Apple deliberately slowing down old iPhones" which was portrayed as if Apple is doing it to make you buy a new iPhone.
isoprophlex 4y ago
These mobile processors are very aggressive in lowering power demand when there is little computational load. Then, when you open an app or give it anything to do at all, power consumption jumps by orders of magnitude. An aged battery will show big voltage drops under load. What was looking like a fine and dandy voltage (voltage is used to infer state of charge) can suddenly plummet. It can get so bad that your phone might even shut down because it starts to undervolt. So, choosing between the lesser of two evils, iOS throttles down max. power draw, and thus max. processing speed, when the battery ages. The alternative would be random shutdowns, or your battery jumping from 80 to 8% suddenly. In settings -> battery -> health & charging you can check in which regime you are.
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  A clear explanation, thank you!
sliken 4y ago
As a battery ages it's capacity decreases. That's noticeable in that it will carry a load for less time, and the voltage it can sustain decreases. On most phones you realize that when an old phone goes from 15%, you do something CPU intensive and the phone dies seconds later. So it's reasonable to lower the peak power use on older batteries to lengthen battery life and make it more stable. Generally battery life increases when you are gentle. Charge slowly (which results in lower temps), avoid charging over 90% or discharging below 10%, and decrease the peak loads.

brundolf 4y ago

iOS does have a feature that throttles the CPU on deeply worn-down batteries to save battery life, however, after it got some publicity a few years ago they made it user-toggleable from the settings menu (Battery > Battery Health & Charging) My XS is currently at 74% of initial capacity (it tells you this too, which is really nice), and I don't even have the option to enable throttling yet, so it must not kick in until things get really dire

kaba0 4y ago
That was only the case for a particular device afaik, that would otherwise just randomly reboot during usage (much worse then degraded performance).

MrGilbert 4y ago

Yes and no. Yes, iPhones get throttled when the battery is on the verge of going ex, but no for this particular device. I run an iPhone X with a new battery from November 2021 (serviced by Apple), with maximum capacity at 90%, and it really is slower compared to the old days. But! I'm not complaining. It's an almost 6 year old device. That means, for every year of usage, I payed roughly 200€, or 16€ per month. That's not too shabby, tbh.

mardifoufs 4y ago
90% is pretty degraded for a battery (if the battery health metrics work the same way as Androids do). By 80% it's usually almost completely unusable, in my experience Though I agree that battery health hasn't been super important to performance. But resetting the phone can do wonders
- MrGilbert 4y ago
  Not on iOS though. Down to 80%, it still runs with "Peak Performance Capability"