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People suspected it for years but yeah it was eventually found to be true that they were tweaking battery throttling in updates which to the end user materializ

People suspected it for years but yeah it was eventually found to be true that they were tweaking battery throttling in updates which to the end user materialized as the feeling of the new phone being out and their suddenly slowing down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batterygate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batterygate

l72 2y ago
My iPhone X battery recently dropped below 90% and even though settings show “peak performance capability” it has started to feel very slow. Lots of stuttering at basic things like typing, showing the keyboard, swiping and so on. It is very very frustrating. DeepSeek says the “battery can't consistently deliver the voltage the A11 chip needs for bursts of speed. This causes micro-stutters.” It is frustratingly slow at times. So do I spend $100 to repair an old phone or make the move and get a new one? Either way Apple is probably making money.
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joshstrange 2y ago
> People suspected it for years Maybe it’s nitpick-y but people didn’t suspect phones were being slowed down due to aging batteries, they thought (and still think) that Apple slowed phones down to force people to upgrade. [0] > it was eventually found to be true Again, “it”, but it’s a completely different “it” from the first part of the sentence (because I never saw anyone say the slowdowns were due to the battery prior to Batterygate) > which to the end user materialized as the feeling of the new phone being out and their suddenly slowing down. This is fair, users were wrong about the reasons but they absolutely felt like it coincided with a new phone. It’s like when users report years-old bugs right after a new release and blame it on the new release. Correlation != causation. All that said, Apple should have just come right out and explained what they were doing from the start. They could have, should have, spun it as the good thing it is instead of waiting for it to enviably leak (or be discovered). Doing nothing would have resulted in the same conspiracy theories (“My phone randomly shuts off, Apple is trying to get me to upgrade!”). Apple’s mistake was not being open about it (and it was a big mistake, no doubt). [0] And yes, we could spend all day debating if new software OS’s that run slower than the original OS constitutes “slowing down older hardware”. It’s a fine line and while people online will say things like “I don’t even want any of the new features” that’s rarely true. They don’t care about X feature but they do want Y feature. Apple could be more selective over what features are included in new OS’s on older phones but that would lead to the same outcry (“Apple is gating features that could run on my phone behind the new hardware just to force me to upgrade”). Apple could probably improve the situation by allowing people to install older OS’s (a sort of LTS setup maybe?) on their phones but there are legitimate security issues with that not to mention the extra overhead to support that. It raises all sorts of questions around downgrading to an older OS (can you use your newer OS backups? What about iCloud services that might have migrated already? Etc?). Not unsolvable problems but not easy ones either.

l72 2y ago

My iPhone X battery recently dropped below 90% and even though settings show “peak performance capability” it has started to feel very slow. Lots of stuttering at basic things like typing, showing the keyboard, swiping and so on. It is very very frustrating. DeepSeek says the “battery can't consistently deliver the voltage the A11 chip needs for bursts of speed. This causes micro-stutters.” It is frustratingly slow at times. So do I spend $100 to repair an old phone or make the move and get a new one? Either way Apple is probably making money.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

joshstrange 2y ago

> People suspected it for years Maybe it’s nitpick-y but people didn’t suspect phones were being slowed down due to aging batteries, they thought (and still think) that Apple slowed phones down to force people to upgrade. [0] > it was eventually found to be true Again, “it”, but it’s a completely different “it” from the first part of the sentence (because I never saw anyone say the slowdowns were due to the battery prior to Batterygate) > which to the end user materialized as the feeling of the new phone being out and their suddenly slowing down. This is fair, users were wrong about the reasons but they absolutely felt like it coincided with a new phone. It’s like when users report years-old bugs right after a new release and blame it on the new release. Correlation != causation. All that said, Apple should have just come right out and explained what they were doing from the start. They could have, should have, spun it as the good thing it is instead of waiting for it to enviably leak (or be discovered). Doing nothing would have resulted in the same conspiracy theories (“My phone randomly shuts off, Apple is trying to get me to upgrade!”). Apple’s mistake was not being open about it (and it was a big mistake, no doubt). [0] And yes, we could spend all day debating if new software OS’s that run slower than the original OS constitutes “slowing down older hardware”. It’s a fine line and while people online will say things like “I don’t even want any of the new features” that’s rarely true. They don’t care about X feature but they do want Y feature. Apple could be more selective over what features are included in new OS’s on older phones but that would lead to the same outcry (“Apple is gating features that could run on my phone behind the new hardware just to force me to upgrade”). Apple could probably improve the situation by allowing people to install older OS’s (a sort of LTS setup maybe?) on their phones but there are legitimate security issues with that not to mention the extra overhead to support that. It raises all sorts of questions around downgrading to an older OS (can you use your newer OS backups? What about iCloud services that might have migrated already? Etc?). Not unsolvable problems but not easy ones either.