Apple admits it slows your iPhone down as the battery gets older

[TruthTheOnlyDefense]

Apple is taking heat for a discovery about old iPhones: As their batteries age, Apple's software slows them down.

The phenomenon, discovered by Reddit members and acknowledged Wednesday by Apple, throws gasoline onto a long-standing conspiracy theory that iPhones slow to crawl as a sly way to convince us to buy new ones.

Replacing your phone's battery might make a huge difference. Repair site iFixit, which sells replacement batteries and other parts, says it's seen performance boosts of 100 percent in old iPhones given battery transplants.

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Apple admits it deliberately slows your iPhone down.
But replacing a battery can be expensive: Apple wants $US80 to do it in a store. There's no charge if you paid upfront for AppleCare Plus coverage and have a battery Apple thinks warrants replacing.

You can buy a new iPhone 6 battery for as little as $US20, if you're willing to do surgery on your phone. (Warning: it's not easy.) Or some mom-and-pop shops will do it for far less than Apple. Taking either approach would void Apple's warranty.

Why not design phones in a modular way, so owners could just slide in new batteries? As recently as 2014, Samsung's flagship Galaxy S5 phone came with an easily swappable battery. That style went out of favor as phone makers moved toward thinner, water-resistant, and more durable designs.

The battery replacement problem is an example why a growing community of gadget lovers are calling for laws to ensure consumers have a legal "right to repair" their own electronics. Laws proposed in a handful of states would help prevent tech companies from locking down devices with software and make repair manuals available to the public.

Guess who has lobbied against those laws? Tech companies, including Apple.

The Apple spokeswoman didn't respond to questions about replacing batteries or its view on right to repair legislation.

The Washington Post


http://www.theage.com.au/technology...s-the-battery-gets-older-20171221-h08zfn.html

 

[war&peace]

Apple under this gay scumbag Tim Cook is turning into a disgrace. He is exploiting the loyal customers. What a rip off.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/20/a...eries-are-running-slower/?ncid=mobilenavtrend

Apple addresses why people are saying their iPhones with older batteries are running ‘slower’

Because of a Reddit post and the loose interpretation of subsequent benchmark tests posted by Primate Labs’ John Poole, the “Apple throttles old iPhones” meme has reared its ugly head again.

The gist, as it always is, is that Apple is being super petty and trying to force customers to upgrade their phones by making their old phones run slower.

As always, the answer is no. It would be beyond stupid and incredibly short-sighted for Apple to do this and, if it was actually true, would likely lead to tangles of a governmental and legal nature that no company like Apple would ever want to happen.

Instead, Apple is focusing attention on smoothing out the very high and quick peaks of power draw that can cause problems with older batteries.

Here’s a statement that Apple provided when I inquired about the power profile that people were seeing when testing iPhones with older batteries:

Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices. Lithium-ion batteries become less capable of supplying peak current demands when in cold conditions, have a low battery charge or as they age over time, which can result in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components.

Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions. We’ve now extended that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add support for other products in the future.

The short-form version of what Poole’s benchmarks are showing is the result of a power curve-smoothing algorithm that Apple rolled out last year to mitigate iPhone shutdown issues. I wrote about it here; you can read that and come back.

Basically, iPhones were hitting peaks of processor power that the battery was unable to power and the phones were shutting off. Apple then added power management to all iPhones at the time that would “smooth out” those peaks by either capping the power available from the battery or by spreading power requests over several cycles. This is clearly shown in Poole’s charts in his post:

Also, to be clear, Poole’s charts appear to be accurate — nor is Apple saying this isn’t happening.

Some users who have had older batteries replaced also said they’ve seen improved benchmarks after replacing their batteries. Well, yeah. Of course. As batteries age, they stop working as well. Period.

And that age isn’t just about years or charge cycles — heat is a huge killing factor for batteries, for instance. If your iPhone gets left out in the sun a lot or gets hot a bunch, then your battery will kick the bucket a lot sooner.

As that battery ages, iOS will check its responsiveness and effectiveness actively. At a point when it becomes unable to give the processor all the power it needs to hit a peak of power, the requests will be spread out over a few cycles.

Remember, benchmarks, which are artificial tests of a system’s performance levels, will look like peaks and valleys to the system, which will then trigger this effect. In other words, you’re always going to be triggering this when you run a benchmark, but you definitely will not always trigger this effect when you’re using your iPhone like normal.

Apple will continue to add this smoothing to more devices over time to avoid shutdown issues, freezing and other problems.

It’s important to note that this is a lithium-ion chemistry issue, not an Apple issue. Batteries just get crappy over time. This is an attempt to make your phone work for longer with less issues, not to get you to switch away from it.

Last year, Apple also added a notification for the user when the battery gets to a really rough state, but it’s pretty conservative about that, so it will likely not trigger until well after iOS feels it should start capping the max power draw from batteries. Just as an FYI.

Basically, if your phone is cold, has a low battery charge or has an aged battery, it will be unable to supply peak current. Period.

I think there’s an argument here that many people will never, ever see this happening. It is applied only when maximum power draw is required of the battery, e.g. when you are doing something intense with your iPhone like playing a game or using 3D applications. But clearly some people are seeing a pervasive triggering of this limiter.

This will not affect the average performance of your device, and it is emphatically not throttling; it’s capping the peak demands and not allowing them to be as high — and spreading that work out over more cycles rather than one.

However…
I think one thing that can be argued here is that there is a balance to be struck between giving people too much information and not enough information. If you give a user enough rope they will hang themselves, so to speak, by replacing batteries too early or replacing phones that don’t need replacing.

But, as a matter of transparency, I think that beyond saying very publicly that they are doing this power management (which they have now done twice), there could be an avenue here to be more aggressive and transparent with the user about when their battery is directly affecting the peak performance of their iPhone.

“I think users who experience significant slowdowns due to battery wear would want Apple to be more transparent about this issue,” says Poole. “A notification stating that the battery needs service would be a simple way to reduce users’ concerns and help them address this problem.”

Roughly, the three points for possible improvement I see here are as follows:

• Apple should examine whether the gap is too large between when the algorithm starts smoothing out the peaks of performance and when they’re notified that their performance is taking a hit due to battery age. If a person is noticing (and it seems they are, given the discussion threads and social activity on this) that their phone is running slower, then they need to know why.
• The point at which iOS will tell you that your battery has gone to hell is currently very, very conservative. Perhaps this can be set to be more aggressive. Then, of course, users will complain that Apple is cash-grabbing on battery replacements, but humans will remain humans.
• It’s clear that people just didn’t understand that protecting an iPhone with an older battery was going to directly affect performance. Perhaps this is a failing of Apple messaging or a failure of myself (and other journalists) in not explaining it as clearly as possible.

Largely, I think, the controversy that has hit this week could have been mitigated significantly by Apple having a direct conversation with its users via the device that they’re actually using. I know these things are hard (and I get to say “do it” without actually having to do it), but these kinds of conversations are not always best conducted via a third party.

 

[TruthTheOnlyDefense]

That's why I don't go anywhere near Apple

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

That's why I don't go anywhere near Apple

Versus many Android phone makers that are super slow in releasing OS updates (if they even release them at all)??

 

[Thetigerforces]

Apple are a bunch of scumbags

 

[Lagay Raho]

Apparently the updates on older phones after the new one comes out is technically a degrade and slows your device.Both android and apple

 

[KAL-EL]

Apple under this gay scumbag Tim Cook is turning into a disgrace. He is exploiting the loyal customers. What a rip off.

Like not including a fast charger with the latest iPhones that are fast charge capable.

I would say that's a complete money grab by Apple when Samsung (for example) has included this for years with its Android phones.

^^That last comment was not aimed at being an iOS versus Android thing. Just pointing out that some companies aren't as money-grabbing as others with accessories.

 

[TruthTheOnlyDefense]

Versus many Android phone makers that are super slow in releasing OS updates (if they even release them at all)??

Rather that than be forced to use only Apple crap.

 

[war&peace]

Like not including a fast charger with the latest iPhones that are fast charge capable.

I would say that's a complete money grab by Apple when Samsung (for example) has included this for years with its Android phones.

^^That last comment was not aimed at being an iOS versus Android thing. Just pointing out that some companies aren't as money-grabbing as others with accessories.

BTW I'm an avid user of Apple products. Typing this comment on my new MacBook pro and next to it is my new iPhone X .... so my rants are not of android fanboy because I don't use android. Apple was always expensive but at least during Steve Job's time, it used to stay ahead of the competition and offer its users the latest tech but under Tim Cook, it has started to lag behind. Samsung has been offering quad HD i.e. 4K OLED displays for quite sometime while Apple stuck with the old LCD and only offered in the most expensive iPhone X, iPhone 8 still offers old LCD with less than FHD on iPhone 8 and FHD on iPhone 8+.

 

[KAL-EL]

BTW I'm an avid user of Apple products. Typing this comment on my new MacBook pro and next to it is my new iPhone X .... so my rants are not of android fanboy because I don't use android. Apple was always expensive but at least during Steve Job's time, it used to stay ahead of the competition and offer its users the latest tech but under Tim Cook, it has started to lag behind. Samsung has been offering quad HD i.e. 4K OLED displays for quite sometime while Apple stuck with the old LCD and only offered in the most expensive iPhone X, iPhone 8 still offers old LCD with less than FHD on iPhone 8 and FHD on iPhone 8+.

I think it's good that a fan of a companies products can still unbiased enough to be critical of that company when they feel it might go a little astray from what they feel is the usual.

I've been a Samsung Galaxy Note user for years and I'm mostly positive on the Android OS, but that hasn't stopped my criticisms when I felt they were necessary.

My friend is a die-hard Apple Fanboy, and although not a deal-breaker for him, he still ripped into Apple for not including it with their thousand-dollar phone.

His exact words to me. "That's a ******* money grab"

 

[war&peace]

I think it's good that a fan of a companies products can still unbiased enough to be critical of that company when they feel it might go a little astray from what they feel is the usual.

I've been a Samsung Galaxy Note user for years and I'm mostly positive on the Android OS, but that hasn't stopped my criticisms when I felt they were necessary.

My friend is a die-hard Apple Fanboy, and even he ripped into Apple for not including the fast charger with their thousand-dollar phone.

His exact words to me. "That's a f****** money grab"

Unfortunately my experience with Android has not been positive and perhaps that's the major reason for me staying in the Apple's eco system. I bought TV nVidia shield 2017 version since I was not satisfied my Apple TV since it was limited to FHD and gaming experience was not that great but nVidia shield always zoomed in the pic on my Panasonic FHD TV... I used to reset the setting and it fixed it but momentarily so despite offering a lot of bells whistles, it messed up on the core functionality so I returned and instead I got Apple TV 4k and I'm happy with it despite offering limited 64 GB memory as compared to tv shield that has USB 3 ports to use with external hard drives of any size.

 

[KAL-EL]

Unfortunately my experience with Android has not been positive and perhaps that's the major reason for me staying in the Apple's eco system. I bought TV nVidia shield 2017 version since I was not satisfied my Apple TV since it was limited for FHD and gaming experience was not that great but nVidia shield always zoomed in the pic on my Panasonic FHD TV... I used to reset the setting and it fixed it but momentarily so despite offering a lot of bells whistles, it messed up on the core functionality so I returned and instead I got Apple TV 4k and I'm happy with it despite offering limited 64 GB memory as compared to tv shield that has USB 3 ports to use with external hard drives of any size.

Other then an Android OS based phone, I'm not really in an Android eco-system. I use a windows based laptop/browser and a Roku media box. Just have always been a big fan of the Samsung Note line.

Sorry about your Shield troubles. Never used one, but from what I understand, they're extremely powerful (especially for gaming purposes) and have had rave reviews.

For people who use multiple Apple products, I certainly understand why it's convenient to stay within the Apple eco-system. My brother is one of those people. Although he thinks the Apple TV is a bit overpriced.

As far as media boxes go, I'm very happy with my Roku.

 

[Pax Ottomana]

The only way these azzholes will stop being such scumbags and act like decent human beings is if you STOP BUYING their schitty overpriced phones.

 

[TruthTheOnlyDefense]

Apple is just a rip off once you buy an Apple product you have to keep buying Apple products it ties you into the Apple shit for the rest of your life.