Apple has now confirmed long-existing rumors about purposely slowing down their customers’ iPhones, although they dispute it being a tactic to make consumers buy their newer models.
The Internet has been awash for years that iPhones conveniently slow in speed and become riddled with bugs whenever a new model is being released. These have remained nothing but rumors, until Apple seemingly confirmed it after being challenged by a tech expert. Geekbench Developer John Poole observed the performance of an iPhone 6s and 7 over time and concluded particular iOS updates reduce a phone’s speed. According to The Verge, iOS 10.2.1 drew significant attention in the experiment, as it was “designed to reduce random shutdown issues for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6S,” but ends up reducing the phone’s processor speed.
There have been widespread reports that replacing your iPhone’s battery can significantly improve performance. The problem lies in that most users would tend to purchase an entirely new handset altogether, not realizing that a battery replacement could be a much cheaper solution.
When faced with the allegations, Apple responded:
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 response is Apple’s way of saying they’re not slowing down devices just to make customers purchase a new phone, but rather they are addressing the problems (such as unexpected shutdowns) caused by old lithium-ion batteries. Older batteries are incapable of handling the phone’s operation with the same effectiveness as an iPhone with a new battery. As such, they risk the device shutting down in order to prevent damage to its internal components. Ultimately, Apple is trying to avoid embarrassing malfunctions, although in not being transparent while doing so, they risk their customers losing trust in the brand.
It has to be said: replacing an iPhone battery is also no easy (or cheap) task. Alas, it’s a better alternative than forking out for an entirely new iPhone.
What do you make of this development?
Lead image credit: Torsten Dettlaff via Pexels
[via The Verge]
And why again is this on Fstoppers?
Probably because it's mainly a photography website, and this article is about the most used camera in the world...
Is there any particular reason you think it shouldn't be on Fstoppers? It's on here because these devices have cameras in them that are in daily use in every country on earth for posting images to the internet.
Apple are VERY famous for having clandestine stuff going on in their mobile devices and denying it exists even when they're caught with a smoking gun in their hands.For example the tracking software first secretly included in the 3rd generation iPhone and upwards.
This idea of throttling back the processor speed to save power when the battery gets too old to run it at full speed for any length of time has it's merits.High end Mercedes cars do a similar thing and give a message on the dashboard saying something like 'Consumer electrical devices de-activated to save power'.This switches off electric seats,air con,infotainment systems etc etc if the battery has low charge or is just knackered.When it has a new or fully charged battery in it,everything works again as it's supposed to.
The car manufacturer is of course honest about this sort of thing.The consumer electronics manufacturer would never ever even think of having their devices flash up a warning on the screen that warns of impending battery failure (easy to do).Instead they monopolise on the inherent gullibility of their loyal fanbase who would follow them to the end of the world and throw them selves into the abyss if told to by their omnipotent overlords.Or buy the very next iPhone because the last model is soooo last year.
Wow, this answers so many questions. Over the last few weeks with what feels like Apple pushing out an update every week, my iPhone 6 has become nearly unusable. I suspected that there was something in their updates, and my battery life has been slowly going downhill. Maybe I'll try this first.
Via @ReneRitchie
"Apple did in-depth briefings on it almost a year ago explaining how batteries age (including prematurely), what was being done to prevent spikes and shut downs, etc. Tech press knew.
In hindsight, the power management is either overly aggreesive or notification overly passive."
Also
https://www.imore.com/apple-and-ios-1021-address-unexpected-shutdowns-ip...
This is one of those things that would have been a million times less damaging if they were just transparent about it from the start. It's almost always a terrible idea to let people speculate and discover something like this for themselves.
I always felt with new performance updates it becomes harder on the hardware like computers. I update my computer every what.... 5-7years or so? I figured it's kind of like the same thing. My iPhone 6s is slowly going...Ive had that for about three years. I try to back stuff up etc/clean it up as much as I can.
"It has to be said: replacing an iPhone battery is also no easy (or cheap) task. Alas, it’s a better alternative than forking out for an entirely new iPhone."
It's neither expensive nor difficult. For $29.99 you can get the toolkit and battery from iFixit. I've replaced mine on several devices and it's never been a difficult task as long as you get the right toolkit and follow the tutorials.
Parts:
https://www.ifixit.com/Store/iPhone
Videos:
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown
And loose the warranty... or worst, do something wrong and put people life at risk if a fire happen later if you pinch something at the wrong time. Other phone with exchangeable battery have stronger enclosure. There is a reason why Apple want this to be done by professional only.
Apple is designing phones in a way to make battery not exchangeable, but at the same time, hide this weakness with some software trick without letting customers knows about the loss of productivity it will imply.
Thanks a lot for these researchers who show how customers is tricked by numbers.
Perhaps 1 out of 100 iPhone users puts in the effort to replace their own phone battery. The rest don’t. They upgrade. You need to understand the marketplace first. Apple phones haven’t allowed battery (or memory) upgrades forever, and Samsung and LG quickly followed. They realized most consumers don’t know, and don’t care. It’s more profitable to sell cloud storage instead.
There are different chemistries for lithium batteries. Some designed for maximum recharge cycles, others designed to maintain a charge. You cannot group “lithium batteries” under one umbrella term. http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/types_of_lithium_ion
If this was about an older Tesla car models with rapidly degrading batteries, a slower vehicle performance would be welcome vs. a vehicle that randomly dies on the highway. Heck, Windows computers progressively get slower until you’re forced to format them (and yet, that’s considered normal). This was true 20 years ago, and it remains true today. So Apple tries to mitigate the issue and people are still not happy. Listen, you can install the latest Windows OS on a 5 year-old laptop, and believe me, it’ll run slower than the OS built for it at the time. So what’s the issue here? Would you rather have your old phone run, albeit st a slower pace, or no phone at all? The only ones out with pitchforks are class-action opportunists. I just hope they have the cash to go up to the most valuable company in the world.
apple is not what it was sadly
WooHOo free batteries for all iPhone 6&7 users!
For me it is simple. If apple have put a menu option to enable/disable this "feature" then thats ok. If not they are forcing an already purchased and belonging to the customer device to be performance degraded. Here in Europe its probably a suck it and see attitude or change vendors... in the US this would probably fall under a class action lawsuit?
I just love the fact that the author’s last line was a question and there’s not a single reply from him to any comment. I noticed this before with him too. He doesn’t seem to give a shit about it. Oh well.