F*#k I just accidentally updated my iPhone 6s. Now it's slow as f. I knew this scam long ago but the damn update reminder kept popping up. Usually I filled my iPhone with videos so it can't automatically download the update. F#*k Apple! Someone from California is filling a class action lawsuit against them right now about this bs. This is my last iPhone. People please do not support this evil. Boycott iDevices!
Yeah... iOS 11 slowed down my iPhone 6S tremendously. I get so much cruddy lag switching between apps while voice chatting. And apps are slow to open. It's kind of amazing how slow it's gotten.
Instead of secretly slowing the phone down, why not simply show a notification telling the user to get the phone to a care center and get the battery replaced in order to restore full capability?
I'm not the one to go for the "evil corporations" angle, but it seems they really don't want people to keep their older phones.
At what point this message comes up? It says "When a battery gets closer to the end of its lifespan", but when is that exactly? 20% health? 50%? The performance drop seems to start much earlier than that.
You poor soul. This notification does NOT trigger when this SoC throttling occurs.
That’s the entire issue, man. People have batteries trying to prevent suicide by entering a protected mode that kills SoC performance...yet Apple refuses to let you know that.
You seem to have completely missed the point. It's not that the throttling changes the condition of the battery; it's that once the battery health drops to a certain point, far from the end of its lifespan (I don't know the percentage), the processor's max frequency, and its performance as result, drops significantly. It seems that the user is not notified of this drop.
That link you posted is for when the battery is nearing death.
I know what the issue is. Also posted a link that shows this is no apple design flaw but others have the same issue. Removed.
That in combination withbthe fact the world hardly knows IOS gives a message .... i think all critics ar a bit harsh ( BUT RIGHT in apple failing to communicate ... and they should be accountable )
You keep repeating the same thing. IOS does NOT give any message about reduced performance, it just says "need to be serviced" and it does happen long before reaching critical levels.
They should be accountable for slowing down my phone when it is not my choice. I have a 6 months old SE that has battery wear of 5% and yet my phone is not operating at max frequency. I bought a 1.85GHz phone and I expect it to work at that frequency unless I decide to put it in low power mode myself. Apple should provide a toggle like on Samsung, having performance mode or whatever. What percentage battery wear does Apple consider unhealthy and is throttling. My battery is pretty much new and I get half the perfomance. There are some blips to 1.5 or 1.85GHz and the difference is night and day.
Below a guy posted when he had the message. Later he posted his battery capacity ... thats a looooong way from death and i have the throttling starts at 75%
“I just noticed this message on mine today. The last month I've been noticing lots of weird battery drain/shutdown issues, so not surprised. This is on a iPhone 6 bought at launch, so just under 2.5 years old”
And then
“FYI: just ran some battery apps - they put mine at 55-61% health (i.e. 1000 or 1100 mAh down from 1810mAh)”
"it's that once the battery health drops to a certain point, far from the end of its lifespan (I don't know the percentage), the processor's max frequency, and its performance as result, drops significantly."
I think that's slightly simplistic. It's not that max frequency as a whole is borked - it's that max frequency during load spikes (think: the few seconds when you're loading up an app) is limited.
So it's not performance as a whole that's limited.its performance in the few seconds you're under load that gets limited.
If that stops the device shutting off it seems a reasonable trade off to me, given how long it might otherwise take to reboot.
The key point is the disclosure the fix is to smooth "instantaneous" peaks of performance. Basically when there are spikes in processor load.
The problem is a benchmark is basically a torture test which always runs the processor at full load... Effectively it is a permanent performance spike.
IMHO unlikely to bear much resemblance to real world experience.
TL;DR If you think your iPhone is slowing during everyday usage it's almost certainly not due to this issue.
Thanks ... thats an impotant thing to know .... and website should address .... i think people do not understand this .... and think the phone is generally downclocked
I know about that, and that actually makes it worse. The high frequency is most needed under those heavy load spikes in order to finish the task ASAP and keep the phone as responsive as possible. It's the main reason for modern phones being so fluid.
Depends. Some conjecture here, but if it's say loading an app you have latency anyhow. So it's a 1 sec or 1.5 sec load times doesn't really make much difference, if you are smooth once it's loaded.
Second use case I'm thinking about is if you are just running a heavy duty workload which isn't utilising all cores. Could be that this use case doesn't trigger a restriction and so phone responsiveness isn't affected by the gating process.
The key point is no one is bothering to ask or investigate the simple question "how often does this happen in real world use cases" as opposed to torture test benchmarks.
Until you have established this basic context you can't really have a meaningful debate on the issue. People are just assuming "omg peak frequency is bring throttled" when that is almost certainly the one thing that is NOT happening.
It is being throttled when it is needed the most. The ENTIRE reason for modern phones' responsiveness is the instantaneous high clock speeds. Besides, 1 - 1.5 seconds is quite noticeable. Also, there are a lot of computationally intensive instances besides loading where instant high performance is needed.
Actually, that's not even the point. The point is that apple did not inform users that their phones would actually drop in performance down the line, something that no one expected to be the case.
That makes absolutely zero sense. The SOC when not under load is throttled back already to conserve battery, If the SOC is now being throttled under load then it is now being throttled when you actually need it, and it effectively means a hard cap on the clock speed.
Looked at another way you are trying to argue that a motorbike with a restrictor kit (to cap BHP for licensing purposes or whatever) does not always slow the performance of the bike, and you are correct... it does not slow the performance of the bike when it is idle. It does however slow the performance of the bike when you actually want the thing to move.
Whilst the PR team over at Apple hq can spin it as a protective measure to prevent unexpected shutdown (or battery damage), if that was their intention then the phone would clearly and obviously tell you it needs a battery replacement to maintain its slick operation. In hiding this fact, Apple know that they will shift millions of new phones as users become irritated at their performance.
I can image i start pokemon on an iphone 6 .... starting the app causes a spike. That spike is thottled. So perhaps slower loading of pokemon.
Once loaded ... pokemon in memory ... graphics calculated ... no spiking and pokemon runs a smooth gaming experiense for 30 mins.
Again black and white example huh. But totaly different then starting pokemon and it runs completely slow and downthrottled for 30 mins making it unplayable.
In my humble oppinion this changes stuf ... and if this way of downthrottling is the case ( only a few secs during spikes ) ... many people are misunderstanding what actually is happenning.
Perhaps a spike happens with a “heavy game” like pokemon ... but no spike with simple stuff like banking or safari.
Again ... in my oppinion ... something completely different then an overall slow phone.
Black what .... if i use my phone for 30 mins with pokemon / banking / safari / email ... and it was downthrottled for 3 secconds in that 30 mins .... whats the problem ??
It's not a matter of opinion. It's quite objective. A phone with a capped instant-load max frequency will perform slower and more sluggish, even in regular daily tasks. It might not be a massive difference but it will be noticeable.
It would not have been an issue if apple informed about this beforehand, but they didn't, hence the current criticism.
As a user who paid good money, you should not be defending such practices, unless you do want companies to take advantage.
Battery wear 5% on my SE. Geekbench is constantly at iPhone 6 level with the CPU locked at 911MHz SP 1400 MP 2500. If this was to save battery, then why is it still throttled when connected to a charger. I call BS on battery issue and will go with the planned obsolescence.
So what happens if you need max power after the few seconds load? And first of all, why not at least tell your buyers that you are implementing this algorithm that will abusively protect their devices at the expense of performance, how much performance and how much protection. Thing is now they can half your performance as soon as your battery drops to 90% and it doesn't take long for that.. the battery will surely continue to lose capacity and you will also get the iOS notification at 75% or 50% but you will spend the months getting there with a slow device, certainly not what you paid for in the store. Apple is more and more disappointing nowadays..
The iPhones are basically flagship devices right? Are there any flagship phones on the Android side that have a battery that's intended for user replacement? (Yeah, I get that you can take apart your phone and go through the trouble of battery replacement yourself even when they're sealed inside, but I don't think I should have to go through that sort of trouble just for a battery swap.) It seems like just the cheap budget handsets have removable batteries which is kind of crazy when you think about it since they're more likely to last longer despite starting out life with a performance and storage capacity disadvantage just because the person that owns it can buy a new battery if she wants.
LG V20 was the last. I just side-graded my HTC 10 that was about 18 months old to a new V20 for $300, primarily for the battery. Sick of paying $600+ for flagships that need to be charged three times a day after a year.
Oh wow, thanks for the tip! The V20 looks like a decent phone and I see there's even some extended batteries available from Amazon. I might have to look into getting one.
I just bought a cheap, brand new, non carrier variant V20 and I love it. The quad DAC sounds amazing, giant screen, IR blaster, headphone jack, USB c, SD card, dual lens camera. Its a media beast. No wireless charge, but it has a nice aluminum body instead.
My Nexus 6P lost a fair whack of performance, and even after a full wipe, battery performance is less than half what it was two years back. I'm on an HTC U11 now, so I'll keep an eye on that, but I'll be interested to see if Huawei did this as well. Performance could also have been damaged by a degradation of storage within the 6P, not that it was stellar to begin with.
>Yeah, I get that you can take apart your phone and go through the trouble of battery replacement yourself even when they're sealed inside, but I don't think I should have to go through that sort of trouble just for a battery swap.
It takes about 5 minutes and you do it at most once a year. You can find videos of literal children doing it on youtube. Or you can have Apple do it for you (for free if you have AppleCare).
I just don't think this is the big deal people make it out to be.
For my iPhone 7 its only a 29 step process on ifixit to replace the battery. Everyone should be doing it. LOL your post is humorous. Pretty much everyone who buys an iPhone should not be pulling it apart to replace the battery, ever.
I'm not worried about replacing the battery myself. I'm worried about Apple just implanted another software which probably always running in the background of my iPhone to monitor the battery current. But their main purpose is just to slower the older models out so people have to buy new ones.
AFAIK, the user that highlighted this also stated that the phone was still slow when connected to their mains charger, which is what I see a lot of Apply phone users do around the office (I don't see and Android users do the same but then many Android users don't use their phones so much) and as they are suing mains power the battery excuses should not exist, exposing this as the BS excuse that it is.
If this had come out a few weeks ago, before Android 8.1 came out, I'd have said that Google were probably doing something similar as since the Oreo update my Nexus 5x was frustrating and almost impossible to use at times, but 8.1 appears to have fixed most of the issues that I've noticed.
I wonder if once you reach the battery threshold for slowing your CPU down, if replacing the battery or running it while plugged in can even reverse the throttling? Or is performance permanently crippled in software if you don't replace your battery soon enough?
From the original thread it looks like once you replace the battery it goes back up to speed. Doesn't do it if you're running it from the mains though.
Jep. So if you change the battery, the speed is again just as new. The Apple did have two alternatives in here. Reduce the time phone is useable, (like most phone maker do) or reduce the speed to maintain long operation time. Hard choice in some situations. But as a customer I would like to make that decision, but Apple rule is to make all choices so that customer does not have to worry those. It has worked well to Apple, so most likely they keep on making these decisions, because their devices sell well, because end user don't have to decide anything, except the color of the phone.
Bullshit. I charged my iPhone 6s less than 50 times since I bought it brand new sealed in box. The battery is healthy but since the accidental update, the performance drops noticably.
Well yea, what other incentive do Apple users have for upgrading?
The thing is, this isn't anything new. This didn't start with this "battery issue" thing which clearly is a major design flaw in the battery, platform or both. iPhones slow down considerably with each major update and iPhone users will be more than happy to lie about it.
Almost ALL iPhone users I know make it a life decision to update since they KNOW pretty darn well that it's going to slow their phone. In the matter of fact, the question I get the most from them is "will update x slow down my phone?"
This isn't about newer software being more taxing and resource intensive. This is about deliberate obsolescence that EVERYONE has denied despite numerous accusations from iPhone users.
I don't know, maybe this would focus more light on this really old issue and make tech blogs investigate this "dark secret" they've been trying to hide while falsely accusing other platforms of that same fault.
Keep drinking that Kool-Aid, buddy. "Dark secret" lol
My wife's original 5S phone, with the original battery, still works great and is still supported by Apple, something that the two-year-lifecycle Android phone vendors don't seem to give a shit about long term. Minus Google.
10W spikes translates to 3-4A of peak current from the battery, depends on the efficiency of the PMIC. That's discharging the battery at more than 1C (2C probably for smaller batteries), which can be tough when the battery gets older. I'm guessing the PMIC doesn't have anything much to buffer the spikes because of the limited space.
"My phone doesn't feel as snappy as it used to, must be getting old, maybe I should upgrade. Look at how quick these new ones are!"
Of course, there is also a slim chance that they're actually doing what they can to protect people's devices and provide a solid user experiences to customers with devices a few years old so that they don't need to upgrade for a few more years.
If they were worried about their users, they would be more transparent about the issue and actually TELL their users that "hey, we believe your battery needs to be changed, so we'll make your device run slower until you change the battery, since we'll never admit to a design flaw in our products".
Considering Apple offers a battery replacement service this is inexcusable. And it's not a small CPU speed drop. Another article showed it goes from 1400mhz to 600.
That's because they were using an iPhone 6 which is effectively 3 years old, with over 1095 cycles on it, which means the battery is in the 40% health range --- the drop is far less steep at 500 cycles, when battery health is at 80% (which is what apple's batteries are rated for).
The real issue is that they should be showing the notification at 500 charge cycles, since that's their rated battery life.
I had a letter through the post, years and years ago, saying that my 5-year-old iPod could potentially have a battery issue and they were replacing them. I sent it in, and came back with the latest model.
Somehow I think a mass recall of iPhone 6 units would actually hit the bottom line a lot more than a bunch of 5-year-old iPods did.
Ian, I think there was a battery issue with the 6s that made Apple recall certain models by serial number. Apple might have realized that the problem is larger than it seems and faced a total recall of iphone 6s. They introduced this update right after these battery issues appeared and swept it all under the rug.
They do notify you when your battery starts to die.
But the notification comes well after the 500 cycles... and closer to 750, at which point battery health is around 50%. (too late) They should have it come after 500 cycles, when battery health is around 80%
Maybe they should twist this properly. How about saying "our phones are built to a high standard and are very long lasting but we are held back by limitations in battery technology. Therefore, if you choose to keep your Apple phone running for a long time (and given the investment as well you might), you should see it like a car. It's an expensive investment designed to run and run but there are parts which will need servicing and replacing as a matter of course but most phones don't last as long as ours so you never normally run into this problem. You wouldn't choose to replace your entire car just because the tyres were worn and with our well built phones you don't have to replace the whole phone just because of a worn battery".
This is of course including a fair amount of marketing bullshit but equally it is relatively true. iPhones are high end products and they do endure so it's easily spun into a decent narrative that disses other companies and promotes theirs.
I'm an iPhone user, my phone runs fine, I think most of these comments are hyperbole -- but I agree with this. If the phone has detected that the battery has lost enough life that it is throttling performance it should notify the user.
Because they don't tell users about every feature. Juat same as they didn't tell X users about the feature that mutes the ringtone when you're looking at it. It's just not their style.
They design a system to work as best as they want and let people have it on a take it or leave it basis.
This pisses me off because I've seen so many iPhone users buy new iPhones because their 1 or 2 year old iPhones become slow and laggy to the point where OCD starts kicking in.
Apple's processors should be very capable of handling ALL modern software and eye candy. Or, so they are advertise by all....
Those iPhone users are obviously hunting for a reason to upgrade. An iPhone does not feel "laggy" after only two years. 3-4 years, sure, then the OS starts to outrun the performance of the phone. And this issue has nothing to do with the SoC anyway.
The issue is with the battery aging. And I have had this EXACT issue happen, where the phone randomly shuts down when CPU usage spikes. Replacing the battery does fix it. This OS update always would have prevented the shutdowns.
is funny seeing as Apple tends to be near or the most expensive phones in their class and tend to also offer the lowest capacity batteries for them, they cannot use excuse of because they are thinner or whatever, cause many different Android models are just as thin (or thinner) yet offer higher capacity on a similar or higher spec phone.
They seem to do "ok" for the battery capacity so they are well designed, but, when they want a higher $ premium, they should IMO also be offering a better experience, a simple change, user replaceable battery, and a default higher capacity battery so instead of the seemingly normal Apple way of what ~1400Mah batteries, they should be doing in the 2800+ range (I know some models are of decent size, but, it is not a "space constraint" thing, others offer quite large batteries in comparison..LG X power 2 4500Mah battery compared to say Iphone 8 Plus "rated" 2691, so the XP2 is a 59.8% larger capacity)
Anyways, all phone makers need to think twice about specs, one of these things have to be a larger battery and enough thickness to hold up to at least some abuse ^.^
Bear in mind user replaceable battery also means thicker device or less battery capacity. Apple decided that actually represents a worse user experience. Of course if you disagree you can just shop elsewhere - I would recommend a Xiaomi Redmi 4000mah FTW.
Apple should use twice bigger batteries. Side-effect would be camera bump-up disappear. I don't think anyone would complain about 2mm increased thickness. That would be excellent customer experience. But it would significantly reduce Apple's margins.
what was it that Gates said when each iteration of Windoze trashed existing machines? "Let the hardware fix it." back in those days CPU performance was moving from the blade of the hockey stick to the shaft, if you get the analogy. these days, SoC performance is on the flattening top of that common lazy S-curve you've all seen. and, of course, the bigger issue is that battery performance has never been on the shaft of its hockey stick.
so, the obvious answer is that Apple is bloating phoneOS just the way Gates did to Windoze to drive hardware sales. in Gates case, he only got come of the candy. Jobs/Cook get it all.
To me, this works along the same lines as the S8 being so pretty but so fragile. It's only going to impress reviewers as everyone else has to buy a case to stop it shattering and as a result is denied the benefit of all the "oh it's so nice to hold" and "ooh pretty glass". This is clearly a design choice. You don't make a phone with a battery that you know behaves like this (you're gonna test its endurance to ensure it's suitable) and then not know that your peak draw exceeds what an ageing battery can pump out.
This is a choice to give the excellent single threaded chooch factor for reviewers and people who are raving about their new phones whilst the battery is capable but in the knowledge that this will quickly diminish over time and that the peak power draw will have to come down. You could argue that a car that starts off with 100 bhp and will lose some of this over time as part of wear and tear but that would be bollocks. You design the car with wear and entropy in mind to ensure that it will perform adequately for its expected life. This is akin to gaming the benchmarks in my book because they know this performance isn't sustainable and that performance which is seen by reviewers is not representative of what you'll get down the line. It's a little bit like sticking an i5 in the older (circa 2011) MacBook airs which performs amazingly for a few minutes and then shits itself with the heat and throttles to the point where youtube is a challenge too far. I'm sure benchmarks were in the mind of the people who made that design choice. Oh, no.
When this is part of the technology, such as an empty Vs full SSD it can be tested for and forgiven. In this case it is a design choice which has been hidden from customers. I wonder how many thousands / millions have upgraded their iPhone to a new model when a battery replacement for a tenth of the cost would have sufficed? This is another nail in the Apple shaped coffin for me (actually, it's a bloody axe). I bought a MacBook Air a while back and, whilst I'm exceedingly happy with the product itself, when the charger broke the customer service was utterly shit. Smelly dogshit shit. I had "Apple Care," was treated like scum in their store (having very recently dropped over a grand in there, they should have been licking my feet knowing I had money and was possibly going to spend it there) and then looked at reviews of their chargers (which cost £60!) which showed that failure was practically guaranteed after around 18 months. Just after the 12 month warranty runs out. Funny that. I bought a cheap generic one and it's still going 4 years on. I can not abide treating your customers in this manner. The MacBook now has Linux on. It's better this way. There are now Windows laptops which fulfil my criteria (at the time there was only the Air) and so I won't be needing to "invest" in a "we're so superior" Apple cult product again.
Samsung Galaxy S6 ACTIVE owner here. The battery in this this is freaking amazing. I've had the device since it was released and it lasts a solid 24 hours under use. Granted, I always have bluetooth and gps tracker off (unless I need).
I can take this phone apart and replace the battery as well. Really love this phone. I wish these companies made more durable phones with replaceable batteries.
The Active series is the best variant of the Galaxy Sx. Unfortunately no one outside the US gets to see them. I'd probably buy an S7 Active and keep it for a decade - last flagship with a half-decent screen size.
So is this what Apple would call a feature then..lol They make it like they are trying to protect you from sudden shut downs when the real truth is they want you to upgrade to a new phone. I guess they figure if you get upset enough with your old phone acting like it is getting slow you will just walk into a Apple store or a provider and upgrade to a new and improved iPhone that will be fast fast fast.
I still am on a Samsung Galaxy S5 & have never changed the battery it is over three years old. It has never shut down do to cold or got slower IT JUST WORKS as it should. I still charge it once every 4-5 days like I did when it was new.
So either Apples design is bad or their batteries are weak to begin with take your pick. It could be just pre planned to make you have to upgrade every couple of years even though your phone would have been just fine if they did not mess with the power & performance levels.
Apple and Samsung both do the planned obsolescence thing. Samgsun has had class action lawsuits filed (and samsung lost) for their tv capacitors failing right around when their warranty expires.
Apple does it with software, they just bloat up the system, or in this case slow down the cpu.. in order to get the user to become frustrated and buy a new device.
They should be sued over this. Apple should be sued.
I got two Samsung TV's one from 2011 a Plasma 43 inch which has been used for hundreds of hours so far & the other is from 2015 a LCD LED backlit 60 inch which has been used a lot as well without issues on either of them (Knock on wood).
I do agree if these companies do this on purpose then they should be sued for their actions. Then again if Apple knew about this all the way back to the early iPhones then they should have fixed it a long long time ago and redesigned their phones in such a way that this would become less of a problem for the end users. BY just continuing to do the same thing is just pure bad form on their part at least Samsung fixed their problem in the TV's & moved past it. Apple being a multi billion dollar company has more than enough resources to design phones and other devices that would not have these issues. It may be time for them to invest more money into their designs or fire their design team and hire new people better yet stop using Foxxconn as their go to company to put these devices together.
Actually, it's way older than that. I'm sure I saw a documentary that explained about one of the oldest cartels discovered being the one that carved up the early lightbulb industry around the turn of the 20th Century, where all the manufacturers, US and German mostly, colluded to ensure that the bulbs didn't last too long and no-one broke ranks with any longer-lasting product. That really was the start of modern international corporatism (as opposed to simple capitalism).
It could be that it's a universal issue, but Apple's cure is worse than the disease, and symptoms related to the battery wear aren't that noticeable to end users.
What isn't stated in the article is what counts as a charge discharge cycle. It would be useful if figures were given for 1: Full charge till phone shuts down. Then full recharge. 2: Full charge till 75% of battery used. Then full recharge. 3: Full charge till 50% of battery used. Then full recharge. 2: Full charge till 25% of battery used. Then full recharge.
My phone is almost always on charge, at my desk, at home and work, and in my car. I doubt that my usage counts as 3 recharges per day.
Why does this have to do with an APPLE hardware issue ... see below ... found on US samsung support with totaly different hardware ... SAME ISSUE. Think its more a genral lithium ion issue
My battery has been getting progressively worse over the past few months and now just drains and switches off when the battery gets to 35% or so - it is then completely drained. 0%. (I had just checked battery prior to this happening and it said 4.5hrs left)
Can you help. Is my battery faulty? Phone is only 8 months old.
The issue probably isn't unique to Apple phones. The Nexus 6P is notorious for sudden shutdowns at 20% battery remaining or greater, much the same as iPhone users were experiencing last year; the issue is reportedly resolved by installing a new battery. To my knowledge, Google never officially acknowledged the issue or pushed a software update akin to what Apple has done to induce throttling (I almost wish they had, I'd rather have a slower device than a dead device, although they should have told users what they were doing).
Something to remember. With this hidden behavior Apple games the conditions that need to be met for a free battery replacement. You have been robbed of free warranty service. This is class action material.
When my iPhome 6 was 18 months old and still under AppleCare it started spontaneously dying when the battery remaining was 40% and I did something like shoot a video. Apple wouldn’t replace the battery because I wasn’t on the current OS and because the battery did “test” out of spec. Sure enough months later when I finally gave up my jailbreak and updated the sudden shutdowns stopped too, but now the phone was slow as heck.... so... I replaced it.
This is the key thing, no one is defining what an old battery is... in my case it should have been a manufactures defect under warranty replace,met and wasn’t because the software “fixed” it.
Phones should operate normally, full power, for at least their warranty duration, don’t you think?
People are complaining about this but this would be a positive feature that would improve the functionality of my Nokia Lumia 929, which has a degraded battery.
I doubt whatever early Snapdragon it has inside would do anything but infuriate you by the slowdowns. Hell, and I was thinking about iPhone SE after my 730 goes four years old...
This does potentially reveal something about Apple's perceived SoC performance advantage: if other SoCs are not vulnerable to this issue, then Apple's performance advantage may be less down to process or architecture, and more down to keeping things hot-clocked to the edge of what the batteries are capable of delivering. With the cat out of the bag, other vendors may start using the same trick.
I think this is clearly either a defect in the batteries Apple has used or an engineering shortcoming. Shouldn't Apple design it's lithium-ion batteries with a "spare area" much like an SSD has more capacity than is usable in case of defective cells? Much like a Tesla, shouldn't the battery not charge to 100% and drain below 20% to keep the battery from outright dying? I understand that eventually a battery will not provide enough voltage or current to keep the phone on but shouldn't this be well after the devices useful life?
While it sounds sensible to throttle the device to avoid the sudden shutdown, Apple could have been forthcoming about it. People can then decide if they would like to upgrade their OS. As a 6S user, there is not much of an impact for my usage, but for those that uses it for gaming and such will see a drop in performance. The throttle is very aggressive, since it seems to lose half of the clockspeed.
I personally feel it is a very dodgy move. It could be done for the benefit of consumers, but why keep it a secret until they are caught doing it? When I buy say an iPhone X because of its performance improvement, I expect it to behave the same after a year or even longer. Based on some investigations I read, the clockspeed is drastically lower after the firmware updates, i.e. 600Mhz vs 1.4Ghz. If it is because of battery life, I think the throttle is way too heavy handed. It almost sounded like a deliberate reduction in performance to entice people to switch. Also, why only on iPhone 6 onwards, and not iPads and older iPhones? All these raises more questions about Apple's intent. Anyway true enough, they are already hit with law suits, which is not unexpected. One less reason to go back to Apple until they fix their shop. There are way too many missteps from them this year and they ought to rethink their strategy in the new year instead of being complacent.
I don't think this is the case. I have had my iPhone 5 with an older battery die on me (at 50 % charged), and throttling is definitely better than just dying. Neither is in Apple's interests, because it sells iPhones by making customers happy. This whole conspiracy theory makes no sense.
Older phones not crashing because the battery can no longer support the energy draw is definitely a bad user experience. But Apple should have been honest and given the user a message: Your battery is old and should be replaced. Because of that, you may see slower performance.
What if I get my phone serviced or buy a refurbished phone, or just replace the battery myself? To my knowledge, phones don't have a way of detecting the age of a battery, so this will affect everyone no matter how new their battery is... Even if this were accurate, it seems like a massively sweeping decision for a very minor problem that doesn't even effect hundreds of thousands of users. If Apple's argument is to be believed, those small amount of users would be benefited from less random shut downs of their phone, but they're also at the same time being hurt by a much slower phone and potentially even less battery life since they will spend way more time with the screen on waiting for apps to load. So even the people it's supposed to help are also being hurt at the same time... and then people who get their phone serviced are hurt even more and get no help. Even if you were to believe Apple's argument, this seems like a very poor solution. It should at least be optional, maybe give the user a warning saying "hey your phone is old, get your battery serviced, or enable our feature to improve performance [Yes][No]". If they did that, this argument would be a million times more believable...
That's not correct, the battery controller knows full well the state of your device's battery. There are plenty of apps with which you can check the health of your battery on iOS devices. I use Battery Life.
well. Apple could have done what some others have done: write the OS with switches so that "new" functions that don't exist in old phones are walled off. old phones get security code, but not non-functional function code. but, of course, that would mean old phone remain just as usable as before.
Why not let the customer decide? Most Android phones don't have user replaceable batteries either. Personally, I hope this will push cell phone manufacturers to make battery replacements a more normal occurrence, and to remind customers that batteries don't live forever.
"As batteries degrade over time and the cell impedance also rises also in function of the state of charge and temperature.." For lithium-ion polymer battery, the cell impedance is very stable as the battery ages. That may be why LG and Samsung say they are not throttling the clocks like Apple is doing.
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Raniz - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
"feature"Chaitanya - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
iFeature.peevee - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
And... the insufficient battery capacity finally bites the users in the a$$.sonny73n - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
F*#k I just accidentally updated my iPhone 6s. Now it's slow as f. I knew this scam long ago but the damn update reminder kept popping up. Usually I filled my iPhone with videos so it can't automatically download the update. F#*k Apple! Someone from California is filling a class action lawsuit against them right now about this bs. This is my last iPhone. People please do not support this evil. Boycott iDevices!sonicmerlin - Wednesday, December 27, 2017 - link
Yeah... iOS 11 slowed down my iPhone 6S tremendously. I get so much cruddy lag switching between apps while voice chatting. And apps are slow to open. It's kind of amazing how slow it's gotten.rrinker - Thursday, January 4, 2018 - link
My 5S is still working just fine after iOS 11. I don't notice any slowness in switching between apps. But I also don't have 50 things open at once.eddman - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Instead of secretly slowing the phone down, why not simply show a notification telling the user to get the phone to a care center and get the battery replaced in order to restore full capability?I'm not the one to go for the "evil corporations" angle, but it seems they really don't want people to keep their older phones.
Dgh - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
PEOPLE CAN .... people do not know but they can since 10.2.1 .... almost 1 year ... settings > batteryhttps://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207453
shabby - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
"Published Date: Nov 29, 2017"Dgh - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
So ? Was before all hell broke out ... but it does not matter ... it was in IOS for the last year.eddman - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
At what point this message comes up? It says "When a battery gets closer to the end of its lifespan", but when is that exactly? 20% health? 50%? The performance drop seems to start much earlier than that.picka - Tuesday, December 26, 2017 - link
Mi iPhone SE is locked at 911MHz for hours with battery wear at 5%. The phone is 6 months old. It is definitely planned obsolescence.ikjadoon - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
You poor soul. This notification does NOT trigger when this SoC throttling occurs.That’s the entire issue, man. People have batteries trying to prevent suicide by entering a protected mode that kills SoC performance...yet Apple refuses to let you know that.
Dgh - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
It actually does .... throttling does not change the CONDITION of the battery .... poor maneddman - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
You seem to have completely missed the point. It's not that the throttling changes the condition of the battery; it's that once the battery health drops to a certain point, far from the end of its lifespan (I don't know the percentage), the processor's max frequency, and its performance as result, drops significantly. It seems that the user is not notified of this drop.That link you posted is for when the battery is nearing death.
Dgh - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
I know what the issue is. Also posted a link that shows this is no apple design flaw but others have the same issue. Removed.That in combination withbthe fact the world hardly knows IOS gives a message .... i think all critics ar a bit harsh ( BUT RIGHT in apple failing to communicate ... and they should be accountable )
eddman - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
You keep repeating the same thing. IOS does NOT give any message about reduced performance, it just says "need to be serviced" and it does happen long before reaching critical levels.sonny73n - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
You think critics are harsh? Then let me roll back to iOS 9.picka - Tuesday, December 26, 2017 - link
They should be accountable for slowing down my phone when it is not my choice. I have a 6 months old SE that has battery wear of 5% and yet my phone is not operating at max frequency. I bought a 1.85GHz phone and I expect it to work at that frequency unless I decide to put it in low power mode myself. Apple should provide a toggle like on Samsung, having performance mode or whatever. What percentage battery wear does Apple consider unhealthy and is throttling. My battery is pretty much new and I get half the perfomance. There are some blips to 1.5 or 1.85GHz and the difference is night and day.Dgh - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Google bro before you tell YOUR thruth.Below a guy posted when he had the message. Later he posted his battery capacity ... thats a looooong way from death and i have the throttling starts at 75%
“I just noticed this message on mine today. The last month I've been noticing lots of weird battery drain/shutdown issues, so not surprised. This is on a iPhone 6 bought at launch, so just under 2.5 years old”
And then
“FYI: just ran some battery apps - they put mine at 55-61% health (i.e. 1000 or 1100 mAh down from 1810mAh)”
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/your-iphone-b...
Jon Tseng - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
"it's that once the battery health drops to a certain point, far from the end of its lifespan (I don't know the percentage), the processor's max frequency, and its performance as result, drops significantly."I think that's slightly simplistic. It's not that max frequency as a whole is borked - it's that max frequency during load spikes (think: the few seconds when you're loading up an app) is limited.
So it's not performance as a whole that's limited.its performance in the few seconds you're under load that gets limited.
If that stops the device shutting off it seems a reasonable trade off to me, given how long it might otherwise take to reboot.
Dgh - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
Is that true ? Where dis u find that out ?Because if you are right .... that changes the whole discussion
Jon Tseng - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
Yeah... Read apples original statement and the Techcrunch write up:https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/20/apple-addresses-...
The key point is the disclosure the fix is to smooth "instantaneous" peaks of performance. Basically when there are spikes in processor load.
The problem is a benchmark is basically a torture test which always runs the processor at full load... Effectively it is a permanent performance spike.
IMHO unlikely to bear much resemblance to real world experience.
TL;DR If you think your iPhone is slowing during everyday usage it's almost certainly not due to this issue.
Dgh - Saturday, December 23, 2017 - link
Thanks ... thats an impotant thing to know .... and website should address .... i think people do not understand this .... and think the phone is generally downclockedThanks again
eddman - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
I know about that, and that actually makes it worse. The high frequency is most needed under those heavy load spikes in order to finish the task ASAP and keep the phone as responsive as possible. It's the main reason for modern phones being so fluid.Jon Tseng - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
Depends. Some conjecture here, but if it's say loading an app you have latency anyhow. So it's a 1 sec or 1.5 sec load times doesn't really make much difference, if you are smooth once it's loaded.Second use case I'm thinking about is if you are just running a heavy duty workload which isn't utilising all cores. Could be that this use case doesn't trigger a restriction and so phone responsiveness isn't affected by the gating process.
The key point is no one is bothering to ask or investigate the simple question "how often does this happen in real world use cases" as opposed to torture test benchmarks.
Until you have established this basic context you can't really have a meaningful debate on the issue. People are just assuming "omg peak frequency is bring throttled" when that is almost certainly the one thing that is NOT happening.
eddman - Saturday, December 23, 2017 - link
It is being throttled when it is needed the most. The ENTIRE reason for modern phones' responsiveness is the instantaneous high clock speeds. Besides, 1 - 1.5 seconds is quite noticeable. Also, there are a lot of computationally intensive instances besides loading where instant high performance is needed.Actually, that's not even the point. The point is that apple did not inform users that their phones would actually drop in performance down the line, something that no one expected to be the case.
Edvard - Saturday, December 23, 2017 - link
That makes absolutely zero sense.The SOC when not under load is throttled back already to conserve battery, If the SOC is now being throttled under load then it is now being throttled when you actually need it, and it effectively means a hard cap on the clock speed.
Looked at another way you are trying to argue that a motorbike with a restrictor kit (to cap BHP for licensing purposes or whatever) does not always slow the performance of the bike, and you are correct... it does not slow the performance of the bike when it is idle. It does however slow the performance of the bike when you actually want the thing to move.
Whilst the PR team over at Apple hq can spin it as a protective measure to prevent unexpected shutdown (or battery damage), if that was their intention then the phone would clearly and obviously tell you it needs a battery replacement to maintain its slick operation. In hiding this fact, Apple know that they will shift millions of new phones as users become irritated at their performance.
Dgh - Sunday, December 24, 2017 - link
Black white example :I can image i start pokemon on an iphone 6 .... starting the app causes a spike. That spike is thottled. So perhaps slower loading of pokemon.
Once loaded ... pokemon in memory ... graphics calculated ... no spiking and pokemon runs a smooth gaming experiense for 30 mins.
Again black and white example huh. But totaly different then starting pokemon and it runs completely slow and downthrottled for 30 mins making it unplayable.
In my humble oppinion this changes stuf ... and if this way of downthrottling is the case ( only a few secs during spikes ) ... many people are misunderstanding what actually is happenning.
And i agree that apple ahould be more clear.
Dgh - Sunday, December 24, 2017 - link
Another examplePerhaps a spike happens with a “heavy game” like pokemon ... but no spike with simple stuff like banking or safari.
Again ... in my oppinion ... something completely different then an overall slow phone.
Black what .... if i use my phone for 30 mins with pokemon / banking / safari / email ... and it was downthrottled for 3 secconds in that 30 mins .... whats the problem ??
Dgh - Sunday, December 24, 2017 - link
Black what = black/white exampleeddman - Sunday, December 24, 2017 - link
It's not a matter of opinion. It's quite objective. A phone with a capped instant-load max frequency will perform slower and more sluggish, even in regular daily tasks. It might not be a massive difference but it will be noticeable.It would not have been an issue if apple informed about this beforehand, but they didn't, hence the current criticism.
As a user who paid good money, you should not be defending such practices, unless you do want companies to take advantage.
picka - Tuesday, December 26, 2017 - link
Pretty much my new SE is throttled with a still very good battery. Why is it clocked at 911MHz when charging. Battery issue my ass.picka - Tuesday, December 26, 2017 - link
Battery wear 5% on my SE. Geekbench is constantly at iPhone 6 level with the CPU locked at 911MHz SP 1400 MP 2500. If this was to save battery, then why is it still throttled when connected to a charger. I call BS on battery issue and will go with the planned obsolescence.renegade800x - Thursday, December 28, 2017 - link
So what happens if you need max power after the few seconds load?And first of all, why not at least tell your buyers that you are implementing this algorithm that will abusively protect their devices at the expense of performance, how much performance and how much protection.
Thing is now they can half your performance as soon as your battery drops to 90% and it doesn't take long for that.. the battery will surely continue to lose capacity and you will also get the iOS notification at 75% or 50% but you will spend the months getting there with a slow device, certainly not what you paid for in the store.
Apple is more and more disappointing nowadays..
picka - Tuesday, December 26, 2017 - link
My battery wear is 5% and yet SE is locked at 911MHz for the past day.Dgh - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Funny .... i just posted a link to the samsung support centre ... that proves apple is not the onlyone .... removedshabby - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Good excuse to basically force people to update their phone because it's running slow.nathanddrews - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Simple solution: replaceable battery.PeachNCream - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
The iPhones are basically flagship devices right? Are there any flagship phones on the Android side that have a battery that's intended for user replacement? (Yeah, I get that you can take apart your phone and go through the trouble of battery replacement yourself even when they're sealed inside, but I don't think I should have to go through that sort of trouble just for a battery swap.) It seems like just the cheap budget handsets have removable batteries which is kind of crazy when you think about it since they're more likely to last longer despite starting out life with a performance and storage capacity disadvantage just because the person that owns it can buy a new battery if she wants.Demi9OD - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
LG V20 was the last. I just side-graded my HTC 10 that was about 18 months old to a new V20 for $300, primarily for the battery. Sick of paying $600+ for flagships that need to be charged three times a day after a year.nathanddrews - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
I don't know about current flagships, but it will be a cold day in hell before I let go of my Galaxy S5 with SD slot and removable battery.PeachNCream - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Oh wow, thanks for the tip! The V20 looks like a decent phone and I see there's even some extended batteries available from Amazon. I might have to look into getting one.BigSchu22 - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
I just bought a cheap, brand new, non carrier variant V20 and I love it. The quad DAC sounds amazing, giant screen, IR blaster, headphone jack, USB c, SD card, dual lens camera. Its a media beast. No wireless charge, but it has a nice aluminum body instead.peevee - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
LG phones die after 2 years like they are made to do it. Even Nexus 5x.idealego - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
My 5-year-old LG Nexus 4 is still working perfectly.Demi9OD - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
If I am still getting 3200mAh worth of time out of a phone after two years that will be better than any other phone I've ever owned.silverblue - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
My Nexus 6P lost a fair whack of performance, and even after a full wipe, battery performance is less than half what it was two years back. I'm on an HTC U11 now, so I'll keep an eye on that, but I'll be interested to see if Huawei did this as well. Performance could also have been damaged by a degradation of storage within the 6P, not that it was stellar to begin with.vanilla_gorilla - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
>Yeah, I get that you can take apart your phone and go through the trouble of battery replacement yourself even when they're sealed inside, but I don't think I should have to go through that sort of trouble just for a battery swap.It takes about 5 minutes and you do it at most once a year. You can find videos of literal children doing it on youtube. Or you can have Apple do it for you (for free if you have AppleCare).
I just don't think this is the big deal people make it out to be.
PeachNCream - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
I've seen you posting similar comments like this before. Sorry, I'm not getting into that kind of discussion.FreckledTrout - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
For my iPhone 7 its only a 29 step process on ifixit to replace the battery. Everyone should be doing it. LOL your post is humorous. Pretty much everyone who buys an iPhone should not be pulling it apart to replace the battery, ever.sonny73n - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
I'm not worried about replacing the battery myself. I'm worried about Apple just implanted another software which probably always running in the background of my iPhone to monitor the battery current. But their main purpose is just to slower the older models out so people have to buy new ones.BOYCOTT APPLE!
Aloonatic - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
AFAIK, the user that highlighted this also stated that the phone was still slow when connected to their mains charger, which is what I see a lot of Apply phone users do around the office (I don't see and Android users do the same but then many Android users don't use their phones so much) and as they are suing mains power the battery excuses should not exist, exposing this as the BS excuse that it is.If this had come out a few weeks ago, before Android 8.1 came out, I'd have said that Google were probably doing something similar as since the Oreo update my Nexus 5x was frustrating and almost impossible to use at times, but 8.1 appears to have fixed most of the issues that I've noticed.
Demi9OD - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
I wonder if once you reach the battery threshold for slowing your CPU down, if replacing the battery or running it while plugged in can even reverse the throttling? Or is performance permanently crippled in software if you don't replace your battery soon enough?mkaibear - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
From the original thread it looks like once you replace the battery it goes back up to speed. Doesn't do it if you're running it from the mains though.haukionkannel - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Jep. So if you change the battery, the speed is again just as new.The Apple did have two alternatives in here. Reduce the time phone is useable, (like most phone maker do) or reduce the speed to maintain long operation time.
Hard choice in some situations. But as a customer I would like to make that decision, but Apple rule is to make all choices so that customer does not have to worry those.
It has worked well to Apple, so most likely they keep on making these decisions, because their devices sell well, because end user don't have to decide anything, except the color of the phone.
sonny73n - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
@natanddrewsBullshit. I charged my iPhone 6s less than 50 times since I bought it brand new sealed in box. The battery is healthy but since the accidental update, the performance drops noticably.
Jon Tseng - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
"Simple solution: replaceable battery."I think what you meant to say is "replaceable battery and thicker and less sleek design"
Unfortunately when it comes to basic design mechanics there is no free lunch...
lilmoe - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Well yea, what other incentive do Apple users have for upgrading?The thing is, this isn't anything new. This didn't start with this "battery issue" thing which clearly is a major design flaw in the battery, platform or both. iPhones slow down considerably with each major update and iPhone users will be more than happy to lie about it.
Almost ALL iPhone users I know make it a life decision to update since they KNOW pretty darn well that it's going to slow their phone. In the matter of fact, the question I get the most from them is "will update x slow down my phone?"
This isn't about newer software being more taxing and resource intensive. This is about deliberate obsolescence that EVERYONE has denied despite numerous accusations from iPhone users.
I don't know, maybe this would focus more light on this really old issue and make tech blogs investigate this "dark secret" they've been trying to hide while falsely accusing other platforms of that same fault.
phillyboy - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Keep drinking that Kool-Aid, buddy. "Dark secret" lolMy wife's original 5S phone, with the original battery, still works great and is still supported by Apple, something that the two-year-lifecycle Android phone vendors don't seem to give a shit about long term. Minus Google.
haukionkannel - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
So true. Apple products are much longer usable than Android devices.It is a design choice...
lilmoe - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Took you a while to jump in and tell your cute little lies.Keep taking your shill pill in the morning bro. Keep giving Apple excuses to screw their customers over. At this point, it seems that they like it.
hammer256 - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
10W spikes translates to 3-4A of peak current from the battery, depends on the efficiency of the PMIC. That's discharging the battery at more than 1C (2C probably for smaller batteries), which can be tough when the battery gets older. I'm guessing the PMIC doesn't have anything much to buffer the spikes because of the limited space.TheITS - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
"My phone doesn't feel as snappy as it used to, must be getting old, maybe I should upgrade. Look at how quick these new ones are!"Of course, there is also a slim chance that they're actually doing what they can to protect people's devices and provide a solid user experiences to customers with devices a few years old so that they don't need to upgrade for a few more years.
lilmoe - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
BS.If they were worried about their users, they would be more transparent about the issue and actually TELL their users that "hey, we believe your battery needs to be changed, so we'll make your device run slower until you change the battery, since we'll never admit to a design flaw in our products".
Gunbuster - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Considering Apple offers a battery replacement service this is inexcusable. And it's not a small CPU speed drop. Another article showed it goes from 1400mhz to 600.WinterCharm - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
That's because they were using an iPhone 6 which is effectively 3 years old, with over 1095 cycles on it, which means the battery is in the 40% health range --- the drop is far less steep at 500 cycles, when battery health is at 80% (which is what apple's batteries are rated for).The real issue is that they should be showing the notification at 500 charge cycles, since that's their rated battery life.
Ian Cutress - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
I had a letter through the post, years and years ago, saying that my 5-year-old iPod could potentially have a battery issue and they were replacing them. I sent it in, and came back with the latest model.Somehow I think a mass recall of iPhone 6 units would actually hit the bottom line a lot more than a bunch of 5-year-old iPods did.
id4andrei - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Ian, I think there was a battery issue with the 6s that made Apple recall certain models by serial number. Apple might have realized that the problem is larger than it seems and faced a total recall of iphone 6s. They introduced this update right after these battery issues appeared and swept it all under the rug.WinterCharm - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
They do notify you when your battery starts to die.But the notification comes well after the 500 cycles... and closer to 750, at which point battery health is around 50%. (too late) They should have it come after 500 cycles, when battery health is around 80%
lilmoe - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Do they also notify the user about the drop in performance......?philehidiot - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Maybe they should twist this properly. How about saying "our phones are built to a high standard and are very long lasting but we are held back by limitations in battery technology. Therefore, if you choose to keep your Apple phone running for a long time (and given the investment as well you might), you should see it like a car. It's an expensive investment designed to run and run but there are parts which will need servicing and replacing as a matter of course but most phones don't last as long as ours so you never normally run into this problem. You wouldn't choose to replace your entire car just because the tyres were worn and with our well built phones you don't have to replace the whole phone just because of a worn battery".This is of course including a fair amount of marketing bullshit but equally it is relatively true. iPhones are high end products and they do endure so it's easily spun into a decent narrative that disses other companies and promotes theirs.
vanilla_gorilla - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
I'm an iPhone user, my phone runs fine, I think most of these comments are hyperbole -- but I agree with this. If the phone has detected that the battery has lost enough life that it is throttling performance it should notify the user.zorxd - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
why didn't they inform the user about the existence of such "feature"?shabby - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Because apple knows best... this should at least be a toggle option somewhere in the settings menu.Jon Tseng - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
Because they don't tell users about every feature. Juat same as they didn't tell X users about the feature that mutes the ringtone when you're looking at it. It's just not their style.They design a system to work as best as they want and let people have it on a take it or leave it basis.
lilmoe - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
This pisses me off because I've seen so many iPhone users buy new iPhones because their 1 or 2 year old iPhones become slow and laggy to the point where OCD starts kicking in.Apple's processors should be very capable of handling ALL modern software and eye candy. Or, so they are advertise by all....
Stuka87 - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Those iPhone users are obviously hunting for a reason to upgrade. An iPhone does not feel "laggy" after only two years. 3-4 years, sure, then the OS starts to outrun the performance of the phone. And this issue has nothing to do with the SoC anyway.The issue is with the battery aging. And I have had this EXACT issue happen, where the phone randomly shuts down when CPU usage spikes. Replacing the battery does fix it. This OS update always would have prevented the shutdowns.
pennyfan87 - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
I blame Anand.philehidiot - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Ha, now that's funny!Dragonstongue - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
is funny seeing as Apple tends to be near or the most expensive phones in their class and tend to also offer the lowest capacity batteries for them, they cannot use excuse of because they are thinner or whatever, cause many different Android models are just as thin (or thinner) yet offer higher capacity on a similar or higher spec phone.They seem to do "ok" for the battery capacity so they are well designed, but, when they want a higher $ premium, they should IMO also be offering a better experience, a simple change, user replaceable battery, and a default higher capacity battery so instead of the seemingly normal Apple way of what ~1400Mah batteries, they should be doing in the 2800+ range (I know some models are of decent size, but, it is not a "space constraint" thing, others offer quite large batteries in comparison..LG X power 2 4500Mah battery compared to say Iphone 8 Plus "rated" 2691, so the XP2 is a 59.8% larger capacity)
Anyways, all phone makers need to think twice about specs, one of these things have to be a larger battery and enough thickness to hold up to at least some abuse ^.^
Jon Tseng - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
Bear in mind user replaceable battery also means thicker device or less battery capacity. Apple decided that actually represents a worse user experience. Of course if you disagree you can just shop elsewhere - I would recommend a Xiaomi Redmi 4000mah FTW.maxijazz - Tuesday, December 26, 2017 - link
Apple should use twice bigger batteries. Side-effect would be camera bump-up disappear. I don't think anyone would complain about 2mm increased thickness. That would be excellent customer experience. But it would significantly reduce Apple's margins.jjj - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Apple should sell imaginary products, both Apple and their customers would be better off that way.FunBunny2 - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
what was it that Gates said when each iteration of Windoze trashed existing machines? "Let the hardware fix it." back in those days CPU performance was moving from the blade of the hockey stick to the shaft, if you get the analogy. these days, SoC performance is on the flattening top of that common lazy S-curve you've all seen. and, of course, the bigger issue is that battery performance has never been on the shaft of its hockey stick.so, the obvious answer is that Apple is bloating phoneOS just the way Gates did to Windoze to drive hardware sales. in Gates case, he only got come of the candy. Jobs/Cook get it all.
philehidiot - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
To me, this works along the same lines as the S8 being so pretty but so fragile. It's only going to impress reviewers as everyone else has to buy a case to stop it shattering and as a result is denied the benefit of all the "oh it's so nice to hold" and "ooh pretty glass". This is clearly a design choice. You don't make a phone with a battery that you know behaves like this (you're gonna test its endurance to ensure it's suitable) and then not know that your peak draw exceeds what an ageing battery can pump out.This is a choice to give the excellent single threaded chooch factor for reviewers and people who are raving about their new phones whilst the battery is capable but in the knowledge that this will quickly diminish over time and that the peak power draw will have to come down. You could argue that a car that starts off with 100 bhp and will lose some of this over time as part of wear and tear but that would be bollocks. You design the car with wear and entropy in mind to ensure that it will perform adequately for its expected life. This is akin to gaming the benchmarks in my book because they know this performance isn't sustainable and that performance which is seen by reviewers is not representative of what you'll get down the line. It's a little bit like sticking an i5 in the older (circa 2011) MacBook airs which performs amazingly for a few minutes and then shits itself with the heat and throttles to the point where youtube is a challenge too far. I'm sure benchmarks were in the mind of the people who made that design choice. Oh, no.
When this is part of the technology, such as an empty Vs full SSD it can be tested for and forgiven. In this case it is a design choice which has been hidden from customers. I wonder how many thousands / millions have upgraded their iPhone to a new model when a battery replacement for a tenth of the cost would have sufficed? This is another nail in the Apple shaped coffin for me (actually, it's a bloody axe). I bought a MacBook Air a while back and, whilst I'm exceedingly happy with the product itself, when the charger broke the customer service was utterly shit. Smelly dogshit shit. I had "Apple Care," was treated like scum in their store (having very recently dropped over a grand in there, they should have been licking my feet knowing I had money and was possibly going to spend it there) and then looked at reviews of their chargers (which cost £60!) which showed that failure was practically guaranteed after around 18 months. Just after the 12 month warranty runs out. Funny that. I bought a cheap generic one and it's still going 4 years on. I can not abide treating your customers in this manner. The MacBook now has Linux on. It's better this way. There are now Windows laptops which fulfil my criteria (at the time there was only the Air) and so I won't be needing to "invest" in a "we're so superior" Apple cult product again.
Now, where can I get a Tesla?
jsntech - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Does this only affect iPhones or does it also apply to iPads?Total Meltdowner - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Samsung Galaxy S6 ACTIVE owner here. The battery in this this is freaking amazing. I've had the device since it was released and it lasts a solid 24 hours under use. Granted, I always have bluetooth and gps tracker off (unless I need).I can take this phone apart and replace the battery as well. Really love this phone. I wish these companies made more durable phones with replaceable batteries.
ads295 - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
The Active series is the best variant of the Galaxy Sx. Unfortunately no one outside the US gets to see them. I'd probably buy an S7 Active and keep it for a decade - last flagship with a half-decent screen size.rocky12345 - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
So is this what Apple would call a feature then..lol They make it like they are trying to protect you from sudden shut downs when the real truth is they want you to upgrade to a new phone. I guess they figure if you get upset enough with your old phone acting like it is getting slow you will just walk into a Apple store or a provider and upgrade to a new and improved iPhone that will be fast fast fast.I still am on a Samsung Galaxy S5 & have never changed the battery it is over three years old. It has never shut down do to cold or got slower IT JUST WORKS as it should. I still charge it once every 4-5 days like I did when it was new.
So either Apples design is bad or their batteries are weak to begin with take your pick. It could be just pre planned to make you have to upgrade every couple of years even though your phone would have been just fine if they did not mess with the power & performance levels.
diehardmacfan - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Well yeah it's hard to slow down a phone with updates if they stop updating it.Total Meltdowner - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Apple and Samsung both do the planned obsolescence thing. Samgsun has had class action lawsuits filed (and samsung lost) for their tv capacitors failing right around when their warranty expires.Apple does it with software, they just bloat up the system, or in this case slow down the cpu.. in order to get the user to become frustrated and buy a new device.
They should be sued over this. Apple should be sued.
rocky12345 - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
I got two Samsung TV's one from 2011 a Plasma 43 inch which has been used for hundreds of hours so far & the other is from 2015 a LCD LED backlit 60 inch which has been used a lot as well without issues on either of them (Knock on wood).I do agree if these companies do this on purpose then they should be sued for their actions. Then again if Apple knew about this all the way back to the early iPhones then they should have fixed it a long long time ago and redesigned their phones in such a way that this would become less of a problem for the end users. BY just continuing to do the same thing is just pure bad form on their part at least Samsung fixed their problem in the TV's & moved past it. Apple being a multi billion dollar company has more than enough resources to design phones and other devices that would not have these issues. It may be time for them to invest more money into their designs or fire their design team and hire new people better yet stop using Foxxconn as their go to company to put these devices together.
FunBunny2 - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
"Apple and Samsung both do the planned obsolescence thing. "which was invented, in modern-ish history, by American car companies in the 1950s. not a new thing.
asmian - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Actually, it's way older than that. I'm sure I saw a documentary that explained about one of the oldest cartels discovered being the one that carved up the early lightbulb industry around the turn of the 20th Century, where all the manufacturers, US and German mostly, colluded to ensure that the bulbs didn't last too long and no-one broke ranks with any longer-lasting product. That really was the start of modern international corporatism (as opposed to simple capitalism).FunBunny2 - Sunday, December 24, 2017 - link
"Actually, it's way older than that."here: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/dawn-of-ele...
praktik - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
It could be that it's a universal issue, but Apple's cure is worse than the disease, and symptoms related to the battery wear aren't that noticeable to end users.jimc092 - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
What isn't stated in the article is what counts as a charge discharge cycle.It would be useful if figures were given for
1: Full charge till phone shuts down. Then full recharge.
2: Full charge till 75% of battery used. Then full recharge.
3: Full charge till 50% of battery used. Then full recharge.
2: Full charge till 25% of battery used. Then full recharge.
My phone is almost always on charge, at my desk, at home and work, and in my car.
I doubt that my usage counts as 3 recharges per day.
HStewart - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
What Apple needs to have a way to reduce notifications and such. But lets be fair, this is not just Apple (IE Windows Android ... )Dgh - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Why does this have to do with an APPLE hardware issue ... see below ... found on US samsung support with totaly different hardware ... SAME ISSUE. Think its more a genral lithium ion issuehttps://us.community.samsung.com/t5/Galaxy-S-Phone...
04-21-2017 03:33 AM
Re: S7 Edge battery drain
Hi,
My battery has been getting progressively worse over the past few months and now just drains and switches off when the battery gets to 35% or so - it is then completely drained. 0%. (I had just checked battery prior to this happening and it said 4.5hrs left)
Can you help. Is my battery faulty? Phone is only 8 months old.
Hurr Durr - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
It`s just a standard faulty battery versus explicit throttling of the CPU. No shill points for you.forgot2yield28 - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
The issue probably isn't unique to Apple phones. The Nexus 6P is notorious for sudden shutdowns at 20% battery remaining or greater, much the same as iPhone users were experiencing last year; the issue is reportedly resolved by installing a new battery. To my knowledge, Google never officially acknowledged the issue or pushed a software update akin to what Apple has done to induce throttling (I almost wish they had, I'd rather have a slower device than a dead device, although they should have told users what they were doing).id4andrei - Thursday, December 21, 2017 - link
Something to remember. With this hidden behavior Apple games the conditions that need to be met for a free battery replacement. You have been robbed of free warranty service. This is class action material.jb510 - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
When my iPhome 6 was 18 months old and still under AppleCare it started spontaneously dying when the battery remaining was 40% and I did something like shoot a video. Apple wouldn’t replace the battery because I wasn’t on the current OS and because the battery did “test” out of spec. Sure enough months later when I finally gave up my jailbreak and updated the sudden shutdowns stopped too, but now the phone was slow as heck.... so... I replaced it.This is the key thing, no one is defining what an old battery is... in my case it should have been a manufactures defect under warranty replace,met and wasn’t because the software “fixed” it.
Phones should operate normally, full power, for at least their warranty duration, don’t you think?
jb510 - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
^ did not test out of spec ^lmcd - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
People are complaining about this but this would be a positive feature that would improve the functionality of my Nokia Lumia 929, which has a degraded battery.Hurr Durr - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
I doubt whatever early Snapdragon it has inside would do anything but infuriate you by the slowdowns. Hell, and I was thinking about iPhone SE after my 730 goes four years old...edzieba - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
This does potentially reveal something about Apple's perceived SoC performance advantage: if other SoCs are not vulnerable to this issue, then Apple's performance advantage may be less down to process or architecture, and more down to keeping things hot-clocked to the edge of what the batteries are capable of delivering. With the cat out of the bag, other vendors may start using the same trick.superunknown98 - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
I think this is clearly either a defect in the batteries Apple has used or an engineering shortcoming. Shouldn't Apple design it's lithium-ion batteries with a "spare area" much like an SSD has more capacity than is usable in case of defective cells? Much like a Tesla, shouldn't the battery not charge to 100% and drain below 20% to keep the battery from outright dying? I understand that eventually a battery will not provide enough voltage or current to keep the phone on but shouldn't this be well after the devices useful life?Jon Tseng - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
Has anyone bothered to check how often this happens before rushing to judgement?If it's only during a few seconds of peak load, it seems a sensible and worthwhile optimisation to make if it prevents device shutdown.
Jon Tseng - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
Nope. Thought not.After all let's not let figuring out some basic context get in the way of a good argument..
watzupken - Monday, December 25, 2017 - link
While it sounds sensible to throttle the device to avoid the sudden shutdown, Apple could have been forthcoming about it. People can then decide if they would like to upgrade their OS. As a 6S user, there is not much of an impact for my usage, but for those that uses it for gaming and such will see a drop in performance. The throttle is very aggressive, since it seems to lose half of the clockspeed.watzupken - Friday, December 22, 2017 - link
I personally feel it is a very dodgy move. It could be done for the benefit of consumers, but why keep it a secret until they are caught doing it? When I buy say an iPhone X because of its performance improvement, I expect it to behave the same after a year or even longer. Based on some investigations I read, the clockspeed is drastically lower after the firmware updates, i.e. 600Mhz vs 1.4Ghz. If it is because of battery life, I think the throttle is way too heavy handed. It almost sounded like a deliberate reduction in performance to entice people to switch. Also, why only on iPhone 6 onwards, and not iPads and older iPhones? All these raises more questions about Apple's intent. Anyway true enough, they are already hit with law suits, which is not unexpected. One less reason to go back to Apple until they fix their shop. There are way too many missteps from them this year and they ought to rethink their strategy in the new year instead of being complacent.OreoCookie - Thursday, December 28, 2017 - link
I don't think this is the case. I have had my iPhone 5 with an older battery die on me (at 50 % charged), and throttling is definitely better than just dying. Neither is in Apple's interests, because it sells iPhones by making customers happy. This whole conspiracy theory makes no sense.Older phones not crashing because the battery can no longer support the energy draw is definitely a bad user experience. But Apple should have been honest and given the user a message: Your battery is old and should be replaced. Because of that, you may see slower performance.
amihart - Sunday, December 24, 2017 - link
What if I get my phone serviced or buy a refurbished phone, or just replace the battery myself? To my knowledge, phones don't have a way of detecting the age of a battery, so this will affect everyone no matter how new their battery is... Even if this were accurate, it seems like a massively sweeping decision for a very minor problem that doesn't even effect hundreds of thousands of users. If Apple's argument is to be believed, those small amount of users would be benefited from less random shut downs of their phone, but they're also at the same time being hurt by a much slower phone and potentially even less battery life since they will spend way more time with the screen on waiting for apps to load. So even the people it's supposed to help are also being hurt at the same time... and then people who get their phone serviced are hurt even more and get no help. Even if you were to believe Apple's argument, this seems like a very poor solution. It should at least be optional, maybe give the user a warning saying "hey your phone is old, get your battery serviced, or enable our feature to improve performance [Yes][No]". If they did that, this argument would be a million times more believable...OreoCookie - Thursday, December 28, 2017 - link
That's not correct, the battery controller knows full well the state of your device's battery. There are plenty of apps with which you can check the health of your battery on iOS devices. I use Battery Life.FunBunny2 - Thursday, December 28, 2017 - link
well. Apple could have done what some others have done: write the OS with switches so that "new" functions that don't exist in old phones are walled off. old phones get security code, but not non-functional function code. but, of course, that would mean old phone remain just as usable as before.Tim: "don't you dare do that!!"
vladpetric - Thursday, December 28, 2017 - link
If that's not a good argument for mandating replaceable batteries, I don't know what is :)OreoCookie - Thursday, December 28, 2017 - link
Why not let the customer decide? Most Android phones don't have user replaceable batteries either. Personally, I hope this will push cell phone manufacturers to make battery replacements a more normal occurrence, and to remind customers that batteries don't live forever.Albertc - Friday, December 29, 2017 - link
"As batteries degrade over time and the cell impedance also rises also in function of the state of charge and temperature.."For lithium-ion polymer battery, the cell impedance is very stable as the battery ages. That may be why LG and Samsung say they are not throttling the clocks like Apple is doing.
twtech - Sunday, December 31, 2017 - link
This seems like the sort of thing class action lawsuits are made for.THEchasein8tor - Thursday, January 4, 2018 - link
lol, switch to Android