Apple apologizes for slowing down your iphones

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

https://www.apple.com/iphone-battery-and-performance/

"We’ve been hearing feedback from our customers about the way we handle performance for iPhones with older batteries and how we have communicated that process. We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down. We apologize. There’s been a lot of misunderstanding about this issue, so we would like to clarify and let you know about some changes we’re making.

First and foremost, we have never — and would never — do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades. Our goal has always been to create products that our customers love, and making iPhones last as long as possible is an important part of that"

We all knew the iPhones/iPads were going ever worse with every new iOS software update, but I wonder what do the apple fanboys have to say, if anything, other than scream "conspiracy theory"?

The cheapest iPhone has a 1.8Ah battery IIANM, and any android phone of a similar price has about twice as much capacity (at least). Has Apple's bean counter department perhaps gone too far with that?

[Cyberdragon]

 

Tell those people...no shit Sherlock! That's what battery saver apps do, they slow your clock speed to keep the CPU cooler.

I think it's just a case of Apple being Crapple and their trying to hide everything from their customers came and bit them in the ass.   They're probably pissed that they have to dish out life support for their older phones and just hope the people will buy their new overpriced crapphones and stop complaining. They've dug themselves in a hole, their batteries suck, and battery savers will ruin performance. Hopefully, they lose some customers who finally realize their phones are crap and no amount of software can fix them.

[ataradov]

The argument "we want to extend the life of the battery" is flawed. What's the point of having a long life, if device is uselessly slow all that time?

[floobydust]

I call bullshit on Apple's explanation.

An older battery with higher internal resistance may sag, but cellphone TX current is much higher than the CPU+display.
GSM band can hit 2A TX peak at 3.7V max transmit power. Compared to the CPU, this is much more current.

Bet you guys lunch Apple also did this on iPads 

Worse yet, Apple only 'fessed up after users found this slowing down stuff. $250 billion cash reserves. Somebody turn down the greed.

[Neganur]

I do have an iPhone 6+ (the large screen version) and I was fairly happy with it as long as I didn't take it out into the cold since the battery dies from 30% to zero instantly.
So after 2.5 years I decided to give it a new battery (genuine, and the service report claimed the battery still had 87% capacity which I find hard to believe). The phone does all I want really, there is nothing the newer phones have or do that I feel I miss. All my sales pictures for example are made using the phone and I use it to answer work mails while commuting.

Anyway, I tried to hold off with updates until important bugfixes etc were convincing enough. But mostly I regretted updating because I usually lost an app that wasn't updated anymore, and you can't downgrade the fw.

With one of the last updates the phone has a very annoying delay on anything is does. Touch the messenger icon-> wait 5 seconds before app starts loading etc.

I don't know if it's the apps that are updated and optimised for a more powerful phone or the fw that slows the phone down but it pisses me off.
Especially since the phone actually has a battery saving mode to save battery if I choose to use it.
So why force this stupid delay on me, make it an option that I can enable!

[floobydust]

As an option, who's going to turn that on and off manually?

I find Apple products skimp on memory, so after a few iOS updates you have a slow, dead, turd of a product and are forced to buy new.
Planned obsolescence.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Planned obsolescence.

"Apple may face criminal charges in France over iPhone slowdown due to planned obsolescence laws"

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/apple-lawsuit-phones-slow-france-planned-obsolescence-legal-challenge-crime-a8132371.html

[Cyberdragon]

As an option, who's going to turn that on and off manually?

I find Apple products skimp on memory, so after a few iOS updates you have a slow, dead, turd of a product and are forced to buy new.
Planned obsolescence.

Yup. And no software is gonna fix a failing battery. So they just forced some software that limits your CPU speed, to try and life support their crap untill hopefully you shill out and buy and new one. Since its Apple and they don't care about anything other than shutting up whistleblowers, they didn't add anything that actually checks your battery, and it just affects everyone anyway.

Also, some Apple phones actually have decent memory, it's just that they don't allow expansion (no SD slot) so unlike with any other phone, when you run out of internal memory, you're just screwed.

[Neganur]

As an option, who's going to turn that on and off manually?

I don't understand your point. Of course I turn battery saving on if I'm concerned about conserving battery. It's a one-click to kill all background data connections, GPS, apps etc. Very useful.

Not sure about the memory thing, the firmware should handle that stuff. If a phone has insufficient memory to handle the features of a new firmware it should either deactivate those (probably not even compatible) features or simply stop providing updates to the phone. I don't expect this phone to last more than maybe 5-7 years in total. I think my phone has 1 GB RAM, the iPhone 10 has 3 GB? the others have 2 GB I think. So could be that app devs are expecting more memory available but I have no idea how the phone manages memory. So you could be right in assuming the RAM is an issue (but hey, my phone is now 5 models behind...)

In terms of user storage, I've been happy with 128 GB which is mostly filled with music or pictures. Anything bigger is on google drive, dropbox, onedrive etc. But maybe that's just Finland having cheap data connections.

[amyk]

Our goal has always been to create products that our customers love to keep buying after every year, and making iPhones last as longclose to the outside of the warranty period as possible is an important part of that

[Cyberdragon]

People like Rossmann are the only thing keeping old Macs going though.

Also...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/apple-iphone-slowdown-lawsuits-sued-slow-old-models-california-new-york-illinois-a8130276.html

[DTJ]

I call bullshit on Apple's explanation.

An older battery with higher internal resistance may sag, but cellphone TX current is much higher than the CPU+display.
GSM band can hit 2A TX peak at 3.7V max transmit power. Compared to the CPU, this is much more current.

Bet you guys lunch Apple also did this on iPads 

8<

That's what I thought. It sounds like a load of BS.

My iPad 2 now sits in the corner - one too many updates and its uselessly slow. A replacement sub $200 Lenovo tablet puts it to shame.

[tooki]

People have been crying “planned obsolescence” since the dawn of software updates. That doesn’t make it true. The advancement of technology makes some of it incompatible with good performance on older hardware. Such is life.

People have been lobbing this accusation at Apple for years and years, but the software update that introduced this deliberate throttling on phones with degraded batteries was only released a year ago. It literally cannot explain prior complaints. In fact, the throttling is only on a specific set of models even with the update installed.

Here is a rational analysis of the current situation, by someone who’s not even known for liking Apple. (The only mistakes he makes are the terminology around voltage vs current.)

https://youtu.be/8k3TT-T-vyw

[tooki]

I call bullshit on Apple's explanation.

An older battery with higher internal resistance may sag, but cellphone TX current is much higher than the CPU+display.
GSM band can hit 2A TX peak at 3.7V max transmit power. Compared to the CPU, this is much more current.

Bet you guys lunch Apple also did this on iPads 

Worse yet, Apple only 'fessed up after users found this slowing down stuff. $250 billion cash reserves. Somebody turn down the greed.

Uhhhh... the peak demand on the battery is the sum of all the components in use, not the single largest one among them. The current draw of the cellular radio can’t be throttled down (and have it work at all) so they throttle the thing that can be throttled without making it fail: the CPU and display.

I would expect that a real-world task that would create worst-case-scenario current draw would be transmitting live video (so cellular modem transmitting, camera module toiling, and GPU compressing video) with GPS navigation going in the background. The only things you can throttle are the CPU and display.


As for iPads, they’ve got much, much beefier batteries and haven’t been known to shut down spontaneously with degraded batteries, nor are they on Apple’s list of devices being throttled, nor have independent tests shown any such throttling. So I expect my free lunch, thanks!


For sure — and on this EVERYONE agrees including us Apple fans — Apple screwed the pooch in not communicating this new throttling “feature” and not providing an opt-out.

[tooki]

The argument "we want to extend the life of the battery" is flawed. What's the point of having a long life, if device is uselessly slow all that time?

That’s not the argument. The argument is: Degraded batteries have been causing sudden shutdowns under high current draw. To prevent sudden shutdowns and data loss, we are now throttling CPU on units with degraded batteries to ensure peak current demand doesn’t exceed the battery’s peak ability to supply current, causing excessive voltage sag.)

[ajb]

The argument "we want to extend the life of the battery" is flawed. What's the point of having a long life, if device is uselessly slow all that time?

Is it *uselessly* slow, though?  I don't have an iDevice, and benchmark numbers don't mean much in terms of UX.  There's certainly an amount of slowdown that's a fair tradeoff against rebooting under high utilization (IE, when you're probably trying to do something important!), but certainly not all users will agree on where that tradeoff should be made.

[Neganur]

[...] Is it *uselessly* slow, though?  [...]

in my case it does not make it useless, just annoying. It feels like "going back to a computer that doesn't have an SSD"-type of annoying.
The sudden shutdowns have stopped with the new battery, that's worth far more to me

[floobydust]

I thought the "slow down" is occurring for users outside of a phone call?  Running games, basic apps, web browsing etc. that kind of thing.
I can't see the CPU using that much power. This looks like the battery is simply worked hard. It is very compact 6S is 1,715 mAh, 6.91 Wh
Aging Li-ion batteries, I'm not sure how much internal resistance goes up, or how much heat is generated in it.

This is all still "hitting the fan" and is a serious misstep for Apple. The class-action law suits are just starting up.
I'll buy lunch after the dust settles and the iPad is not found part of the same scheme to limit battery stress.  My iPad battery gauge and a coulomb-meter tell me otherwise.

[ajb]

This is all still "hitting the fan" and is a serious misstep for Apple.

  If anything, I think their misstep was in not selling this as a feature -- "We've added power management features that will extend the useful life of older devices" or somesuch.  Even so, people would have figured out that meant some loss of performance and would have still been upset if they couldn't at least turn that feature off.  I expect there would have been some amount of fallout no matter how they handled this, but clearly trying to do this slyly has come back to bite them.

I do wonder how sophisticated the throttling actually is--do they measure actual battery performance under load and adapt, or is it a fixed cap based on the age/cycle count of the battery?

[@rt]

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[Halcyon]

This is yet another example of Apple telling the consumers what they want and how to use their devices, rather than the other way around. Unfortunately I have to use Apple devices at work and they are awful to work on. I'm yet to find anything good about them.

The last time I used an Apple product which was ahead of its time or truly innovative would probably have to be the PowerPC's from the 1990's.

Secure, stable, reliable and customisable have long ceased to be words which relate to Apple products, desktop or mobile. They are just toys.

[Bud]

I am still on iPhone 5, it works just fine.

[Buriedcode]

People have been crying “planned obsolescence” since the dawn of software updates. That doesn’t make it true. The advancement of technology makes some of it incompatible with good performance on older hardware. Such is life.

People have been lobbing this accusation at Apple for years and years, but the software update that introduced this deliberate throttling on phones with degraded batteries was only released a year ago. It literally cannot explain prior complaints. In fact, the throttling is only on a specific set of models even with the update installed.

Here is a rational analysis of the current situation, by someone who’s not even known for liking Apple. (The only mistakes he makes are the terminology around voltage vs current.)

https://youtu.be/8k3TT-T-vyw

As much as I dislike Apple, their marketing, and their fanbase, I'm with this guy.  They used the minimum possible battery capacity they could for size, and got stuck deciding between two unpleasant ways of dealing with aging batteries.  Neither would have been seen as acceptable.

Because they sell premium products, one obviously expects 'the best' but remember, we live in a world where people believe they can get longer battery life with weird "life hacks" and just expect their phone to provide the full specified battery for as long as they have their phone.  This cannot be achieved with 'standard' use of a phone (average CPU load, calls, WIFI, almost daily charging).

I understand why users feel cheated, but I believe this is based on false assumptions ("Apple intentionally slowed down their phones to force them to upgrade").  And then crying foul when someone questions this. The overreaction is silly.  But then again, I'm a Samsung customer.. I'm trying to imagine what I would do if I found out Samsung would do the same, but I can't because my phone's battery life is still pretty good after two years - which I didn't expect, I think maybe I'm just lucky.

[borjam]

All this battery issue has become a McGuffin for a serious (albeit unavoidable) issue.

Software updates make the devices slower, not because of some evil plot. It's much simpler: Software gets more complex. With new, more powerful devices, manufacturers release software with more features that need more memory (more on this later). Also applications get bigger, hence costlier to run. To add insult to injury, websites have became insane loads of javascript crap that can kill the performance of almost everything.

In the case of iOS 11 (and probably it has happened before) there were some serious bugs in the update process that somewhat hurt performance in certain devices. A backup - reset - restore cycle restored most of their original performance. Not all of course, due to the increased software complexity.

That said I've been using an iPhone 4S for more than 5 years and I stayed up to date with all the software updates. It was perfectly usable (except for browsing newspapers which, as I said, load MBs of crap) although, of course, within reason. I didn't use apps such as Facebook or Twitter which are known battery/CPU/memory hogs of course nor games.

In this thread (surprising in this forum!) there are people confusing memory with storage. And memory together with battery capacity is the limiting factor on mobile devices. The iPhone 4S had 512 MB of RAM memory and it was the state of the art at the time. The next model jumped to 1 GB.

I am still using a 2009 Macbook Pro and a 2010 Mac Pro. That's a lot of years. Why don't they get obsolete so quickly? Well, the MBPro has 4 GB of memory. Plenty for lots of applications. But the story with mobile devices is different. The 4S had 512 MB, the 5 jumped to 1 GB (double the memory!), the 6S, SE and 7 have 2 GB of memory (again, doubled!) and the 7S and X have 3 GB (a 50% increase over the previous models).

I imagine that the 2 GB models will take a longer time to have memory problems because the doubling memory capacity trend has probably ended. It makes much more sense to add 1 GB at a time if necessary. Also, 2 or 3 GB are a respectable memory size for a device that is not expected to be multitasking heavily with lots of heavy applications. But during the first ten years growth has been enormous. We'll see, I have just got an iPhone SE. Maybe I'll be cursing them in a year, who knows.

Now, before accusing Apple of being idiots(*) or scamming their customers, how are the rest of the devices? What's the useful life of a competitor's phone? How much RAM (not flash storage) do the models from the same time have? Are Apple idiots manufacturing devices limited to 512 MB or 1 GB of RAM while the rest sport 16 GB of RAM? I don't think so!

Actually they have behaved like idiots with this CPU throttling issue. And in this case all this bad press has been purely self inflicted. They should be more transparent with users. If only because of the time wasted by people affected by the slowdowns trying to diagnose the cause and doing all sorts of voodoo crap. It would have been much better to do what they have done now: be transparent, explain what and why you are doing it, and how to solve it. And I don't mean transparency just in the CPU throttling issue, but with OS update processes that, for some reason, can hurt performance seriously.

[Halcyon]

What's the useful life of a competitor's phone? How much RAM (not flash storage) do the models from the same time have? Are Apple idiots manufacturing devices limited to 512 MB or 1 GB of RAM while the rest sport 16 GB of RAM? I don't think so!

I'll have to disagree with you there. My last 3 or 4 Android phones have lasted several years and the ones I still have, still work and achieve reasonable battery life. Pre-smart phone days when I used Nokia phones between 1997 and say 2003-ish, those phones still work and even though their batteries are very old now, most of them still give me an hour or two.

For today's day-to-day battery performance, I would expect to get at least a solid 12 hours usage out of a smart phone/battery that is 1 year old. I don't use a lot of power-hungry applications, but I'm constantly on it checking e-mails, messages etc... and even with that kind of usage, I get a good 20 hours out of my Samsung Galaxy S8 without any additional power management on at all. With battery saver options, I get double to triple that with the same sort of usage as above.

As for RAM, that is something I do use a lot of, switching between applications (most of which still run in the background because I need them to). Of the 4GB of RAM available, I generally use about 3GB of it at any given moment (right now I have 500MB RAM free on my phone). Had that been an iPhone X, I would have had to have started closing applications to free up memory.

We essentially carry computers in our pockets. Even 7-8 years ago when I built my Xeon desktop computer, I put 8GB RAM into it. These days, you'll be hard pressed finding even an entry level machine with less than 4GB.

Are Apple idiots? No, I don't think so. Their customers on the other hand who keep going back, time and time again... well... that's another story. Apple appeal to a certain market now, long gone are the days where you see Apple computers on the desks of serious video production or graphic design companies or in the pockets of IT professionals. On the off-chance you do, it's probably because they've invested so much in the Apple "ecosystem" that it would be to costly and/or time consuming to replace.