It's not only to make them run longer - they're reducing the peak demand on the batteries to avoid spontaneous shutdown when the aged battery can't handle the load.
This seems like a good idea, and it appears to be well executed (ie it's not apparently based just on age or milage like a crappy car maintenance reminder), but Apple should probably have something in iOS that tells people their phone is running slow because the battery is 2 years old.
This comment deserves more attention. And, in fact, means the headline is wrong.
Apple is not slowing down devices to extend battery life. Apple is slowing down devices to prevent the thing from crapping out entirely ("unexpectedly shutting down"). Arguably, this does more to prevent obsolescence than plan it.
Agreed with @djrogers suggestion to alert the user to the situation. It should not be a user choice.
"Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions [cold, low battery, battery age]."
> It's not only to make them run longer - they're reducing the peak demand on the batteries to avoid spontaneous shutdown when the aged battery can't handle the load.
Yes. I used to have spontaneous shutdowns on my iPhone 6 in cold weather when the fuel gauge indicated a number like 20% and it was this sort of problem that was meant to be fixed: the CPU using too much current, causing the battery voltage to drop enough to trigger the low-voltage/brownout detector, causing the phone to die. The battery would last long enough (from last full charge to needing to recharge) -- it wasn't inadequate in the energy department -- it just couldn't deliver enough power in cold conditions.
Throttling the CPU in those cases (when the aged battery can't deliver enough current) is sensical and extends the life of the phone -- the only serious issue is that the user might think that there is a problem with the CPU or the software (and replace the whole phone) when the problem can be adequately fixed with a new battery (far less expensive than a new phone).
The feature is good but Apple's software should be far more proactive in notifying users that this is happening, if only because users jump to a conclusion of "my old phone can't handle this new iOS update, damn Apple making me buy a new phone" rather than "my battery is too old to reliably deliver whatever current the SOC wants".
It does say in iOS that your battery needs to be replaced [1]. Everyone keeps saying they never told anyone about this but they basically announced it to the press with a statement (as well as the notice in iOS) when iOS 10.2.1 was released [2].
I can't tell how well it's executed but the major issue I have with this is that this is not properly communicated to the user. I guess most people already get the feeling that their devices slow down after time, or the new apps/OS's just require more potent hardware and replacement of the devices is necessary as time goes by. But for many of those it seems that a "simple" battery replacement would have done the trick as well.
If my device has to substantially throttle the performance to avoid a complete shutdown I expect a major notification that something is terribly wrong and I better do something about it.
My car had an occasional issue with an exhaust regulation valve and drastically reduced the performance in those situations. Every time I received a notification on the dashboard that the power was reduced but that I can continue driving but that I should visit a service partner as soon as possible. That would be exactly what I expect from a smart device
Did you have it replaced at an Apple Store or by a third party? I'm deciding between the two – my gut is to go with the Apple Store, but the apple website makes it sound like it could take up to 5 days, which is too long.
I don't get it. An old iPad 2 was running fine card games until we upgraded to IOS 9 a few weeks ago. Now it's almost unusable. Pretty sure we had the same battery before we upgrade, so why wasn't cpu throttled before we upgrade?
This looks more like Apple needed to slow down devices to sell new ones and found a really good excuse for it.
Exactly. I had an old iPhone 3G that was working fine until Apple released an update that crippled it after I held on to it too long after their product line had moved on...
I mean, to all those who might think "well, old phones be old", it's not that simple. The OS was running very smoothly, it's Apple, after all, but then I installed an OS update and after the update everything was slow and painful and took long to load, etc. It was night and day, pre-update: perfection, post-update: laggy as hell.
You can't tell me that this is anything but a way to force users of older models to upgrade.
There are two issues with older phones running more slowly, and you are probably encountering both of them
1. Newer versions of iOS demand more processing power because they do more (or perhaps do it less efficiently).
2. Old batteries can't deliver as much power.
So an old phone will new version of the OS mores slowly than a new one, regardless of the battery situation.
But, if the battery was marginal but hadn't hit the limit before the upgrade, then you get a double whammy
1. The phone simply can't run a more demanding OS as fast as the old one
2. The increased demand pushes the battery over the limit
At some point, the battery was going to age out anyway, so it was only a matter of time until you hit the second issue. But the upgrade made you hit it sonner rather than later.
+1 I don’t use any new features in the new iOS releases just want the same speed and efficiency I’ve come to enjoy, and that I literally had minutes before the upgrade.
How come that the MASSIVE slowdown of my iPhone 6s occurred after upgrading to iOS11? TBH the spin that Apple is sending out to make us believe that this was all a clever implementation (which it still might be) does not match with the reality that iOS 11 was creating the slowdown of a device that was working 'fine' before. And yes - this 6s is eligible for the battery replacement program and the Geekbench scores also indicate that this device has an issue. tl;dr: it seems that this is not the only explanation of the slowdown. Any thoughts?
I had this issue, restore it and set it up "as a new phone" then manually reinstall your apps. the backup-restore process introduces all kinds of crappy issues
My wife had a phone replaced off Apple about 6 months back because it was shutting down for no reason about 40% battery life.
She’s recently upgraded from 10.x to latest version. She’s noticed an actual decrease in performance to the point where she’s nearly punching the phone. It just locks up for no reason.
I’d like to blame this on the battery or age of the phone but I can’t. It is an iPhone 6 but it is only half a year old.
I believe that this phone should be able to handle the latest release just fine.
Was her replacement phone a refurbished or new unit? Either way, she can probably get a brand new battery just by taking it in to the Apple Store.
Also, battery age isn't actually time based, it's cycle based. If your wife uses her phone so heavily that she has to recharge it multiple times a day, she's putting more cycles on the battery. Still should last more than 6 months though.
Devil's Advocate to spark discussion (I'm not an iPhone owner so no dog in fight):
Apple did the right thing by not putting a switch in to toggle this slowdown[1]. For many iPhone users, the phone is a magic box that gives them videos and apps and (unlike our HN audience) don't have a clue about how it works, nor do they care. If such a switch existed, these same people would see a twitter comment saying "speed up yuor (sic) IPhone by turning off this setting~~~!!!!1" and would just do it.
The result? iPhones dying at a faster rate. Even today, as Android phones are barely updated at all, it is still a desirable selling feature of an Apple iPhone that it will be supported for years. People turning that switch on without understanding the consequences would shorten the life of their devices and then //still// complain about how the device didn't last that long.
I would think that a jailbreak-locked option would work IE you have to know enough about how your phone works to make the change, thus increasing your chances of making an informed decision on whether to shorten its life or not.
[1]Which is different than not telling people about it, which IMO is shady
> If such a switch existed, these same people would see a twitter comment saying "speed up yuor (sic) IPhone by turning off this setting~~~!!!!1" and would just do it.
If only we had such a technology as a scary warning message with a 5 second wait time before you can toggle the switch... Maybe in 10 years, meanwhile we'll just have to keep crippling old phones and tripling revenue!
The whole problem is that the batteries can't deliver that performance.
They can throttle the chip to what the battery can deliver or it will crash. Maybe Apple's more conservative on the throttling, and some amount of performance could still be achieved without a crash, but there's zero chance Apple's putting a "make my phone unstable" switch in Settings.
Not a good implementation, this feature should be been far more explicitly stated in some sort of alert rather than buried.
This is something that is burning the good will towards apple. Something that is in shorter supply since the days of Steve Jobs. You can see the polarization about it on social media.
Again whether the feature was good/bad, there is clearly something to be learned from the shitstorm that it is causing. Something I hope Tim Cook learns quickly.
I'm not sure what the right move is here. Apple does have a notification once the battery reaches some threshold of "bad". But maybe it's too conservative? Clearly, notifying an iPhone customer that their battery is going bad when they're throttling CPU by 1% is too aggressive. 75% is too late. Where the right number lies, I don't know.
Sounds to me like Apple didn't factor the degradation of battery into the design of the phone and instead focused solely on their relentless push for thinness.
All modern batteries degrade past the point of usefulness. It doesn't matter how big the battery is if you leave it in the Sun long enough it will die. The question is, "what then?"
Many people are reasonably asking that they be made aware of the problem instead of quietly kneecapping the phone.
My reading of the article was that it's a pretty new "feature". I'm running iOS 9.1 on a 5s, and it neither shuts down in the cold, nor runs slower than it used to.
Maybe, just maybe the batteries should be larger even if the case is slightly thicker.
It is one thing for Apple to compensate for weaknesses of current phones in the field. It would be another story if they plan to do this going forward without telling consumers at the time of sale. Car companies got in trouble over mileage...
[+] [-] djrogers|8 years ago|reply
This seems like a good idea, and it appears to be well executed (ie it's not apparently based just on age or milage like a crappy car maintenance reminder), but Apple should probably have something in iOS that tells people their phone is running slow because the battery is 2 years old.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/20/apple-addresses-why-people...
[+] [-] basseq|8 years ago|reply
Apple is not slowing down devices to extend battery life. Apple is slowing down devices to prevent the thing from crapping out entirely ("unexpectedly shutting down"). Arguably, this does more to prevent obsolescence than plan it.
Agreed with @djrogers suggestion to alert the user to the situation. It should not be a user choice.
"Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions [cold, low battery, battery age]."
[+] [-] zkms|8 years ago|reply
Yes. I used to have spontaneous shutdowns on my iPhone 6 in cold weather when the fuel gauge indicated a number like 20% and it was this sort of problem that was meant to be fixed: the CPU using too much current, causing the battery voltage to drop enough to trigger the low-voltage/brownout detector, causing the phone to die. The battery would last long enough (from last full charge to needing to recharge) -- it wasn't inadequate in the energy department -- it just couldn't deliver enough power in cold conditions.
Throttling the CPU in those cases (when the aged battery can't deliver enough current) is sensical and extends the life of the phone -- the only serious issue is that the user might think that there is a problem with the CPU or the software (and replace the whole phone) when the problem can be adequately fixed with a new battery (far less expensive than a new phone).
The feature is good but Apple's software should be far more proactive in notifying users that this is happening, if only because users jump to a conclusion of "my old phone can't handle this new iOS update, damn Apple making me buy a new phone" rather than "my battery is too old to reliably deliver whatever current the SOC wants".
[+] [-] IBM|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207453
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/23/apple-says-ios-10-2-1-has-...
[+] [-] blensor|8 years ago|reply
If my device has to substantially throttle the performance to avoid a complete shutdown I expect a major notification that something is terribly wrong and I better do something about it.
My car had an occasional issue with an exhaust regulation valve and drastically reduced the performance in those situations. Every time I received a notification on the dashboard that the power was reduced but that I can continue driving but that I should visit a service partner as soon as possible. That would be exactly what I expect from a smart device
[+] [-] Blazespinnaker|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] invisiblea|8 years ago|reply
Geekbench 4 benchmark before https://twitter.com/invisiblea/status/943439761066397696
And after https://twitter.com/invisiblea/status/943891561661812736
[+] [-] lukewrites|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluetidepro|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] macns|8 years ago|reply
This looks more like Apple needed to slow down devices to sell new ones and found a really good excuse for it.
[+] [-] mfoy_|8 years ago|reply
I mean, to all those who might think "well, old phones be old", it's not that simple. The OS was running very smoothly, it's Apple, after all, but then I installed an OS update and after the update everything was slow and painful and took long to load, etc. It was night and day, pre-update: perfection, post-update: laggy as hell.
You can't tell me that this is anything but a way to force users of older models to upgrade.
[+] [-] compiler-guy|8 years ago|reply
1. Newer versions of iOS demand more processing power because they do more (or perhaps do it less efficiently).
2. Old batteries can't deliver as much power.
So an old phone will new version of the OS mores slowly than a new one, regardless of the battery situation.
But, if the battery was marginal but hadn't hit the limit before the upgrade, then you get a double whammy
1. The phone simply can't run a more demanding OS as fast as the old one
2. The increased demand pushes the battery over the limit
At some point, the battery was going to age out anyway, so it was only a matter of time until you hit the second issue. But the upgrade made you hit it sonner rather than later.
[+] [-] martian|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] valuearb|8 years ago|reply
Did your iPad have any problems with spontaneously rebooting?
[+] [-] rajeevk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oger|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unreal37|8 years ago|reply
https://www.geekbench.com/blog/2017/12/iphone-performance-an...
[+] [-] nyolfen|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thinkythought|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrislomax|8 years ago|reply
She’s recently upgraded from 10.x to latest version. She’s noticed an actual decrease in performance to the point where she’s nearly punching the phone. It just locks up for no reason.
I’d like to blame this on the battery or age of the phone but I can’t. It is an iPhone 6 but it is only half a year old.
I believe that this phone should be able to handle the latest release just fine.
She’s now looking at upgrading the phone.
[+] [-] valuearb|8 years ago|reply
Also, battery age isn't actually time based, it's cycle based. If your wife uses her phone so heavily that she has to recharge it multiple times a day, she's putting more cycles on the battery. Still should last more than 6 months though.
[+] [-] unreal37|8 years ago|reply
Just because Apple replaced the phone doesn't mean the battery isn't deficient.
[+] [-] thinkythought|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Multicomp|8 years ago|reply
Devil's Advocate to spark discussion (I'm not an iPhone owner so no dog in fight):
Apple did the right thing by not putting a switch in to toggle this slowdown[1]. For many iPhone users, the phone is a magic box that gives them videos and apps and (unlike our HN audience) don't have a clue about how it works, nor do they care. If such a switch existed, these same people would see a twitter comment saying "speed up yuor (sic) IPhone by turning off this setting~~~!!!!1" and would just do it.
The result? iPhones dying at a faster rate. Even today, as Android phones are barely updated at all, it is still a desirable selling feature of an Apple iPhone that it will be supported for years. People turning that switch on without understanding the consequences would shorten the life of their devices and then //still// complain about how the device didn't last that long.
I would think that a jailbreak-locked option would work IE you have to know enough about how your phone works to make the change, thus increasing your chances of making an informed decision on whether to shorten its life or not.
[1]Which is different than not telling people about it, which IMO is shady
Edit: remove italics
[+] [-] mfoy_|8 years ago|reply
It pains me that I effectively have to choose between replaceable batteries and IPXX ratings.... T_T
[+] [-] jdminhbg|8 years ago|reply
No, because this is a new feature as of the iPhone 6. The conspiracy way predates that.
[+] [-] ric2b|8 years ago|reply
If only we had such a technology as a scary warning message with a 5 second wait time before you can toggle the switch... Maybe in 10 years, meanwhile we'll just have to keep crippling old phones and tripling revenue!
[+] [-] wnevets|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MollyR|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trynumber9|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roc|8 years ago|reply
They can throttle the chip to what the battery can deliver or it will crash. Maybe Apple's more conservative on the throttling, and some amount of performance could still be achieved without a crash, but there's zero chance Apple's putting a "make my phone unstable" switch in Settings.
[+] [-] LeoJiWoo|8 years ago|reply
This is something that is burning the good will towards apple. Something that is in shorter supply since the days of Steve Jobs. You can see the polarization about it on social media.
Again whether the feature was good/bad, there is clearly something to be learned from the shitstorm that it is causing. Something I hope Tim Cook learns quickly.
[+] [-] the_gastropod|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bec123|8 years ago|reply
MAKE . IT . EASIER . TO . REPLACE . THE . BATTERY !!!
[+] [-] sctb|8 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[+] [-] nicky0|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nephrite|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] valuearb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] szajbus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greedo|8 years ago|reply
https://plus.google.com/+YgorCortes/posts/CZ2GhoxgHk3
[+] [-] JustSomeNobody|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cjensen|8 years ago|reply
Many people are reasonably asking that they be made aware of the problem instead of quietly kneecapping the phone.
[+] [-] forkerenok|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ouid|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Neil44|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walterbell|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Codestare|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisdbaldwin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChiliDogSwirl|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heisenbit|8 years ago|reply
It is one thing for Apple to compensate for weaknesses of current phones in the field. It would be another story if they plan to do this going forward without telling consumers at the time of sale. Car companies got in trouble over mileage...