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Other new iPhone every 2 years?

V

vett93

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 27, 2014
279
40
California
I have iPhone 11 Pro Max now. Before that, I had iPhone 8 Plus. Before that, I had iPhone 6S Plus. It seems that iPhones last only 2 years before their performance degrade to a level that is annoying. With my 6S Plus, Apple slowed it down intentionally: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/28...e-battery-replacement-price-slow-down-apology

I upgraded to iPhone 8 Plus and was happy for 2 years. But it was annoyingly slow after 2 years. So I got my iPhone 11 Pro Max 2 years ago. It is sad to say that it is annoyingly slow now too. I erased everything on my 11 Pro Max and reinstalled everything from backup. But it did not help. My wife's Google Pixel 2 is snappier than my phone!

Is this your experience too? I don't think I want to get another iPhone this time....
 
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Uhh. I’ve got an 8 Plus right now on iOS 14 and there’s absolutely nothing slow about it. It’s very fast. Not the slightest feeling of lag.

My iPhone 4, 5 and 6 Plus are slow but definitely not the 8+. Any phone after that is faster still
 
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You may need to wipe the phone and manually install everything. A pain, for sure, but sometimes a clean install is what it takes. I have an 8plus on iOS 14 and it's starting to get a little laggy but nothing horrible. I won't be installing 15. I may have to the same thing myself.
 
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vett93 said:
I have iPhone 11 Pro Max now. Before that, I had iPhone 8 Plus. Before that, I had iPhone 6S Plus. It seems that iPhones last only 2 years before their performance degrade to a level that is annoying. With my 6S Plus, Apple slowed it down intentionally: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/28...e-battery-replacement-price-slow-down-apology

I upgraded to iPhone 8 Plus and was happy for 2 years. But it was annoyingly slow after 2 years. So I got my iPhone 11 Pro Max 2 years ago. It is sad to say that it is annoyingly slow now too. I erased everything on my 11 Pro Max and reinstalled everything from backup. But it did not help. My wife's Google Pixel 2 is snappier than my phone!

Is this your experience too? I don't think I want to get another iPhone this time....
Click to expand...
Given a choice of a

very fast iPhone that has 1/2 the operating time due to worn out battery

vs

annoyingly slow iPhone that has nearly the original operating time due to worn out battery...

I choose the longer operating time as I need it to function as a phone for 2G calls & SMS. Based on the average lifespan of the low mAh battery & chips with larger die shrink it appears that people like us should buy a new battery nearing its 24th month.

What Apple did wrong here is that on day 1 they did not give users an option for full speed at a fraction of the operating time or slow down iPhone with nearly similar operating hours. They also did not communicate the new feature change effectively hence all the conspiracy theories, lawsuits and govt actions against them.

I also have all 3 iPhones that you have. If I did not need the business expense and I knew that I would be work from home for more than 21 months I would have opted to keep the 2017 iPhone 8 Plus, dowgrade to a <$6.00/month SIM-only plan and get a new battery every ~24 months until I cannot update iOS further. This would be 75-93 months from the 8's launch. This would be by year 2024. I would also likely renew

I was dumb enough to buy a 2015 Google Nexus 6P. I experienced OLED burn in, bootloops & a bad battery in less than 12 months. Unlike iPhones I had difficulty sourcing a genuine Nexus 6P battery and just gave up.

I then bought a 2017 Essential PH-1 phone. I faired no bettery. Battery was a crap shot a little bit long after and its the 1st phone I've owned that I managed to crack the screen by simply falling face down into a concrete floor. Sadly for me that company shut down a month before lockdown.

As far as I am concerned I'm more satisfied with a <$150 Android phone than than a >$649 Android flagship.
 
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vett93 said:
I have iPhone 11 Pro Max now. Before that, I had iPhone 8 Plus. Before that, I had iPhone 6S Plus. It seems that iPhones last only 2 years before their performance degrade to a level that is annoying. With my 6S Plus, Apple slowed it down intentionally: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/28...e-battery-replacement-price-slow-down-apology

I upgraded to iPhone 8 Plus and was happy for 2 years. But it was annoyingly slow after 2 years. So I got my iPhone 11 Pro Max 2 years ago. It is sad to say that it is annoyingly slow now too. I erased everything on my 11 Pro Max and reinstalled everything from backup. But it did not help. My wife's Google Pixel 2 is snappier than my phone!

Is this your experience too? I don't think I want to get another iPhone this time....
Click to expand...
Your experience doesn’t make much sense compared to most people at all. My mom still uses my 8 plus and it still runs great, my stepson uses an iPhone 11 we got him last year and it still runs perfect as well. The iPad 9 just came out that uses the same A13 as your 11 and it gets fantastic reviews for its performance as well

What exactly are these phones doing?
 
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I still use my 8+, gets the job done well. Battery did dip to 79% health now but for a 4 year old phone, that's amazing. Speed is fine too. At the end of the day, it's just a phone and im not going to be folding proteins on it.
 
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It is good to see positive responses about iPhones. I will erase my iPhone 11 Pro Max again and manually install all apps. Before I erased the phone a few weeks ago, it couldn't even connect to WiFi reliably. I work from home and use the same WiFi APs for some time. The iPhone 11 Pro Max used to connect to the home WiFi reliably. But it started to have connectivity issues after IOS 15.1 upgrade. It was the only WiFi device in the house that had connectivity issues.

I contacted Apple Support and a Sr. Advisor asked me to try a few things. None of them worked. Finally, he suggested I should erase everything and use iTunes to restore. WiFi issue was resolved after the erase and reinstallation. But my wife's Google Pixel 2 is more responsive than my phone. Maybe I am a bit picky with my phones.

I work in the tech industry in the engineering/data science area and have had mobile phones since 1994. I use my iPhone for office productivity, Ring/Alexa/home automation apps, and manage my home network based on Unifi Dream Machine Pro (https://ui.com/consoles )

I am also an amateur photographer and my main gears are Sony E-mount full frame cameras. So my iPhone has a few photography apps too.
 
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JCCL said:
An iPhone 11 Pro Max shouldn't be annoying slow by now. I can use my wife's and I can't notice any performance difference with my 13 Pro Max.
Click to expand...
But you definitely notice a difference in cell reception oh yes you do
 
I was using my 7 Plus until a couple of weeks ago and it was fine. The battery needed replacing but it was still fully functional other than that. Back on older iPhone you definitely noticed slowdown with laters OS versions, but from the 7 onwards they have held up very well.
 
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vett93 said:
I have iPhone 11 Pro Max now. Before that, I had iPhone 8 Plus. Before that, I had iPhone 6S Plus. It seems that iPhones last only 2 years before their performance degrade to a level that is annoying. With my 6S Plus, Apple slowed it down intentionally: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/28...e-battery-replacement-price-slow-down-apology

I upgraded to iPhone 8 Plus and was happy for 2 years. But it was annoyingly slow after 2 years. So I got my iPhone 11 Pro Max 2 years ago. It is sad to say that it is annoyingly slow now too. I erased everything on my 11 Pro Max and reinstalled everything from backup. But it did not help. My wife's Google Pixel 2 is snappier than my phone!

Is this your experience too? I don't think I want to get another iPhone this time....
Click to expand...

Please dont tell me you think degrading your performance over battery is a bad thing. The not communicating it and just doing it for the user is what should and did piss people off but not having black screen crashes is better then having black screen crashes cause your cpu spikes for performance and your battery cant handle it.

Besides the above, I have pulled out my 6 plus from time to time and used it for a full day and havent noticed any degraded performance besides the expected for a 7 year old device. ProMotion has also ruined me as I expected because I could see the 60hz when scrolling. I notice it on my 13PM when in low power but im not in low power often but on the 6 plus I could tell. Besides that, everything I do on my phone which consists of browsing, reading, twitter, calendar, notes, etc was all smooth for a 7 year old device.

I also have played with a X that a buddy has and complained about slow performance. Had him DFU it and not restore from backup and he gained all of his phone was like new. He has 92% on his battery health so its in "peak performance capability". I assume if he had about 80% he would've still noticed some performance loss after the DFU but its like a new phone. Bringing up the app switch and scrolling is smooth and fast like it use to be and not laggy and sometimes bogging down like it was pre DFU. He has had ios 11 on it since day 1 of owning it and has upgraded all the way to iOS 15. Fresh DFU install of iOS 15 and he's super happy with his phone again. He also used the "oh its 4 years old apple is purposely slowing down my phone" and now he wont admit he drank the same ******** as everyone else.

Check your battery health and then do a fresh install with no restore from backup and see if you phone is behaving the same way it is now. If its in peak performance in battery health and >=90%, then you should see immediate improvement with a fresh install.
 
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I kept my XS for 3 years, ran iOS 12 through iOS 15 on it, and when I boxed it up to trade it in for my 13 Pro it was still just as fast as the day I bought it. Battery was at 79%, so I would have needed a battery replacement if I was going to keep it another year, but other than that it still worked perfectly and looked like brand new. With a fresh battery I could have easily gotten at least another 1-2 years out of it.
 
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I kept my 7 plus for 4 years and it still works pretty well though it needs a battery change and the lightning connection is wonky. Still no regrets about that nor upgrading now to a 13 Pro Max.
 
Just got my 11 Pro Max in February 2021. Have yet to hit 'annoyingly slow'.

I have a 6s+ I used from 2015 to 2020 on iOS 9.0.1 (never updated). It's running iOS 15.1 right now and is my secondary phone. Still have yet to hit 'annoyingly slow' on that iPhone too.

In between the 6s+ and the 11PM is a Pixel 3a XL which I used for a little over a year. It's running Android 12 and it's not 'annoyingly slow' either.

I don't upgrade every two years either, don't have the money to do that. My 3GS, my 4, 4s, and my 5 are still fairly quick too - for their age.
 
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vett93 said:
I have iPhone 11 Pro Max now. Before that, I had iPhone 8 Plus. Before that, I had iPhone 6S Plus. It seems that iPhones last only 2 years before their performance degrade to a level that is annoying. With my 6S Plus, Apple slowed it down intentionally: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/28...e-battery-replacement-price-slow-down-apology

I upgraded to iPhone 8 Plus and was happy for 2 years. But it was annoyingly slow after 2 years. So I got my iPhone 11 Pro Max 2 years ago. It is sad to say that it is annoyingly slow now too. I erased everything on my 11 Pro Max and reinstalled everything from backup. But it did not help. My wife's Google Pixel 2 is snappier than my phone!

Is this your experience too? I don't think I want to get another iPhone this time....
Click to expand...
I have an iPhone 6plus that is still running fine and works as fast as it ever did. I think perceptions of snappiness are marketing hype designed to keep you replacing your gadgets each year.
 
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Sikh said:
Please dont tell me you think degrading your performance over battery is a bad thing. The not communicating it and just doing it for the user is what should and did piss people off but not having black screen crashes is better then having black screen crashes cause your cpu spikes for performance and your battery cant handle it.

...
Click to expand...

Couldn't Apple come up with alternative solutions? For example, they could have had a pop-up message stating the battery was getting weaker. They could warn users if they didn't replace batteries in 1 month Apple would throttle the clock. I have quite a few friends and former co-workers working in Apple. They are not dummies.

When did you become an Apple apologizer?
 
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vett93 said:
Couldn't Apple come up with alternative solutions? For example, they could have had a pop-up message stating the battery was getting weaker. They could warn users if they didn't replace batteries in 1 month Apple would throttle the clock. I have quite a few friends and former co-workers working in Apple. They are not dummies.

When did you become an Apple apologizer?
Click to expand...
Agree. ”Battery needs to be replaced in order to maintain performance.”
 
now i see it said:
Uhh. I’ve got an 8 Plus right now on iOS 14 and there’s absolutely nothing slow about it. It’s very fast. Not the slightest feeling of lag.

My iPhone 4, 5 and 6 Plus are slow but definitely not the 8+. Any phone after that is faster still
Click to expand...
Me too. Mine is on iOS 15.2 and as fast as ever.
 
vett93 said:
Couldn't Apple come up with alternative solutions? For example, they could have had a pop-up message stating the battery was getting weaker. They could warn users if they didn't replace batteries in 1 month Apple would throttle the clock. I have quite a few friends and former co-workers working in Apple. They are not dummies.

When did you become an Apple apologizer?
Click to expand...

I agree some sort of notification would be a good idea to make it more obvious.

However labelling others as apologizer simply because they offer their own opinion on an Apple related discussion amongst iPhone users is uncalled for.
 
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