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Performance: proportional to battery level?

Is your phone's performance proportional to your battery level?

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Kalloud

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 23, 2016
145
91
Hello everyone!
On my iphone 6s, I have been wondering why would the performance sometimes be buttery smooth and sometimes stuttery especially when scrolling in the YouTube app and maybe my Facebook feed also.
But I recently noticed also that the general performance is somewhat proportional to battery life. So when I have fully charged my phone it would be silky smooth but when battery life is below 50% it starts to be a little jittery, and when battery level is below 20% the phone stutters more, all without activating low power mode.
Have you guys noticed this?
Note: I'm currently running iOS 10.3 but this was also the case in iOS 10.2.1.
 
If this turns to be done by Apple intentionally, I am glad that I stayed on 10.2...
 
Definitely not the case with my 7Plus. Same performance at 10% as 100%. On macOS I have noticed that once it drops to below 5% the computer tends to lockup and jitters.
 
Maybe this is only related to the iPhone 6s since Apple claims to have solved the issue of unexpected shutdowns of iPhones 6s.
Was this fix just throttling the CPU gradually while displaying 1% of battery when it is really at 30%?
I may have gone too far but I need to know if other 6s users are having the same experience.
My device is not eligible to a free battery replacement BTW.
 
I suppose they had to do this only on 6/6S models, because of the battery problems leading to unexpected shut downs.
But such a solution (to decrease the power of the CPU) is a joke...
 
I highly doubt this is the case. You guys are probably reading too much into it. 10.3 just came put. Device could still be indexing.
 
miragebg said:
I am speaking for 10.2.1 too. It should be already indexed, don't you think;)?
Click to expand...

I can 100% confirm that the device does not loss performance as the devices loses battery on a 6s running 10.2.1. I have 4 of them in the family.

If people are so skeptical run a geek bench at 100% and 20%. If it's within the margin of error (usually 1-5%) then it's a nonissue.
 
The point is that it's not. It's a big drop, around 50%. Many users have already reported that once the battery hits 50% and bellow, the geekbench shows more that 40% of performace drop on 6 and 6S.
 
As I said. I have 4 device in regular use and I use them too. All on 10.2.1 except for one on 10.3. No performance drop below 50%.
 
I can not sense or feel and differences between performance and battery life. And although I do not like synthetic benchmarks here are a couple.

iPhone 6S 64gb iOS 10.3, all apps closed in the app switcher except the benchmark app.

AnTuTu tested at 18% and then 95%

IMG_1113.PNG IMG_1115.PNG

Geekbench 4 tested at 18% and then 95%

IMG_1114.PNG IMG_1117.PNG

So I saw a better score with AnTuTu with higher battery percent. And a lower score with Geekbench 4 with higher battery percent.

If I run these test a dozen times I get a dozen results. The first AnTuTu score I got with a higher battery percent was 109xxx. Not sure what happened so I reran it and got the 127xxx.

So at least in synthetic testing (in a very limited quantity) there is no difference in performance based on battery percentage.
 
Last edited:
cynics said:
I can not sense or feel and differences between performance and battery life. And although I do not like synthetic benchmarks here are a couple.

iPhone 6S 64gb all apps closed in the app switcher except the benchmark app.

AnTuTu tested at 18% and then 95%

View attachment 693929 View attachment 693930

Geekbench 4 tested at 18% and then 95%

View attachment 693931 View attachment 693932

So I saw a better score with AnTuTu with higher battery percent. And a lower score with Geekbench 4 with higher battery percent.

If I run these test a dozen times I get a dozen results. The first AnTuTu score I got with a higher battery percent was 109xxx. Not sure what happened so I reran it and got the 127xxx.

So at least in synthetic testing (in a very limited quantity) there is no difference in performance based on battery percentage.
Click to expand...

Is this on ios 10.3?
 
Act
Mlrollin91 said:
I can 100% confirm that the device does not loss performance as the devices loses battery on a 6s running 10.2.1. I have 4 of them in the family.

If people are so skeptical run a geek bench at 100% and 20%. If it's within the margin of error (usually 1-5%) then it's a nonissue.
Click to expand...
Actually the performance does drop after about 5%, which is rather good than bad. And as this only happens when you have less than 5% of your charge left, it doesn't even matter.
I never let it come that far either. But that's another story.
 
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iScholtz said:
Act

Actually the performance does drop after about 5%, which is rather good than bad. And as this only happens when you have less than 5% of your charge left, it doesn't even matter.
I never let it come that far either. But that's another story.
Click to expand...
Probably similar to MacBooks. I believe I posted above that my MBA slows down with 5% or less remaining. But there is no way it slows down after 50%.
 
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Kalloud said:
Hello everyone!
On my iphone 6s, I have been wondering why would the performance sometimes be buttery smooth and sometimes stuttery especially when scrolling in the YouTube app and maybe my Facebook feed also.
But I recently noticed also that the general performance is somewhat proportional to battery life. So when I have fully charged my phone it would be silky smooth but when battery life is below 50% it starts to be a little jittery, and when battery level is below 20% the phone stutters more, all without activating low power mode.
Have you guys noticed this?
Note: I'm currently running iOS 10.3 but this was also the case in iOS 10.2.1.
Click to expand...

Have experienced the same here, 6S 128gb ios 10.3.2 beta 5. Feedback of same sent to Apple....
 
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gno said:
Have experienced the same here, 6S 128gb ios 10.3.2 beta 5. Feedback of same sent to Apple....
Click to expand...

No way ! I have poor performance with 10.3.1 on my 6s .. but how is feeling 6s on 10.3.2 beta 5 compared to 10.3.2? Sorry for my english ..
 
Yeah, my 6s with TSMC CPU on latest iOS definitely throttles CPU according to battery. My geekbench scores are around 2500 when fully charged and ~2100 when ~10 % battery (low power mode NOT enabled). That's around 16 % lower. Low power mode effectively halves these scores.
 
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stooovie said:
Yeah, my 6s with TSMC CPU on latest iOS definitely throttles CPU according to battery. My geekbench scores are around 2500 when fully charged and ~2100 when ~10 % battery (low power mode NOT enabled). That's around 16 % lower. Low power mode effectively halves these scores.
Click to expand...
I did run geekbench 4 on 95% and 25% and the results were too close:
At 95%: CPU: SC:2545
MC:4426
Compute: 9972
At 25%: CPU: SC: 2524
MC: 4446
Compute: 10107
I am running iOS 10.3.2 beta 5, and I no longer feel the throttling so Apple may have fixed this.
 
stooovie said:
Yeah, my 6s with TSMC CPU on latest iOS definitely throttles CPU according to battery. My geekbench scores are around 2500 when fully charged and ~2100 when ~10 % battery (low power mode NOT enabled). That's around 16 % lower. Low power mode effectively halves these scores.
Click to expand...
I now experienced something similar with my SE, when the Antutu benchmark score dropped from 122000 (what is already low) to 70000-90000 points.
 
With any device, when the charge falls bellow 5%, things start to slow down even if a power saver is not intentionally enabled.

The Apple website states, "Your MacBook knows when it’s plugged in and runs accordingly. When using battery power, it dims the screen and uses other components sparingly." To me, this indicates that as the battery is being used, your performance does decrease.
 
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On MacBooks the processor turns to its lowest possible speed on CPU and Graphics. Thats why it becomes slow. If you install Intel Power Gadget you can see that happen. On my iPhone it won't slow down at any percentage.
 
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