The changes seem to be introduced in different updates for different models, so far, and are supposed to apply only to those devices that might be affected by battery instability: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/12/20/apple-addresses-iphone-throttling-degraded-battery/
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Other Throttling iphones; battery life vs performance
- Thread starter Galacticos
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As in reducing performance preserves battery life AND because the trade off is performance, it incentivises upgradesAs in believing Apple, but not believing them?
To be fair, bad battery life--as in on the level of phones just suddenly unexpectedly dying at almost random times--would similarly "incentivize" upgrades for many, so it's more or less a wash when it comes to that aspect of it. It can even be argued that there are people who would put up with a somewhat slower device for longer than one that they simply can't rely on because it doesn't last long and just unexpectedly shuts down. Although for others the slowdown might be worse, so it's more or less a wash from that side of things too.
A battery that unexpectedly dies would fall under the faulty hardware category. If restoring the software didn’t solve it, Apple would be replacing it.
That’s quite different to something still working at an intentionally reduced capacity
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Agree with you. All these things can be true at the same time
That's assuming people would take it in and Apple's diagnostics would come back showing something. Seems like diagnostics don't always show it for either scenario and plenty of people don't end up taking it all in anyway as their devices are typically older and not under warranty anymore.
There's certainly a difference as you describe. What I'm saying is when it comes to vast majority of typical consumers the part about it being there to drive more sales doesn't necessarily seem to be something that would generate more upgrades than if nothing was done and people had phones that were dying on them with plenty opting to go down the path of upgrading.
I agree it’s speculation what degrees these things effect choices. My guess is that reduced performance is a greater factor for an upgrade than battery life. Look at how much battery can fluctuate between iOS updates, and there doesn’t seem to be commensurate upgrading. And after all, low battery is easily solved by a charge
The goal of the "throttling" is not to increase battery life, but to minimize the jumps in voltage requirement, which older batteries are having hard time providing, thus resulting in random shutdowns. From what I read, this is Apple's goal, so users won't be experiencing random shutdowns when the SoC suddenly requires a jump in power.
The part that all of this is in relation to isn't really about worse battery life as much as it is about essentially battery instability when devices would suddenly unexpectedly just shut down (even when it doesn't look like battery is low). That part isn't something that a user can really solve or even really plan for or deal with all that much given that pretty much at any point their device can just turn off in the middle of them doing something or might already be off in their pocket or purse when they don't realize it and think it's on. That's fairly different than just worse battery life and something that people wouldn't really put up with even if they wanted to sort of just "deal with it".
They also said they want to extend the life of users products. I’m not sure there’s a huge amount of evidence for that idea..
But anyway, and this is just a curiosity. Why would there be a problem now with peak voltages on current chips and software, and not on old chips and software (eg iphone 4/5 etc etc) up until iOS 10/11 on iPhone 6? I have a few ideas but nothing supporting it. If anyone could answer it I would be interested to know (not sarcasm).
.. and couldn’t the software be designed to account for this (I presume this was the case previously)?
So this problem seems to be related to the ever increasing performance capabilities of the CPU. It seems reasonable that processors have out paced battery technology, hence this not being an issue prior to iPhone 6.
My question is do Android phones face similar issue, and if so how is it being resolved.
I see what you’re saying but from my quick reading on the internet (anecdotal!) I haven’t seen any complaints of shutdown, just lower performance.. the other case obviously exists though.
But why not design the software around this (I presume that was what had been happening)
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This was a hunch of mine but couldn’t a more capable cpu better manage the voltage drawn.. I don’t know the practicalities of that
Lower performance because the changes that Apple made are in place to avoid those sudden shutdowns. Last year there were issues with shutdowns and complaints about that until Apple had a recall on some devices and made these type of performance changes. That's basically where all of this comes from.
I’m referring to prior to the changes.
Changing tack a little, I think Apple are too focused on all day battery (eg MacBook pros) at the expense of performance
Going by Apple's tone in their response, they seem to believe they are doing the right thing by prioritising battery life over performance. I am not sure what sort of backlash you are expecting, unless all consumers somehow hold off on updating their phones forever.
Not really expecting, just bringing up a potential scenario. We've seen some things in the past get addressed in one way or another potentially because they gotten more attention (although the possibility that it could have happened without the attention is there too), so this was basically considering a scenario along those lines.
Who knows. Most people don't keep Android phones as long as iPhones.
For example, many of the battery issues were detected on the 6S. The 6S was released in 2015, yet so many people are still using it. On the other hand, the top Android phones from that year like Galaxy S6 and Nexus 6P, not many people even use nor talk about them anymore. So it will be hard to test. Plus, people already has the pre-conception that Android phones will slow down the moment you install the first app, so it is already "acceptable."
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It will be interesting if it's due to the way Apple aggressively set the SoCs to sleep/draw very little power (iPhones are kings of standby time). Newer Ax chips have magnitude of power in their CPU and GPU, thus the jump needed to push the hardware to full speed is much larger than older Ax chips. Add on to the real battery issues in the early batches of the 6S (that Apple still has a replacement program running today), it makes the problem more visible (via random shutdowns).
It’s not going to be fixed. Apple slowing down the older phones is not news. It’s done to force people to upgrade.
I can't decide which of the two options is the best. Probably because my 6s runs battery smooth and last the whole day. I hate lagging phones, my 4s was like this for the last 2 years of it's life, but I hate more the probability of my iPhone to switch off suddenly at the most critical moment, as it was happening due to being one of the problematic battery batch.
IMHO a phone will be a king of standby mode if its battery will last 4/5 days leaving the phone on standby, like the old cellular phones in 2006 (based on j2me or similar os).
My iPhone, which is about two years old, lasts about 1 day (about 24 hours), most of the time it is in standby (about 60-70% of the time). I always have the wi-fi and the mobile phone data connection enabled, so all the apps I have installed are updated with the notifications. Background updates are disabled. Unfortunately I discovered that some applications work in the background even if I have disabled background updates. Very bad thing! When I close an app I want that it is closed and no more in the main processes of the iOS.
Beyond the fact that Apple (like many industries) designs its devices appropriately to have a performance decay after a certain time calculated in order to push users to new purchases even with the current device still working, it would be enough for Apple to implement an option in iOS that allows the user to disable, if desired, the background functioning of all installed applications: for now some applications can run in background even if the user does not want it. It's crazy for iOS!
Regarding the consumption of battery and hardware resources when using the phone (for phone calls, for the use of applications, etc. ..), ie not in stanby, I think the problem of software optimization in order to consume as little energy as possible when performing an operation with an Apple or third-party application (for example: by Apple = phone call, third party = Facebook), is a very complex problem.
Cheers
This entire thing just baffles me. Apple introduced it because of a hardware issue with the iPhone 6S, now they are applying it to more devices that don't have the hardware issue. The A9 was getting too powerful for the battery to keep up, Apple makes A10 with efficient low power cores to resolve the issue. Now Apple is adding this to other devices for a reason that is not quite understandable. What's even more baffling is that Apple hasn't implemented a panel in Settings that tells you how well your battery is and whether it's time to replace it or not. That would allow them to notify users that their devices are throttling to save energy and they need to get their battery replaced soon. Average consumers won't have a clue as to why their device is unusually slow, and they will automatically assume that it's time to get a new phone after 2 years or maybe as soon as a year and a half if they are that rough on their battery. This apparently has turned into a perfect way for Apple to make a believable reason to slow old products and force users to buy new ones. I have never seen clean optimization across all devices that support an iOS version since 6.
This is all about forcing people to upgrade their phones. Should be illegal.