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Apple has been accused of slowing down old iPhones by tying performance to battery condition. This could cause some users to upgrade to a newer model rather than get the battery replaced:
Apple may be slowing down older iPhones in order to counteract problems with decreased battery capacity, according to Primate Labs founder John Poole. The news could add fuel to the conversation around planned obsolescence—the idea that tech companies purposely slow down older devices to encourage users to buy new models. Claims of planned obsolescence have hit almost all the big firms, and have reached the status of a major conspiracy theory in many tech circles.
In a recent blog post, Poole, whose company created the Geekbench benchmarking system, set out to detail the data behind a particular Reddit post claiming that Apple was slowing down iPhones with low-capacity batteries. The user was getting lower-than-expected scores on Geekbench, which improved after they replaced the battery in their iPhone 6S.
[...] Of course, part of the battery issues have to do with the changes that came with iOS 10.2.1, Poole wrote. Apple introduced the update to combat a bug causing the sudden shutdown of iPhone 6 and 6S models. "I believe (as do others) that Apple introduced a change to limit performance when battery condition decreases past a certain point," Poole wrote in the post.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Tuesday December 19 2017, @10:27PM (1 child)
Batteries have have a few different measurements they can offer up.
Original Capacity
Current Capacity
Current charge as Percent of Original capacity
Current charge as percent of Current capacity
Since batteries capacity decline over their life, it often depends on which of these your software is reading.
I have no clue what Apple software read and displays to the user, but Percent of Current capacity is misleading and may show 70% charge but measured late in the battery life, it may actually be 30% of Original Capacity.
Maybe part of Apple's system just uses Percent of Original Capacity to decide how hard it should push the battery (by controlling cpu utilization).
How long till my phone dies is probably more important to most people than how fast I can play some game on the phone.
Not everything has to be a conspiracy. Some of this is just the sad facts of LiPoly life expectancy.
Its time for phone manufacturers to return to replaceable batteries.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday December 20 2017, @03:44AM
Reading between the lines I'd guess it isn't a question of battery life. Internal resistance increased with age beyond tolerance, voltage dropped too far and voltage regulation was failing under heavy load leading to the phone shutting down. Downclock a bit, max peak power drain drops dramatically and problem solved. Apple is doing the correct thing here to solve the problem once you realize they AIN'T going to eat replacing the batteries on phones so far out of warranty. The problem is the non-user serviceable battery, otherwise they could just tell people to order a new one for $20 and solve the problem the right way.