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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: 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.