The problem is that we no longer live in a society where facts, reason, or rational explanations matter. Personal beliefs and perceptions, no matter how naive or subjective, are the only reality. Apple can try to explain this with sound engineering, scientific, and customer value principles and logic but it will not change the minds of those who have already decided that this incident fully confirms everything negative they already believe about Apple. There are many commenters who now attribute every perceived performance degradation on their device to be an intentional act by Apple to trick them into buying a new device, regardless of the health of their battery. Unfortunately it all starts at the top and there is no cure in sight.
Here are my facts: My wife iPhone 5S on iOS 7 after 4 years runs as smooth as my iPhone 7 on iOS 10! I was very close to update the software on her 5S recently but glad I didn't. Based on my experience I'm inclined to believe what I suspected of apple for a while: they are shameless lying hypocrites and charlatans like most if not all large corporations!
Dude, more new software ,means more complex code, with more features & animations.Your Hardware is not upgraded, like your software. So , generally your phone will slow down with the progression of time. But personally I found little difference between iOS 6 iPhone 5 & iOS 10.3.2 iPhone 5
This is why I don't like Apple. They think they know what's best for their customers and also they have an amazing talent to cover their deficiencies up and repackage it to make them look like they are positive improvement. I gotta give a big applause to their PR team. Amazing people who can sell ice to Eskimos.
Any person with some brain knows the Li batteries lose it's charge capacities after certain number of charges, like 500 times or so then slowly after that it only charges up to 90 80 70 and so on then at some point if you can't stand less battery capacities then you get new batteries. Same with any rechargeable tools or electronic devices. It's a given fact.
I buy androids only because I don't like Apple's business philosophy. Regardless I understand both Iphones and Android phones will face the same battery degradation over time.
I had HTC, LG V20, GS3, Note 2, ZTE, 5 of GS7 Edges, and several tablets and notebooks from different manufacturers. Some removable batteries and some built in. My biggest worry about GS7 Edge was that when the battery gets old it is not as easy as the previous phones where I could simply replace the battery on my own besides the convenience of swapping batteries when the batteries dead.
Apple charges quite more than it's competitors because they claim it's premium phone. And they list many things as it's features but the thing they boast most is it's faster apu and their customers buy the phones for that reason among the others.
Well, I would think if it's a premium phone and they know the limitation of the battery technology they would design their apu so that it would be robust enough to operate even when the battery level is low or charge current is low. But they didn't.
So now customers complain that the phone shuts off at 40% battery level after using a couple of years or so then they throttle the apu speed so it does not shut off as frequent yet somewhat usable for most tasks just slower. "To protect the components and for the better user experience"
And they didn't let their customers know what's going on until they cannot keep it quiet anymore.
I don't know about the owners of other products but with me I never once had issues with phone shutting off until the battery level is 2 or even 1 percent especially with Samsungs. The screen might be really really dim below 5% battery level but kept going at full throttle. Yes the battery was draining faster than if it was throttled down but I wouldn't like it even if it had throttle down mode. I just control my use of the phone. Just use less if I need to prolong the battery time. But when I use it I want 100% performance out of it.
Many times I used my phones until the battery level gets down to zero over and over when I charge the phones then none of them stopped working! They always get charged back to 100% and so far there isn't a phone that became unusable because I used them until battery drains completely.
So I was kind of scratching my head "Iphone shuts down to protect the phone itself at 40% or so? So they slow down the apu if the battery gets old and hold less charge?" So what's the point of paying extra $$$ for fast apu phone if you don't get that full throttle speed after a while. To me regardless of how you want to look at it if it shuts off at 40% then it should say 0% because the phone does not work anymore at that point.
Well, if the Apple disclosed that after a couple of years of use their phones will shut off at 40% battery level to save the phones then far less people would buy them and that also a proof that there is a serious design flaw that low battery/voltage level can damage the phone whereas other phones don't.
Back to their marketing. Apple is the master of positioning of their products. They are genius at marketing and PRs. But I think they reach the point where those cannot carry them any farther. Like all the other big companies Apple is following Nokia's footstep and it's ironic that it was Apple who brought down Nokia.
It would have been fine if they admitted that with the older batteries the performance can be degraded and gave the choice to the customers full throttle all the way or less throttle for longer usage per battery charge instead of made that choice and shoved it down their customers throats. Pure arrogance......
But seriously the Iphones did shut off at 40% battery level?????? smh I don't see any premium-ness in it.
All Apple has to do now is remove that throttling algorithm and let the phone battery drain and now the customer will have to go ahead and buy a new phone. At least, this way Apple of helping those customer to make their phone last longer. Also, all of this, because of Li-On battery and this is the best form of batter technology easily available out there. I am sure Apple would rather have customer upgrade to newer equipments.
Nobody and no jury is going to believe this steaming pile of bullshit from Apple, and rightly so. They would be well served to state the truth from here on - rather than keep feeding this bullshit narrative.
They throttled performance to encourage upgrading. They wrote this code as a narrative in case they were ever found out. Never because they wanted to prolong the period of people buying new phones and hurting profits. They deceived everyone because they wanted a better customer experience??? What kind of drooling morons do they take us for?
They are going to get absolutely destroyed in courts all over the globe and in the US congress.
Something doesn’t add up here. Surely these are not the first smartphones to use lithium batteries that degrade over time. What changed, causing these to unexpectedly shut down? Sounds like a defect covered up by slowing down the phone instead of a recall. Why issue a recall when you can get users to buy batteries, or, even better, new phones.
This is my question too. Is it a bad batch of batteries or something? I don’t remember hearing about shutdowns in the past.
All Apple has to do now is remove that throttling algorithm and let the phone battery drain and now the customer will have to go ahead and buy a new phone. At least, this way Apple of helping those customer to make their phone last longer. Also, all of this, because of Li-On battery and this is the best form of batter technology easily available out there. I am sure Apple would rather have customer upgrade to newer equipments.
Wow - you mean iPhone batteries aren't supposed to last forever - I guess that must be why we don't have infinite energy in the world I agree transparency would be better but also like the idea that Apple just remove the anti drain software and let people buy new batteries like every other device. Watch the class action suits pile up then for not "looking after" the customer and not warning them that batteries don't last. Just a hint for some of the people who commented, there's a charger that comes with the phone - you need to charge it more that just the once when you open the box! otherwise it runs out! Just clearing things up in case people weren't sure
The problem is that we no longer live in a society where facts, reason, or rational explanations matter. Personal beliefs and perceptions, no matter how naive or subjective, are the only reality. Apple can try to explain this with sound engineering, scientific, and customer value principles and logic but it will not change the minds of those who have already decided that this incident fully confirms everything negative they already believe about Apple. There are many commenters who now attribute every perceived performance degradation on their device to be an intentional act by Apple to trick them into buying a new device, regardless of the health of their battery. Unfortunately it all starts at the top and there is no cure in sight.
Here are my facts: My wife iPhone 5S on iOS 7 after 4 years runs as smooth as my iPhone 7 on iOS 10! I was very close to update the software on her 5S recently but glad I didn't. Based on my experience I'm inclined to believe what I suspected of apple for a while: they are shameless lying hypocrites and charlatans like most if not all large corporations!
Dude, more new software ,means more complex code, with more features & animations.Your Hardware is not upgraded, like your software. So , generally your phone will slow down with the progression of time. But personally I found little difference between iOS 6 iPhone 5 & iOS 10.3.2 iPhone 5
Why do so many older models get the latest software? So Apple can put up a slide showing most of the install base on the latest software and make fun of Google’s so-called fragmentation? What good is being on the latest software if it makes your phone experience not great? I know Apple says it’s worked on making the latest software better for older devices but every year Ars Technics tests this out and the experience is still not that great.
The problem is that we no longer live in a society where facts, reason, or rational explanations matter. Personal beliefs and perceptions, no matter how naive or subjective, are the only reality. Apple can try to explain this with sound engineering, scientific, and customer value principles and logic but it will not change the minds of those who have already decided that this incident fully confirms everything negative they already believe about Apple. There are many commenters who now attribute every perceived performance degradation on their device to be an intentional act by Apple to trick them into buying a new device, regardless of the health of their battery. Unfortunately it all starts at the top and there is no cure in sight.
Here are my facts: My wife iPhone 5S on iOS 7 after 4 years runs as smooth as my iPhone 7 on iOS 10! I was very close to update the software on her 5S recently but glad I didn't. Based on my experience I'm inclined to believe what I suspected of apple for a while: they are shameless lying hypocrites and charlatans like most if not all large corporations!
Dude, more new software ,means more complex code, with more features & animations.Your Hardware is not upgraded, like your software. So , generally your phone will slow down with the progression of time. But personally I found little difference between iOS 6 iPhone 5 & iOS 10.3.2 iPhone 5
Why do so many older models get the latest software? So Apple can put up a slide showing most of the install base on the latest software and make fun of Google’s so-called fragmentation? What good is being on the latest software if it makes your phone experience not great? I know Apple says it’s worked on making the latest software better for older devices but every year Ars Technics tests this out and the experience is still not that great.
My iPad Mini 2 (A7) performs better under iOS 11 than your iPad Pro with almost no lag. I turned off many features, notably transparency, motion, many of background app refreshes; disabled recent apps on the dock, disabled video overlay, keeping only a couple of Safari tabs open... I always close unused apps via app switcher, closing them releases significant memory. I suggest to do the same on your iPad Pro.
What I mean, owners of older devices can optimize the operating system along with their usage patterns and can still benefit from the deeper enhancements brought by the latest versions and my iPad Mini 2 battery lasts longer under iOS 11. OS X Leopard 10.5.8 still keeps an iBook G4 (a 2005 PowerPC machine) functioning as a media server via iTunes Home Sharing. I am very glad Apple supports older devices with the new OS releases and this is one reason many people commits to Apple. And Apple doesn't force anyone to install the latest OS version. If the government would keep your five years old car out of traffic you would be enraged. That is the point.
I had the 40% shutdown on my 6 a couple of years ago. Pretty sure that was an iOS bug that got fixed soon after. Certainly my lad is now using my 6 with no shutdown issues at that % point (or any other except for zero).
This whole thing is starting to reek of confirmation bias though:
Everyone is jumping on Apple for slowing down the phone to maintain a consistent experience for all users. This is probably also why Apple is designing there own power management chips. How many people want it to come out that the reason for the battery issues is due how many times you have DROPPED you phone? My iPhone 6 kept shutting down at 10 20 and 30 percent. I attributed it to being dropped several times. My 6s didn’t have this issue as much. Instead of acting like th battery was dead it simply rebooted. I attribute the issues to the phone being dropped several times.
When my iPhome 6 was 18 months old and still under AppleCare it started spontaneously dying when the battery remaining was 40% and I did something like shoot a video. Apple wouldn’t replace the battery because I wasn’t on the current OS and because the battery did not “test” out of spec according to the Genius Bar. Sure enough months later when I finally gave up my jailbreak and updated iOS the sudden shutdowns stopped too, but now the phone was slow as heck.... so... I replaced it.
This is the key thing people are missing. Is this isn’t just 4 year old phones. Let’s talk about what an old battery is... in my case it should have been a manufactures defect under warranty replacement at 18 months and wasn’t because the software crippled it instead. .
Phones should operate normally, full power, for at least their warranty duration, don’t you think?
Hmm, I wonder what happens with Apple’s battery management software when you jailbreak an iPhone.
Apple deceived millions into buying new phones when the problem could have been fixed at the Apple store for $79.
If they did nothing, older batteries cause phones to spontaneously reboot at times of high demand. With the throttle, instead of rebooting the phone would slow down until the processing demand came back into what the battery could currently support.
This would cause the lifespan of the phone to be longer, not shorter as people would put up with a phone that is sluggish a hell of a lot longer than a phone that reboots.
Still, Apple should have forthcoming about the it and provided notification when it was in effect.
Apple could not have “made this an option” what would they say? “ we are giving you the option to slow down your current iPhone to avoid random shut downs and possible other battery issues like overheating and explosions. Apple has always underclocked there chips. Like I said in my last post. I would guess this is a combination between the iPhone being dropped and older iPhones with slower processors handling current apps and features designed for more recent iPhones.
Everyone is just looking for Apple to trip and land on its face so they can take in money from a class action lawsuit.
Apple likes to keep performance consistant amomg its devices. This is why Apple allergedly underclocked the Intel modem to match the speed of the Qualcomm modem and many other things.
Funny that I read an article here a few months ago stating that Apple did not intentionally slow older phones.
I accepted that as truth at the time despite my suspicion that my current phone ( and previous phones ) had slowed beyond what I would expect from a more demanding Os and apps.
I guess slowing phones to prevent unexpected problems is not an unreasonable thing to do but a little more transparency would be nice...and perhaps a little better reporting.
They still don't. If your phone is functioning fine, with a good battery, the phone is still just as fast as it always was. There remains no conspiracy to force you to buy a new phone.
$79 for a battery is still far cheaper than $349 for an iPhone SE.
The problem is that we no longer live in a society where facts, reason, or rational explanations matter. Personal beliefs and perceptions, no matter how naive or subjective, are the only reality. Apple can try to explain this with sound engineering, scientific, and customer value principles and logic but it will not change the minds of those who have already decided that this incident fully confirms everything negative they already believe about Apple. There are many commenters who now attribute every perceived performance degradation on their device to be an intentional act by Apple to trick them into buying a new device, regardless of the health of their battery. Unfortunately it all starts at the top and there is no cure in sight.
Here are my facts: My wife iPhone 5S on iOS 7 after 4 years runs as smooth as my iPhone 7 on iOS 10! I was very close to update the software on her 5S recently but glad I didn't. Based on my experience I'm inclined to believe what I suspected of apple for a while: they are shameless lying hypocrites and charlatans like most if not all large corporations!
This response is a perfect example of subjective reality fed by confirmation bias with a little backfire thrown in for good measure. Nothing Apple says or does at this point is going to change the reality embraced by this person or the many others with similarly toned commentary. If Apple removes the wear/aging compensation from iOS 11 and devices crash more often or if Apple puts in a battery health indicator to let uses know when their battery is near death, the same subjectivity will be applied that evil Apple is trying to trick them into buying a new Apple device.
At the end of the day Apple is only one of many vendors selling similar products in the same market category. If you feel as though you're not getting a fair shake from Apple then take your business elsewhere. Can it get any simpler than that? You gotta sleep at night. Think about all the peace, tranquility, and wonder that will ensue when you are unshackled from Apple's oppression. Oops, forgot that all large corporations are out to get us. Maybe consider buying a Raspberry Pi and figuring out how to turn it into a communication device. You can probably fashion a shoulder strap for a motorcycle battery to power it when working mobile. A small form factor bluetooth keyboard with integrated trackpad, a cheap Android tablet as a monitor, and you're all set - wherever you can find a WiFi hotspot you are in like Flynn.
When my iPhome 6 was 18 months old and still under AppleCare it started spontaneously dying when the battery remaining was 40% and I did something like shoot a video. Apple wouldn’t replace the battery because I wasn’t on the current OS and because the battery did not “test” out of spec according to the Genius Bar. Sure enough months later when I finally gave up my jailbreak and updated iOS the sudden shutdowns stopped too, but now the phone was slow as heck.... so... I replaced it.
This is the key thing people are missing. Is this isn’t just 4 year old phones. Let’s talk about what an old battery is... in my case it should have been a manufactures defect under warranty replacement at 18 months and wasn’t because the software crippled it instead. .
Phones should operate normally, full power, for at least their warranty duration, don’t you think?
So my thought on your last question is: my car doesn’t throttle my engine when I am low on gas. To my knowledge, my MacBook doesn’t throttle my chips as the battery is aging. What makes the iPhone so special?
I bought a device that is expected to produce a certain level of preformance, I expect it to continue that level at all times unless otherwise told. Why cover up a failing battery? If it’s a serious problem, I will replace it, as most consumers would once it’s condition is poor. There is no defending Apple on this one.
Not sure how big of a deal this is but the iOS versions here lately have been horrid on my iPhone 7. So bad, I am restarting or hard restarting my phone at least once per day, often multiple times per day. It’s like using a beta iOS or a Samsung. Really annoying. Generally it happens when using built in Apple apps too. Anyone else having a similar experience?
No, but it may have a "limp home" mode in the event of some kind of problem. That's what this is. And, in the case of a depleted battery in at least the white plastic MacBooks, and MacBook Pros before 2010 for sure, and possibly more models, if it isn't capable of delivering enough power, or is not installed, the machine clocks itself down to properly operate.
I'm certainly not defending Apple's lack of response to the situation. However, there are chemical and physical realities associated with batteries, and the throttling in response to a depleted one is fine. Just not the lack of disclosure.
Again, the choices here are a crashing phone that shuts off randomly, or one that is slower and still works.
Where exactly those disclosures should be would be my question. There might be numerous fairly arcane situations that would need to be disclosed, if such disclosure is truly required.
In the previous article, about the first lawsuit, a commenter pointed out that the OS throttles the clock speed to prevent thermal issues. Should that be disclosed? Where, and when?
What about other issues that affect performance? Running 32-bit apps, back before they were culled? Should that have been disclosed at the time of a sale of an iPhone 5S, 6, 6S?
How about the minor difference in processor performance between the Samsung and TMSC A10’s? Should that have been printed on the back of each iPhone, like the P, (Philadelphia), D (Denver) or S (San Francisco) mint marks on old pennies?
Then there’s the Intel versus Qualcomm modem speeds. Again, print that on the back of the iPhone too? Let users make a choice?
The fact is, Apple doesn’t sell their iPhones on those specs. They don’t promise or represent that the CPU will always run at a certain clock speed. They do represent that each new CPU is faster than the previous generations, but that’s a relative comparison. If two generations of CPU are each downclocked under similar conditions (to prevent a thermal issue, for example), then the relative performance claims will remain true. The fact Apple doesn’t make a claim about absolute performance is, in my opinion, why these lawsuits will fail.
Where is it that Apple should be so transparent regarding all these esoteric device management issues?
Comments
Any person with some brain knows the Li batteries lose it's charge capacities after certain number of charges, like 500 times or so then slowly after that it only charges up to 90 80 70 and so on then at some point if you can't stand less battery capacities then you get new batteries. Same with any rechargeable tools or electronic devices. It's a given fact.
I buy androids only because I don't like Apple's business philosophy. Regardless I understand both Iphones and Android phones will face the same battery degradation over time.
I had HTC, LG V20, GS3, Note 2, ZTE, 5 of GS7 Edges, and several tablets and notebooks from different manufacturers. Some removable batteries and some built in. My biggest worry about GS7 Edge was that when the battery gets old it is not as easy as the previous phones where I could simply replace the battery on my own besides the convenience of swapping batteries when the batteries dead.
Apple charges quite more than it's competitors because they claim it's premium phone. And they list many things as it's features but the thing they boast most is it's faster apu and their customers buy the phones for that reason among the others.
Well, I would think if it's a premium phone and they know the limitation of the battery technology they would design their apu so that it would be robust enough to operate even when the battery level is low or charge current is low. But they didn't.
So now customers complain that the phone shuts off at 40% battery level after using a couple of years or so then they throttle the apu speed so it does not shut off as frequent yet somewhat usable for most tasks just slower. "To protect the components and for the better user experience"
And they didn't let their customers know what's going on until they cannot keep it quiet anymore.
I don't know about the owners of other products but with me I never once had issues with phone shutting off until the battery level is 2 or even 1 percent especially with Samsungs. The screen might be really really dim below 5% battery level but kept going at full throttle. Yes the battery was draining faster than if it was throttled down but I wouldn't like it even if it had throttle down mode. I just control my use of the phone. Just use less if I need to prolong the battery time. But when I use it I want 100% performance out of it.
Many times I used my phones until the battery level gets down to zero over and over when I charge the phones then none of them stopped working! They always get charged back to 100% and so far there isn't a phone that became unusable because I used them until battery drains completely.
So I was kind of scratching my head "Iphone shuts down to protect the phone itself at 40% or so? So they slow down the apu if the battery gets old and hold less charge?" So what's the point of paying extra $$$ for fast apu phone if you don't get that full throttle speed after a while. To me regardless of how you want to look at it if it shuts off at 40% then it should say 0% because the phone does not work anymore at that point.
Well, if the Apple disclosed that after a couple of years of use their phones will shut off at 40% battery level to save the phones then far less people would buy them and that also a proof that there is a serious design flaw that low battery/voltage level can damage the phone whereas other phones don't.
Back to their marketing. Apple is the master of positioning of their products. They are genius at marketing and PRs. But I think they reach the point where those cannot carry them any farther. Like all the other big companies Apple is following Nokia's footstep and it's ironic that it was Apple who brought down Nokia.
It would have been fine if they admitted that with the older batteries the performance can be degraded and gave the choice to the customers full throttle all the way or less throttle for longer usage per battery charge instead of made that choice and shoved it down their customers throats. Pure arrogance......
But seriously the Iphones did shut off at 40% battery level?????? smh I don't see any premium-ness in it.
They throttled performance to encourage upgrading. They wrote this code as a narrative in case they were ever found out. Never because they wanted to prolong the period of people buying new phones and hurting profits.
They deceived everyone because they wanted a better customer experience???
What kind of drooling morons do they take us for?
They are going to get absolutely destroyed in courts all over the globe and in the US congress.
i swear some of you are nothing but cult members.
What I mean, owners of older devices can optimize the operating system along with their usage patterns and can still benefit from the deeper enhancements brought by the latest versions and my iPad Mini 2 battery lasts longer under iOS 11. OS X Leopard 10.5.8 still keeps an iBook G4 (a 2005 PowerPC machine) functioning as a media server via iTunes Home Sharing. I am very glad Apple supports older devices with the new OS releases and this is one reason many people commits to Apple. And Apple doesn't force anyone to install the latest OS version. If the government would keep your five years old car out of traffic you would be enraged. That is the point.
This whole thing is starting to reek of confirmation bias though:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
With the throttle, instead of rebooting the phone would slow down until the processing demand came back into what the battery could currently support.
This would cause the lifespan of the phone to be longer, not shorter as people would put up with a phone that is sluggish a hell of a lot longer than a phone that reboots.
Still, Apple should have forthcoming about the it and provided notification when it was in effect.
Everyone is just looking for Apple to trip and land on its face so they can take in money from a class action lawsuit.
Apple likes to keep performance consistant amomg its devices. This is why Apple allergedly underclocked the Intel modem to match the speed of the Qualcomm modem and many other things.
$79 for a battery is still far cheaper than $349 for an iPhone SE.
At the end of the day Apple is only one of many vendors selling similar products in the same market category. If you feel as though you're not getting a fair shake from Apple then take your business elsewhere. Can it get any simpler than that? You gotta sleep at night. Think about all the peace, tranquility, and wonder that will ensue when you are unshackled from Apple's oppression. Oops, forgot that all large corporations are out to get us. Maybe consider buying a Raspberry Pi and figuring out how to turn it into a communication device. You can probably fashion a shoulder strap for a motorcycle battery to power it when working mobile. A small form factor bluetooth keyboard with integrated trackpad, a cheap Android tablet as a monitor, and you're all set - wherever you can find a WiFi hotspot you are in like Flynn.
Where exactly those disclosures should be would be my question. There might be numerous fairly arcane situations that would need to be disclosed, if such disclosure is truly required.
In the previous article, about the first lawsuit, a commenter pointed out that the OS throttles the clock speed to prevent thermal issues. Should that be disclosed? Where, and when?
What about other issues that affect performance? Running 32-bit apps, back before they were culled? Should that have been disclosed at the time of a sale of an iPhone 5S, 6, 6S?
How about the minor difference in processor performance between the Samsung and TMSC A10’s? Should that have been printed on the back of each iPhone, like the P, (Philadelphia), D (Denver) or S (San Francisco) mint marks on old pennies?
Then there’s the Intel versus Qualcomm modem speeds. Again, print that on the back of the iPhone too? Let users make a choice?
The fact is, Apple doesn’t sell their iPhones on those specs. They don’t promise or represent that the CPU will always run at a certain clock speed. They do represent that each new CPU is faster than the previous generations, but that’s a relative comparison. If two generations of CPU are each downclocked under similar conditions (to prevent a thermal issue, for example), then the relative performance claims will remain true. The fact Apple doesn’t make a claim about absolute performance is, in my opinion, why these lawsuits will fail.
Where is it that Apple should be so transparent regarding all these esoteric device management issues?