China adds to government pressure on Apple over iPhone slowdowns
Apple is facing yet another government-backed inquiry into revelations of deliberate iPhone performance throttling, as the Shanghai Consumer Council reportedly sought answers on Monday.
The council has "demanded the cause of the performance and remedy measures as well as complete information regarding the interests of consumers", according to state-run news agency Xinhua. Increased consumer complaints were cited as part of the request, with the council indicating that reported issues were up from 964 in 2015 to 2,615 in 2017.
Apple has been given until Friday to submit its reply.
Several governments have stepped in since Apple admitted that it deliberately throttles performance in iPhones with flagging batteries. The company subsequently issued an apology and dropped the price for a replacement battery to $29, actions which have not satisfied regulators.
Prior to the latest Shanghai request, inquiries have been made by the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, and France's DGCCRF.
Apple's iPhones are among the most popular handsets sold in China, now the company's largest market. The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus finished 2017 as two of the 10 best-selling smartphones in the country.
The council has "demanded the cause of the performance and remedy measures as well as complete information regarding the interests of consumers", according to state-run news agency Xinhua. Increased consumer complaints were cited as part of the request, with the council indicating that reported issues were up from 964 in 2015 to 2,615 in 2017.
Apple has been given until Friday to submit its reply.
Several governments have stepped in since Apple admitted that it deliberately throttles performance in iPhones with flagging batteries. The company subsequently issued an apology and dropped the price for a replacement battery to $29, actions which have not satisfied regulators.
Prior to the latest Shanghai request, inquiries have been made by the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, and France's DGCCRF.
Apple's iPhones are among the most popular handsets sold in China, now the company's largest market. The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus finished 2017 as two of the 10 best-selling smartphones in the country.
Comments
ON = Slow my phone as my battery ages so I get more life out of my battery.
OFF = Allow my phone to suddenly and randomly shut off as the battery ages.
It really is that simple.
But this IPhone slow down and inferior battery deployment is a major issue that I would like to see them address sooner rather than later. And I don’t mean addressing by offering a temporary program of ten months to pay $29 to replace a battery but rather addressing by a permanent fix to the problem by genuinely using better power retaining batteries like Samsung, but with better hardware quality controls like Apple is known for.
Bigger batteries are less stressed, Samsung CPU have deplorable single thread peaks with stresses the battery less, Smaller phones more stress, etc, etc, etc.
Samsung's batteries in the current phones are ripe with problems (not to mention the Note). What's your fracking explanation there huh bud.
So, you just lied again. Just stop lying. You're not fooling anyone buddy.
In response to the iPhone aged battery thing, both Samsung and LG released statements saying that they do not throttle phones with aged batteries. What they didn’t say was that they don’t throttle phones at all.
As as far as I remember, the only phone that ran its components at full speed was the Samsung Note4 – and even then it only ran at full speed when it detected it was running a benchmark test.
This is probably why Apple shuts down the phone at around 2% charge.
Every customer with a a slow iPhone who bought a new iPhone but who was not given the option to replace the battery, was mislead by Apple. The fact that a lot of Apple Stores guided these customers to buy a new iPhone did not help to contradict the possible intentional character.
The throttling itself is not the issue, the secrecy about it is.
The "issue" is people thinking their batteries will last forever no matter how intensely they use them and Apple trying to keeping them from being faced with this delusion full on. Seems letting the phones die as per usual in this case (with ensuing "shock" at this real world tragedy..., would have been the better option seemingly).
What Apple does is essentially power management which happens in phones of all vintage to prevent crapping up the battery life daily and overall battery life. Mobile phones are "throttled" almost ALL THE TIME or your phone wouldn't even last half a day. That's the funny thing about this dumbass outrage.
For example, Apple used to have all big cores doing all the work and now and thus slowing them down slowed down all operations, while now it can shove part of the tasks to small cores as fast as possible to save power while keeping those that need the juice on the big cores. Well the algorythm that does that must be heavily tuned so as not to affect UI and user performance; matching usage to ressources is an art. Some edge cases undoubtably will see this slow down but probably less than before when everything was run on the big cores (like the Iphone 6 and 6s).
That's why I expect later Apple SOC to work better under degraded battery than earlier versions.
Since the batteries are so much bigger with much better thermals (heat dissipation) and less environmental stresses (used in very cold or hot weather), and Ipad's rarely are run through full charging cycles every day (which are particularly bad for batteries), it can take a long long time before the batteries get degraded to the same point as in a phone, at a minimum many years (I'd estimate 3-4 at a minimum even under heavy use). By that time, most people would already realize that the battery is losing juice and not be surprised with degraded performance.
The reason this hit harder here is that many heavy Iphone users these days can reach 700 full charge (meaning they've also put their phone under thermal stress due to intensive use) cycles within 12-18 months. You can easly discharge your phone completely at least twice a day if you use say GPS, bluetooth music and are on the net plus running several background apps and playing a few AA games.
The reason there will be no option is because Apple knows that everyone (including all the people who’re demanding a choice) will always pick a slower phone over a crashing one. Apple engineers are not going to include an option no one will use.
Get ok with it. Apple screwed up big time here and it's time to pay back.
I wonder what would be your and other fanboy alike comments if this was Samsung case?!? You would probably shit all over Samsung for it... Grow up kids. Apple make great products, but their quality is very questionable in recent years. It's not just #throttlegate. Also premium priced iPhoneX doesn't feel that premium at all and it's full of usability quirks. For the most expensive product in it's niche you would not expect that.
There should be more pressure on Apple. They need to step up their game and improve!
-- Apple manages its iPhones even after their sale to insure they operate at their best in all ways possible. That often involves compromise -- such as the current "is slowing worse than a complete shutdown?"
-- Microsoft/HP, etc... take a hands off approach. Once you buy it you can do whatever you want with it. But, you are essentially on your own -- for good or for bad.
Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages.
But, you can't have the benefits of a fully managed system without giving up some of the freedoms of an unmanaged system.
This isn't the first time Apple has been condemned by the uninformed for managing their products. It won't be the last.
But, it is also complicated by the Jobs' legacy of simplicity -- where there aren't a lot of detailed instructions. Rather, like the instruction manual on one of the original Ataris: "Avoid Klingons"
Every CPU in every computer from every manufacturer is managed in a variety of ways....
... Deal with it!
... Deal with it. Or, buy an Android... But go away with your conspiracy theories...