
IPhones start slowing down after a year - alex_young
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/12/20/16803190/iphone-slowdown-is-needed-but-also-a-problem
======
jamiesonbecker
If your battery is only reduced by 8% after a couple of years, why does the
device have a artificial, significant decrease in performance after just one
year?

Worse yet, Apple doesn't disclose this and it took an independent researcher
to actually measure it and discover this. Wonder why? Smells a bit reminiscent
of VW's diesel strategy.

"Thank you for spending your precious, discretionary income on a new Tesla!
Your new vehicle will automatically slow down as it ages, because random
battery parts will wear out, and going slower 'helps stop random shutdowns,
which are a major pain.' By year five, your vehicle's max speed will be
artificially limited to approximately 20 mph. We can help with that if you
bring it in to an authorized manufacturer-owned store, assuming there is one
in your country, or ship it to us at your cost, where we will replace a random
part at only 20% the cost of a new Tesla. You could do this every year to
maintain peak performance, but we prefer that you don't know about this at all
and just buy a new car from us instead."

Planned obsolescence, with an air of plausibility to its reckless,
environmentally unsound _' science'_ that forces you to dispose of the phone
(if you don't know about this pre-programmed slowdown) or battery (if you do)
before it actually ceases being useful to you.. brilliant.

But, when you get that shiny new phone home, you're blown away at how 'fast'
it is compared to your previous phone.

It's actually _breathtakingly_ brilliant, in an evil genius sort of way.

~~~
jakobegger
The slowdown is related to battery health. For some devices, it starts
happening after a year; for others it takes longer.

Replacing the battery restores normal performance. You don‘t need to go to an
authorised repair shop.

~~~
concerned_user
Any responsible manufacturer would notify users about faulty hardware and not
try to hide the problem.

~~~
forgot-my-pw
It's not considered faulty, more like degraded over time. So the CPU is
throttled when the battery is no longer optimal to preserve battery life?

I rather have shorter battery life with same performance so it's more
noticeable that I need to replace the battery.

~~~
concerned_user
Apple says that if they don't throttle it then phone can suddenly shut down
(battery overheats, fail-safes shut the power so it doesn't explode) under
certain circumstances, which is perceived as fault by end user.

I would like to be informed of this "Your battery is starting to fail". Same
way as SMART monitoring in disk drives tells you that it degraded too much and
will break soon.

------
napoleoncomplex
A few things that I haven't seen discussed much.

1\. Battery degradation should happen to all phones, regardless of
OS/manufacturer. How do other phones handle this (flagship Android phones
etc.)?

2\. If other phones don't experience these shutdowns on such a wide scale or
don't throttle the performance so harshly (to literally half or one third of
original performance) to avoid shutdowns, what about the iPhone is different
to force them into this decision?

Geekbench which posted the larger group of data confirming this, they could
probably run the same analysis on S8 phones from Samsung.

Now, if the same does not happen on other phones, the entire debate being
framed as it currently is, is a pretty amazing PR spin.

It's much easier to justify the decision between phones shutting down or
throttling the device, than it would be to justify a engineering decision that
makes the above two choices the only choices, despite other vendors being able
to seemingly pull off this magic trick of keeping devices working for more
than a year.

With all of Apple's resources and engineering know-how, it seems a stretch
that they would be the only ones incapable of solving this issue.

I don't actually know if other vendors solve it differently, but I do know
that they have the same battery life, the same phone thinness and powerful
specs.

Does anyone have a clue about this? Seems like the more interesting story.

~~~
bb88
If you bought a car and it stopped working after a year because the battery
failed, you would expect to be able to change the battery yourself.

~~~
jmull
The ol' car analogy has failed you here.

Cars do sometimes stop working after a year because their batteries fail and
the great majority of people in that situation take their cars to a repair
shop rather than do the work themselves.

Actually, the battery in a phone is more comparable to the entire fuel
delivery and ignition system in a car, not just the battery. Even fewer people
could handle that work on their own.

~~~
jaclaz
I don't think it is relevant "who" changes "what" (you or a specialized
technician).

The point revolves more around whether replacing a vital component after only
one year of normal use would be covered by warranty (in EU for consumers
warranty is two years for _everything_ ).

Another interesting point is how you discover that some part needs to be
replaced.

For the car, it is easy, one morning it won't start.

What if (say) Ford or Chevrolet (or Volkswagen that has some documented
experience in the field ;)) had a hidden electronic device that - in order to
save the battery and your next morning start of the car - progressively dimmed
a litte bit your head and tail lights and/or lowered the heating or the
cooling set temperature slightly, starting, still say, after six month?

------
NDizzle
I'm going to throw out an impossible solution to this problem. It's impossible
because it's very un-Apple.

Let the user choose their own fate. I know, I know, that's crazy talk, right?
If given the option on my old iPhone 6 plus, I would have chose to maybe have
the phone shut off suddenly at 40% battery life and run at full speed. On the
rare days when I'm going to be heavily using my device (and not near constant
power) I could change the setting so that it would run slower, but not freak
out with battery problems.

This assumes that Apple doesn't know best, and that the user actually has a
say in the matter, which goes against iOS / OS X / Apple at a deep,
philosophical level.

~~~
slantyyz
>> If given the option on my old iPhone 6 plus, I would have chose to maybe
have the phone shut off suddenly at 40% battery life and run at full speed.

This sort of begs the question - if your phone is shutting off suddenly at
40%, is the battery really at 40%?

People have certain preconceived expectations when they see a percentage. The
best analog I can think of is a gas tank. People know that how they drive
affects their fuel consumption, but they also know that when their gas tank is
40% full, their car's not going to shut off suddenly.

Perhaps we need to look at using a different measure than percent to indicate
remaining battery life. Having said that, I don't know what that different
measure would be.

~~~
cptskippy
Batteries have a predictable discharge cycle. They're fully charged when their
output voltage stops increasing and as they discharge the output voltage
slowly falls until it reaches a certain threshold where the output voltage is
no longer enough to power the device. That cut off voltage is a fixed number.
The part that varies is the time it takes to go from fully charged to the cut
off voltage.

As a battery degrades, the time is reduced.

Regardless of what the initial voltage is, a plot can be drawn based on
measurements of the voltage to see how quickly it's approaching the cut off
voltage.

So the battery capacity should really be where the voltage is relative to the
last peak when fully charged compared to the cut off voltage.

If Apple is reporting a battery at 40% capacity when it cuts off then they're
fudging their numbers.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Drawing power causes voltage drops; I suspect what they're saying is that a
degraded battery under heavy load will momentarily drop from 40% to under
cutoff threshold.

~~~
cptskippy
Large voltage drops under load are typically an indication of a bad cell or
battery. You could argue this is beneficial to the customer but Apple is
hiding the fact that they're doing this. Why?

I recall when they switched to non-replaceable batteries in MacBooks, they
boasted how their battery lives were the best and would last x years. Is this
how they did it?

------
blinkingled
Another way to look at this is Apple isn't putting in the right sized
batteries in their phones because they believe thinner phone is a better
phone. If all it takes is one year for the phone battery to stop providing
enough juice to the CPU/GPU then either the battery is not of adequately
designed capacity or the CPU/GPU has too much peak power draw for the battery.

Either way looks like a design issue that's just too convenient for Apple to
keep selling new phones each year. If they put slightly thicker battery with
adequate spare capacity or reduced peak power draw for their SoC people can
get 2+ years of consistent performance out of their device. Instead Apple is
designing to provide one year of peak performance followed by slow downs so
you can go out and get the new phone next year - sounds not very user friendly
to me no matter if it looks intentional or not.

~~~
roc
Who in the world would run right out and buy a new iPhone if their last one
became unusable in one year?

People switch _to_ the iPhone because of their longer usable life compared to
the competition. People pay _more_ for old iPhones compared to the competition
because of their longer usable life. Not only is it not in Apple's interest to
make self-destructing phones, to even accuse them of that requires ignoring
the entire history of iPhone adoption and resale value.

Further, there is no "one year" for batteries. Batteries with more charge
cycles degrade faster. Batteries that push peak performance more often degrade
faster. Batteries that spend time in extreme heat and cold degrade faster.
Because of this, a simple anecdote of "throttling after a year" means even
less than usual.

No-one has data on how much throttling is going on, but Apple. The best proxy
we have is the aggregate purchasing decisions of people who had iPhones, and
the prices of used iPhones. And people with iPhones overwhelmingly keep buying
iPhones. And the prices of used iPhones aren't going anywhere. This "Apple
makes self-destructing phones" theory needs a rest.

~~~
leerob
> Who in the world would run right out and buy a new iPhone if their last one
> became unusable in one year?

A lot of people? I'm sure there are tons of people who do this where cost
isn't an issue.

~~~
roc
Let's assume some measurable number of people might do this, purely for
arguments sake. Why does the resale value of old iPhones not reflect these
devices being "unusable?"

~~~
blinkingled
You keep saying unusable - nobody said throttling makes it unusable, just
slower than a year ago when you bought it. Value of iPhones is irrespective of
the Apple admitted fact that they do in fact throttle older phones. Some one
year later and some two but it is a known fact that it happens. What it has to
do with resale values is a separate thing that would be interesting to debate
if Apple had not verified the throttling part.

------
overcast
Just a heads up to everyone. I had my 6S battery swapped for free under Apple
warranty last weekend. The CPU has remained at 1848mhz the entire time since,
all the way down to 1%. It no longer throttles the frequency. You should
contact Apple if you're having whacky slowdown issues. Because my old phone
feels brand new again.

[https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6s-unexpectedshutdown/](https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6s-unexpectedshutdown/)

~~~
malchow
How was your 6S still under warranty? Were you able to claim "manufacturing
defect" to Apple?

~~~
overcast
[https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6s-unexpectedshutdown/](https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6s-unexpectedshutdown/)

Type in your serial number, and it's probably covered.

------
herodotus
> Or Apple could make it easier and cheaper to replace the iPhone's battery

Apple charges $79 to replace a battery. Seems cheap to me. And, btw I have
been running my SE for a couple of years and the battery is only reduced by
8%. Seems pretty good to me. I think peoples expectations are just absurd.

~~~
have_faith
> I think peoples expectations are just absurd.

From the perspective of environmentalism, I think all phones should have
mandatory replaceable batteries. Is that really so absurd? Why are companies
allowed to design devices with such disregard for the environment.

~~~
throwanem
All phones _do_ have replaceable batteries, if you're brave enough.

But Apple sets the bravery bar extremely high. The process of replacing a
battery in e.g. my SE is _insane_ :
[https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+SE+Battery+Replacement/6...](https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+SE+Battery+Replacement/61303)
describes the teardown, and
[https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+Battery+Adhesive+Strips+...](https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+Battery+Adhesive+Strips+Replacement/56465)
the process of applying adhesive to the replacement battery - yes, that second
task is complex and difficult enough to require an entire separate guide of
its own.

I get that the goal of this design is to ensure that the battery _does not
move_ once it's fixed into the case. And I understand why that's necessary.
What I don't understand is why it can't practicably be achieved by a
combination of closer dimensional tolerances and the application of some thin
elastomer to the parts of the case that contact the battery. Given the
complexity of the assembly process, I can't imagine that such a design would
be more difficult to assemble than the one that shipped, and it would provide
a considerably more approachable battery replacement process - I'm not shy
about performing my own device repairs, and I'm good enough at it that I
haven't ruined anything yet, but this is one where I'd rather pay the $79 to
have it done in an Apple store, and the adhesive is about 95% of why.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
And all humans _do_ have replaceable kidneys and hearts but we cant't go
around hot swapping them on a hike.

~~~
throwanem
The expressed concern around environmentalism suggests we're discussing this
in a context of replacing batteries rather than throwing phones away, instead
of hot-swapping batteries to keep using a device while away from a charger.

------
goblins
I don't think the outrage is excessive and I am more inclined to think poorly
of the people not outraged by this. And those ok with the price of replacing
something that should be user replaceable anyway.

This is one of the richest companies in the world who charge some ridiculous
prices for their products arbitrarily slowing down older models of their
phones on purpose for no other reason than to force their customers to upgrade
to newer phones. Planned obsolescence. Their stated reason for doing this is
smacks of bullshit.

~~~
lovehashbrowns
I'm in full agreement with you. A good chunk of the comments in this thread
seem ridiculous to me. Some people not deeming these users as doing anything
important enough ("Most users just use their phones for casual internet
browsing, candy crush, and texting.") to get what they paid for.

Here's another one, apparently straight from Apple's marketing team: "It makes
perfect sense for Apple to optimize their devices for stability and max run
time."

This was perfectly timed to come out just after the silly Mozilla thing, with
people talking about how they've lost trust in the company; here's Apple
gimping their hardware and not telling their paying customers a damn thing
about it.

~~~
goblins
The difference between the Mozilla thing and this though is the level of
outrage and the fact people are actually trying to make excuses for Apple.

Mozilla did their thing imho in all naivety. Someone there thought that would
be "cool" you know because Mr robot is cool, but clearly missed the point.

Apple have a history of trying to pass off design flaws as features;
antennagate anyone? As far as I'm concerned if you know that a component will
deteriorate over time like a battery making it practically impossible to
replace is a design flaws.

------
1undo
I smell a lawsuit coming. Its perfectly fine if the phones are designed to
slow down as long as this information is disclosed to the customers.
Intentionally misleading customers is illegal. Its probably splitting hairs,
but I can easily see a law firm looking into this.

------
carlmcqueen
The only reason I'm upset by this is speculative.

If I buy a 'boost' battery case because I know the battery is going to be
getting worse with time does their software solution acknowledge this and let
me keep the full speed my phone should have?

~~~
thinkythought
No, it only checks the battery state. I'm suspicious it runs off the battery
even when plugged in, and works like power>charge controller>battery>power
management>system rather than power>power management>system when plugged in(or
"plugged in" to a case). An iphone usually wont boot with no battery

------
userbinator
Apple's power management decisions have always been a little... odd. This
throttling reminds me of their older Macbooks with removable batteries, which
would actually slow down when running on mains power only, because they
(deliberately) designed their AC adapters to not be able to supply enough
power to run the computer at full load:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20080913210306/http://support.ap...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080913210306/http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2332)?

The exact opposite of all other laptops I've used, where AC-only/AC+battery
will be the highest performance, with battery-only being the least.

It'd be interesting to see if these iPhones run faster or slower when plugged
in and charging.

~~~
toblender
I just ran Geekbench with it plugged in. Got the same crappy performance with
an iPhone 6, getting 1000, when it should be 1400. Here I was hoping a battery
case would do the trick.

------
_greim_
This brings to mind Louis CK's "everything's amazing and nobody's happy"
routine from several years ago[1]. Sure, Apple could communicate this, and a
thousand other trade-offs like it, but that would shatter the illusion which
people pay Apple so much money for: a magic black box that just works.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8LaT5Iiwo4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8LaT5Iiwo4)

------
cranjice
It makes perfect sense for Apple to optimize their devices for stability and
max run time. These are arguably the most important features of any device.

Any other behavior, including offering the user power options (because many
users won't understand them) would introduce a poorer user experience (abrupt
hard shutdowns, constant need to charge) and likely sway some portion of non-
tech users to purchase a different brand when they refresh.

At the end of the day the battery is replaceable and if you chose to buy an
iPhone you're already aware that they it is a "premium" device.

~~~
1_2__4
Spoken like a tone-deaf apple PR person. The entire furor around this suggests
your opinion is not shared by the general populace. A problem I usually run
into with product managers.

~~~
cranjice
A the verge article represents the opinion of the general populace? Please.

------
sleepybrett
It's a tradeoff, would you rather have to charge it more or have it slow down
slightly to extend battery life?

~~~
marcuskaz
It's disingenuous on Apple's part to slow down the phone without notifying the
user. So instead of a user knowing the battery is degrading and can be
replaced for just $79, the user is led to think the phone performance is
degrading and probably needs to upgrade the whole thing.

~~~
concerned_user
But the part that makes this trick even more ingenious is that you will not
notice phone slowing down by 1% every month and write it off as being some
sort of observational bias.

------
mediocrejoker
I think the outrage is a bit excessive. People buy apple phones because they
want all the technical details abstracted away and they don't want to have to
make the decisions on things like the tradeoff between clock speed and battery
life. That's Apple's selling point in a way, making technology accessible.

If you want to tune your core voltages then isn't that what Android is for?

~~~
sasmithjr
People aren't upset because they cannot tune the voltage themselves; they're
upset because of a lack of communication.

You cannot make informed purchasing decisions if manufacturers are hiding this
kind of information from you. How many people bought a new iPhone due to
degraded performance when a new battery would have fixed it right up? People
didn't have the information to make that choice, and I believe that's what's
upsetting at least some people.

------
JoshMnem
This situation provides another good argument for the need for Free software
operating systems, especially on mobile devices.

------
TYPE_FASTER
I did not notice a big difference with my iPhone 6 and 10.2. I have noticed a
difference with 11.2. Very low sample counts of CPU frequency using the "CPU
DasherX" app seem to back this up: my CPU has gone from running at 1.4GHz
prior to 11.2 to 600-839MHz after the 11.2 update.

I'm averaging roughly 3.25 years per iPhone, having upgraded from 3GS to 4 to
6 over the past ten years. I'm going to replace the battery on my 6 and see
how long I can keep it going.

------
acd
One should be able to repair and swap batteries in electronics including the
batteries. It is not sustainable for the environment to buy and throw cell
phones every few years apart. One should alas be able to reuse components such
as displays.

If one would be able to swap batteries in the iPhone and Samsung s7 there
would have been a less issue.

Phones should also have boot loaders allowing free operating systems. It would
help with new environmental laws demanding reapairability.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
> It is not sustainable for the environment to buy and throw cell phones every
> few years apart.

I don't disagree with your overall point, but is this part actually true? How
does the environmental impact of creating a phone compare with that of
creating a TV which might only last 10 years, or a car? Feels to me like the
phone impact must be pretty minimal.

------
okreallywtf
My question would be - how are you supposed to know when to replace the
battery? You can judge your battery capacity fairly decently yourself - if the
phone used to be at 40% after a day of hard use and now it barely makes it to
bedtime you know its degraded. Measuring relative performance of the phone
would be very difficult to gauge yourself. Granted, in both situations you
could have other issues (unknown apps running etc), but if you aren't changing
anything about your phone for the most part you'll know when the battery is
not doing as good as it has. You then know to replace it.

Even if this isn't planned obsolescence, it is tangential to it. They know
they are putting a new phone out every year or so, and they are hedging their
bets that people will move to it so this decision makes total sense for them
financially. It feels underhanded even if not fraudulent, they made a decision
that is better for them than you. God forbid you have to charge your phone
during the day?

~~~
roc
Apple needs to do _way_ better at informing the user when the battery is
notably degraded, and when that degradation is leading to notable throttling.

Particularly, when as the throttling is severe (more than 25% or so) and when
the user is encountering it with any frequency.

------
markoutso
This is another example of a corporation that's too greedy and dishonest.
Apple is by no means the only one. I'm sure there are going to be many "fan
boys" and girls or maybe marketeers that will try to justify this, but the
fact remains that the company that manufactures and sells the most expensive
device in the market and has 100% control over the hardware and software , is
degrading its performance on purpose. The user has no knowledge of this (hence
the lying) and doesn't have the option of replacing the battery in an easy
way. Who tells me that this isn't part of a strategy so that the user will buy
the newest and more expensive phone...

------
calebgilbert
100% there will be multiple class action lawsuits regarding this. Whether it's
right or wrong going to be people that will wanna see if they can throw
something against the wall and make it stick.

------
teeray
In January, 2016, I put my two-month-old 6S into the Apple battery case, and
it's been there to this day. One of the benefits of the case is that it uses
the case's external battery first. During a typical day, I never use the
internal battery (when traveling I end up using both).

I don't have any empirical evidence to support it, but I've noticed no
degradation in performance of the phone. Given this news I'd like to attribute
that to the minimal use of the internal battery.

~~~
Dolores12
How does your phone know it need use your case battery first?

------
CalChris
The last time I replaced a battery was for my 5S and I noticed it definitely
got snappier. My SE is a year old right now at 92% and I'm quite happy with
it. I suppose if I was running benchmarks on it all day long, I'd notice.
Maybe if I was doing mobile gaming and losing, I'd notice. But I don't.

So if this approach gives me a more hours albeit less snappier hours, I'm good
with this. But it should be a mode.

------
perfectstorm
This was a surprise to me. I always thought Apple engineers worked on the next
flagship device and the lag on older hardware was because they didn't optimize
iOS for the older devices. As an app developer myself I tend to test my app on
the latest device that I could get hold of and the older devices are an after
thought (most of the time).

------
superbrama
It would be quite different if they reduced speed without a need to control
battery expenditure. Planned obsolescence is a benefit to future sales, but
seems this is a technical requirement to work around limitations of batteries.

Transparency to end user would be helpful to end user. Doesn’t full
performance come back when running on wire power?

------
jchw
How is this news like 3 or 4 times? I'm serious when I say I believe this has
hit the frontpage that many times or more...

------
elhenrico
Woah. I have a 2013 macbook that was getting pretty sluggish even for
browsing. Thankfully the battery is easily removeable and I could test this.
After removing it I noticed a great difference! I'll try to live with the
dangers of a sudden power loss from the cable unplugging.

Why throttle the ac connected devices?

------
mtgx
Apple seems to be side-stepping the real issue: them not making iPhones with
user-replaceable batteries.

There are multiple ways in which Apple can do _planned obsolescence_ without
actually there being a record somewhere of a "meeting on planning to make the
iPhone obsolete".

------
Robotbeat
Why can't this just be rolled into "Low Power Mode" or something?

I have a charger at work, at home, and in the car. I'm used to having to
charge things. Just having a reduced battery life is fine with me.

The reason why they're taking the "reduced performance" route is that it is
planned obsolescence. It drives sales of new phones in a world where the
actual phone, if well-protected, could last a decade. In our current world
where smartphones have plateaued for years and Moore's Law has stagnated, it
makes business sense to artificially induce a marked GUI performance
difference between an older and newer phone. But it sucks for the consumer,
and this sort of intentional downgrading should almost be illegal.

Glad to know I just have to change the battery. ~$40-50 at a local shop.

------
surferbayarea
They should at least give an option in settings. What is the algorithm for
slowdown? Is it guaranteed to be fixed on replacing the battery or its just a
linear decay function based on age of phone.

------
toblender
FYI, I ran the benchmark with power from wall and with out, and got the same
performance. It appears to check battery life before deciding core speed.

------
eyeareque
This is so over blown, but expected for something related to Apple.

Batteries wear out and need to be replaced after a year or two. Apple does
something to make the phones last longer, and people frame it as a negative.

I’ve replaced a handful of batteries in iPhons and it is quite easy for anyone
who knows how to use a screw driver and watch a YouTube video. Or just pay
some small business to replace it.

~~~
asendra
The problem is that there is no way for a user to know that they can spend 79$
to fix the problem. Most will asume that is has become slow and think the only
solution is spending +700$ on a new one.

------
psadri
Just curious what happens to the benchmarks when the phones are plugged in to
a charger?

------
kruhft
I'd rather have more battery life. I see no problem with this.

~~~
andrewcarter
100%. Most users will never know or care about this. Most users just use their
phones for casual internet browsing, candy crush, and texting. They'll never
notice the slowdown like they would notice the battery life decrease. You have
to target the main consumer base of your product and make things work well for
them, even if the loud tech community minority may get upset.

~~~
asendra
I noticed the slowdown. Never believed in planned obsolescence so I though it
could be an optimisation problem in iOs 11 but problem persisted after several
os updates.

I finally decided to upgrade to an X because how bad it was. Turns out it is
throttling by as much as 50% (I still have the phone) so I could have just
spent 79$ instead of buying a new iPhone.

The same will happen to a lot of people.

------
tzahola
To those who've read the article: is the performance limit lifted when the
device is put on a charger?

~~~
doublerebel
Please don't bring lazyweb to HN.

