
iPhone Performance Degrades as Battery Ages - Deinos
https://www.geekbench.com/blog/2017/12/iphone-performance-and-battery-age/
======
Someone1234
I feel like more transparency would have been welcomed, but aside from that
this is a "no win" situation, since you have to pick a winner:

\- Do you degrade performance but leave screen-on time relatively unchanged?

\- Do you degrade screen-on time but leave performance relatively unchanged?

Most Android devices seem to do the opposite (lose screen-on time, but keep
performance relatively unchanged). Different people will have a different
perspective on what the "right" strategy is for this, but I think we can all
agree that better transparency and maybe even leaving it to the consumer to
make the choice would be welcome.

PS - "Planned obsolescence" only applies if Apple was doing this
_artificially_. It seems like if they didn't degrade performance you'd lose
screen-on time instead, so you'd still likely replace the handset and perhaps
even sooner (since core services e.g. calling, texting, etc, work even with
lower performance but not on a phone out of juice).

~~~
ohyes
The solution is a battery you can replace, like every phone used to have.

There aren’t only two solutions to this problem.

(Technically you can still replace the iPhone battery, unfortunately it isn’t
trivial like in the bad old days when phones didn’t have high def touch
screens.)

~~~
nbanks
I replace my iPhone battery with a cheap one off eBay every year or two when
something else breaks. Battery life is pretty good, but the screen pops up now
making the phone 0.5mm thicker. It's doing OK for a 5 year old phone, but my
friends can't believe I paid $800 for an iPhone 5.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
I don't understand. Why did you pay $800 for an iPhone 5?

~~~
azurelogic
Maybe the poster is talking about total sunk cost of phone and all of the
batteries

------
jmull
The problem here isn’t that iOS throttles the CPU when your battery can no
longer properly power the phone.

(This is a really nice feature, compared to, e.g., sudden shutdown when
voltage drops too low to run the CPU at normal speed.)

The problem is that iOS doesn’t alert you about what’s happening. If it said
something like, “Your battery needs to be replaced. Until it is, your phone
will run with reduced speed.” Then you would have the information you need to
make an intelligent choice.

You have to suspect Apple doesn’t do this because if you don’t know what’s
going on you’re likely to assume your phone is just old and needs to be
replaced.

~~~
briandear
It does do that.. it tells you your battery needs servicing.

~~~
fourthark
Maybe it warns when the problem gets more severe. But the problem described
here is when the battery still has as much as 80% capacity.

Source: I have 6s+, noticed it was slow recently, after some updates but not
right after. Read about this. Got GeekBench and battery test. It tests normal
when the battery is full, slower when battery is less full.

~~~
jmull
Just because it’s interesting to compare: it was worse for me. My 6 Plus
(three years old) ran at 600Mhz most of the time according to CPU DasherX,
fully charged or not. Normal is 1400Mhz. I replaced the battery this morning
and it’s back to the normal level and is quite noticeable in real-world usage
doing practically anything.

(It wouldn’t surprise me if the GPU or something else in the rendering
pipeline was even more affected than the CPU. There were previously long
delays in things that just seem to be screen rendering. Those delays aren’t
just faster now, but are completely gone.)

------
sliken
Seems like everyone is forgetting the #1 failure in older phones. With today's
technology phones are very power efficient, the manage a rather amazing number
of circuits with different functionality. Things like CPU, GPU, display,
backlight, battery monitor, accelerometer, gps, compass, bluetooth, wifi, wan,
camera, NFC, microphone, dsp, light senors, proximity sensors, etc.

The vast majority of those circuits are sleeping pretty much all the time.
However as you get older your battery keeps up.. except those challenging
times when you activate too many things. Like say nav (that runs the GPS, GPU,
3D chip, CPU, radio, compass, etc). Then the phone just turns off because
there's not enough voltage.

Many people complain about "crashing" phones, claiming less reliability over
time. Seems like often it's just the battery that can't manage the needed
number of volts under load. You can witness this when ever less intensive
things crash, but they all work if you are plugged in.

The sad thing is that these new top of the line smart phones could be useful
for 5-10 years. Fit/finish with glass/aluminum, top spec CPU/RAM, expandable
storage, etc. Sadly the epoxied battery reduces the practical life to 2-3
years.

In what world would a modular/expandable phone (like has been attempted
several times) decide you might want to add fancy speakers, fancy camera, 3d
vision, etc. But _STILL_ expoxy in the battery? WTF?

I wish the government would stem in and just mandate that phones have user
replaceable batteries to keep them from just filling the landfills after a few
years.

~~~
juanmirocks
This is very enlightened. As a consumer, I personally do not care so much for
a modular phone, yet I do pretty much care about maintaining the same level of
performance for my current device. Swappable batteries to increase performance
is/could be a good selling point for modular phones.

~~~
romanovcode
EU should make a rule like that

------
jdking
Why does this correlate so well with iOS version increments?

My iPhone 6 was faultless prior to the upgrade to iOS 11, and immediately
after it battery life was greatly reduced and it now shuts down automatically
when the battery hits 10%.

Apparently I am now supposed to accept that the battery has degraded not
gradually but all at once and on the same day as I upgraded iOS, and this is
now being managed for my benefit by the OS. Hmmm...

~~~
MRSallee
Also have an iPhone 6. I didn't plan to replace it this year until iOS 11 made
it frustrating to use. My primary issue was constant Bluetooth disconnections.

Now I have an Android phone. (Not especially happy about it.)

------
leeoniya
> This will likely feed into the “planned obsolescence” narrative.

well, non-replaceable battery and all...

~~~
derefr
It's replaceable, just not as a DIY. Apple encourages people to take their
phones into Apple stores/authorized dealers to get the battery replaced.

(Also, the repair is free if the battery's capacity has declined to <80% while
under warranty. If you pay for two-year AppleCare+ [$99], you've basically
pre-paid for a free battery replacement [normally also $99] at the two-year
mark, as long as you've used—abused?—your phone heavily enough to wear its
battery down by then. So, Bad Life ProTip: if you have AppleCare, make sure to
run your battery flat a lot to get its capacity down, so as to get your
money's worth.)

~~~
ramphastidae
> If you buy 3-year AppleCare, you're effectively pre-paying for at least one
> battery top-up.)

Unless I'm missing something, AppleCare on new iPhones is limited to two years
... which, in my experience, is just shortly before iPhone batteries degrade
noticeably.

~~~
tolien
The AppleCare itself lasts two years, but that’s in addition to the year you
get by default. The two don’t run concurrently.

Edit: no, they do run concurrently. See child post.

GP’s edited the reference to 3 years anyway.

~~~
ramphastidae
Curious if you have a source on that? I see otherwise here:
[https://www.apple.com/support/products/iphone.html](https://www.apple.com/support/products/iphone.html)

I bought a new iPhone about 48 hours ago and was told the same thing as shown
above.

~~~
Maultasche
In fact, both are true. It just depends on where you live.

What he said is the case within the European Union due to some EU law
regarding warranties. I believe in the EU an extended warranty like AppleCare
only goes into effect after the original warranty has expired. There are also
statutory warranty periods of a year (I think) for devices like the iPhone.

In the United States, on the other hand, AppleCare replaces the original
warranty rather than adds onto it.

Here's a page describing AppleCare within the UK:
[https://www.apple.com/uk/legal/statutory-
warranty/](https://www.apple.com/uk/legal/statutory-warranty/), which lasts
for three years instead of the two within the United States.

~~~
tolien
As you say there could be some legal jiggerypokery but Apple claim it's still
only two years for an iPhone:

> Up to 2 years from date of purchase for Apple TV, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Apple
> Watch or Apple Watch Sport

With the price of iDevices rising there's probably a "reasonability" court
case brewing where someone argues that a £1200 iPhone X should last longer
than 1/2 years.

Edit:
[https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...](https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guarantees-
returns/index_en.htm) says the default statutory warranty should be 2 years.
What a mess.

------
g09980
I wouldn't say "degrades," will confuse non-tech readers. Makes it sound like
the old battery also causes the CPU to age.

Something like "is intentionally reduced" may be more accurate.

------
mikerg87
How do non-apple devices cope as they age ? Any word on what Nexus, Galaxy or
Pixel devices of a similar vintage do? does the performance stay the same but
the battery life becomes shorter?

~~~
plushpuffin
I have a Nexus 6P and its battery is going bad. It just shuts down when it
reaches 20-30%. Kind of annoying because I never know quite how much battery
life I actually have remaining.

~~~
disconnected
I have a similar situation.

My Android (1st Gen Moto G, running Lineage OS, about 3 years old) shuts down
once the battery level hits 15%. You can actually see it change from 15% to 1%
for one brief moment before it shuts down.

Sure, the battery is old, but this behavior is unlike the behavior of any
other OS/device I've seen. I've seen some laptops with seriously messed up
batteries and as far as I can remember, the OS reports a smooth discharge
profile without steep drops and without and strange "surprises".

I think Android is probably not taking battery health into account when it
reports remaining capacity, but that is only a guess.

~~~
k3a
Can't it be a problem with the fuel gauge inacurately measuring the battery
capacity? I have seen it only on one "cheap" Android device and I have been
using Androids for a long time. Anyway, easily removable batteries are the way
to go.

------
freeflight
Still does not really explain why my 4S suffered from both after an iOS
update: Reduced screen-on time and degraded performance at the same time, that
was a couple of years ago tho. As a user, it's just utterly baffling how apps
that used to work fine suddenly became near impossible to use, like messaging
apps taking ages to type a word, the phone felt like a computer with too much
bloatware running in the background, struggling with the most mundane tasks.

Since that happened I've been putting off installing the iOS updates because
this degradation in performance, after an iOS update, has been way too common
of a theme over the years.

~~~
k3a
Yes, one of the reason I switched to Android years ago (which has its own
issues). But Apple makes people pay lot of money for "premium device" which
has worse long-time usability than Android ones.

------
kbumsik
Wow, I thought Apple did this to make people buy newer iPhone. But Apple did
it not only for that but also to hide the battery issue. Well done Tim :/

------
bump-ladel
Related: If you have a Mac, you can check the health of an iPhone battery via
the Console app when the phone is connected via USB. Search for the string
"BatteryHealth", logged by the phone's Springboard process.

~~~
xrjn
Coconut Battery also shows this, albeit with a graphical interface.

You can install it via 'brew cask install coconutbattery'

------
geff82
Interesting that the battery aged extremely fast when iOS 11 got installed and
took the performance down to the „really unpleasant“ level.

~~~
maltalex
It's not just you. Take a look at the google trends data for "iphone slow":
[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=iphone%2...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=iphone%20slow)

~~~
derefr
That chart would seem to indicate that every release of iOS (usually in
September) results in some people experiencing their phone as slow. Except,
strangely, for iOS 10 last year, which had an extremely minor bump in
comparison to the rest.

Anyone know why? Was iOS 10 the "Snow Leopard of iOS releases", with more of a
performance focus?

~~~
stock_toaster
It is my understanding (possibly mistaken?), that after a major upgrade iOS
reindexes spotlight metadata. This is done in the background, but drains
battery and kind of makes the device perform a bit more slowly. Same day right
after an upgrade, my phone tends to be a bit pokey and the battery drains
pretty quickly. Next day after an upgrade, my phone usually "feels" fine again
and battery life is back to normal.

------
ComputerGuru
I think that if iPhone performance remains degraded while plugged into an
outlet, there can be no other explanation aside from planned obsolescence. I
haven’t seen any benchmarks to that end, however.

------
fvrghl
Relevant recent discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15889519](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15889519)

------
habosa
Can someone explain to me why (outside of this one issue) phones get so slow
over time? As a professional programmer I though I understood computers but I
clearly don't.

What's going on my phone that it grinds to a halt? Why does a factory reset
sometimes help, but sometimes not?

It can't just be that the workloads are more resource intensive. If I go get
an old tablet it will take 5x as long to load google.com as the day I bought
it.

~~~
spamizbad
This article does a good job of explaining the main reason: To retain runtime
on a degraded battery, they underclock/undervolt the hardware.. drawing less
power and producing less performance. This honestly accounts for mobile device
performance loss in the majority of cases and it isn't iPhone or Apple-
specific.

A resets might improve performance of the flash device if it frees up
additional space or does something similar to an SSD "trim" event.

~~~
habosa
This implies I could fix all my old phones with a new battery ... Could that
possibly be true?

~~~
spamizbad
Probably. I replaced the battery in my iPhone 4S and iPhone 6 a little after a
year. I did it mostly for more battery life, but I haven't noticed significant
performance degradation.

------
avian
Nitpicking about an otherwise well written post: why show a kernel density
estimate instead of a simple histogram? It can be normalized if you don’t want
reveal the exact number of samples.

Calculating a kernel density estimate just seems to add an unneccesary step
between raw data and the visualization. It can hide some shortcomings in the
data (e.g. low number of samples), but doesn’t add anything.

------
thewayfarer
> Under iOS 11.2.0 the effect is even more pronounced.

No, the effect is exactly the same as you can see from the charts since they
peak at the same benchmark scores. It is the distribution of those effects
that is different, with the performance being negatively affected for more
phones. But keep in mind that under iOS 11.2.0, most iPhone 6S's that are
tested are probably about 2 years old. Under iOS 10.x, most iPhone 6S's
probably about 1 year old. I'd like to know the distribution of the _times_
that these Geekbench benchmarks were run. If scores for one phone model in one
month are one average score under iOS (x) but is substantially lower the next
month under iOS (x+1), then I would consider that to be a significant act of
"planned obsolescence".

But really Apple should probably be more transparent about this. And the
bottom line for users is that if you notice any kind of significant
performance degradation, whether it is fast battery drainage or sluggish
performance, you should consider taking the phone in.

------
zaroth
Finally the data to prove what I’ve always felt. I knew my phones were getting
slower even on the same iOS versions. I always assumed flash, but suspected
that there was a time-based clock slowing... lo and behold! Fucking Apple,
I’ll be happy to join the coming class action!

------
xmpirate
I feel the same applies to Macbook as well. I've a Macbook Pro Retina 13 inch,
early 2015 at a battery cycle count of 1001. From the last few weeks, the
system is terribly slow. I randomly see the fan speed going berserk. :/

~~~
saagarjha
Might be something wrong with your SMC or thermal throttling going on. Either
way I'd suggest resetting the SMC and if that doesn't fix it check out
Activity Monitor to see what's wrong.

~~~
xmpirate
Nothing really. I did reset the SMC couple of times and also check the
Activity Monitor every time the fan speed increases, but to no avail.

~~~
gnyman
Did you try running the hardware test? [https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT201257](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201257)

I had a old Air which ran very slowly and fans spinning like crazy due to a
issue with the cable from the keyboard/touchpad. Apparently if the SMC does
not get proper signals it will go into a "failsafe" where things work but
slowly.

Probably not the same issue, but just a little anecdote on a similar symptoms
caused by different issues so that nobody gets tunnel vision on the battery,
which might very well be the cause in this case.

------
ringaroundthetx
I had suspected that one of my iphone's RAM chips had gone bad, because the
slow speed was as if it was swapping a lot

when I saw the reddit post I was like GTFO

------
toblender
Wow I was, wondering what the heck was happening with my Iphone 6 plus. I new
it had something to do with the software update, but it makes sense now, they
had to make a choice, so they limited the CPU based on battery...

At least it wasn't because they are trying to force us to upgrade. I'm going
to try an update the battery and see if it makes a difference.

------
mromanuk
I have an iPhone 7. Run a test "Antutu benchmark" (The phone was connected to
power) and it got "127823", according to their ranking, it should have
"160864". 20% less. I would like to know, if this is the case or just
coincidence.

~~~
efrafa
I have iPhone 7 as well (almost year old) and got 156,473

------
iampoul
iPhone performance degrades when new iPhones hit the market. xD

------
m3kw9
Is probably same for Android unless they operate at a lower voltage than the
peak so no performance is degraded over a bigger, but at the expense overall
lower performance.

------
Nanite
looking at [https://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/](https://david-
smith.org/iosversionstats/) and apparently still ±50% of currently active
iPhones seem to be a 6(S)(+). Which is a LOT more than I expected. I don't see
how Apple is going to ignore this one.

------
satyajeet23
The point is that older batteries don't produce as much current as new ones
do. So the CPU has to be speed-stepped down in order that the system doesn't
brown out.

Not that this will stop the conspiracy loons foaming at the mouth in their
apple hate, obviously.

------
yig
Why isn’t this an issue with laptops as well as phones?

~~~
azurelogic
It is but you see less screen time instead of degraded performance. The
suggestion here is that Apple is throttling the hardware via software in order
to prevent reduced screen time.

Also, after 3-4 years with a laptop, you typically start to see decreased
performance because of clogging of fans, degradation in the thermal paste,
etc. This causes the CPU to run hotter and throttle sooner to stay inside of
its thermal envelope.

------
lostmsu
Has anybody sued already? That seems like a huge issue.

------
andrewstuart
If truly necessary it should be a user option.

------
rusk
I smell an antitrust ...

~~~
azurelogic
This has nothing to do with a monopoly, so antitrust law is totally not
applicable here. You might be thinking "class action lawsuit", which someone
might attempt. However, if Apple can show that this is actually a mechanism to
provide maximum screen time for the life of the battery (as opposed to
malicious planned obsolescence), the suit would likely fail.

~~~
rusk
I mean in Europe. Class action does not apply but EU has a strong record of
defending consumer rights.

The clandestine nature of how apple has provided this feature would not work
in their favour.

------
jay_kyburz
I have a question. Didn't read the article. Does the phones performance pick
back up if you plug it in, regardless of the battery?

~~~
dannyw
No.

------
maltalex
This screams "planned obsolescence".

If battery scaling is a feature, then why isn't it mentioned by Apple? Why do
we need a Reddit thread and a third party benchmarking tool to figure it out?

Also, why does the google search for "iphone slow" peak every time a new
iPhone is released
([https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=iphone%2...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=iphone%20slow))?
Is it purely psychological? I can't find there are no similar spikes for
"android slow" or "samsung slow" or similar searches.

~~~
Bud
No, it screams "planned and careful shepherding of user experience".

~~~
pishpash
Shepherding literally meaning "sheep herding"?

