
Apple Confirms It Degrades Your Old iPhone - kjhughes
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2017/12/20/apple-iphone-kill-switch-ios-degrade-cripple-performance-battery/?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=yahootix&partner=yahootix&yptr=yahoo#34b4faa316a8
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Danilka
WTF, from 1400mhz to 600?! This is a one hundred percent push of new product
onto people with a good preemptive coverup!

If a person uses their iPhone regularly, they will go through the battery
cycles that Apple defined and he or she is a loyal customer, hence the usage.
No one knows that you "suppose to" update the battery and it's not easy. So,
people just buy new phones.

I am amazed that everyone is just cool with this. It is an extremely clever
strategy and results in billions in extra sales for Apple.

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jackvalentine
I just wish they'd been more transparent - perhaps a message in the battery
section of settings saying "your performance may be impacted because of your
degraded battery. It's recommended you replace it" or something.

New batteries are $119AU which I think is a reasonable price to pay after two
years or so.

Everyone knows components in cars need replacing, including batteries, so I
think people can be reasoned with in to accepting the same is for consumer
goods you want to keep beyond the average phone contract term.

~~~
simonblack
"I just wish they'd been more transparent "

I don't see it as a lack of transparency. That smacks of underhand and
fraudulent behaviour. I won't buy another iPhone.

In a similar vein, you can no longer move photos from your computer to your
iPhone unless you subscribe to the paid Cloud service. iTunes will no longer
allow you to do that.

~~~
godelmachine
Since when was this restriction imposed ?

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rkhassen
A co-work of mine sent me this article after his iPhone 6S slowed down
considerably after installing iOS 11. He thought that his battery was defunct
and causing the issue.

I suggested he turn off the animations that are designed to run on the latest
phones and are more processor intensive. (One other thing that will help,
however, is to cut back on the transition animations in iOS 11. Go to Settings
> General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion and toggle it to off.) And like
magic, his phone ran as fast as it ever did!

I did the same thing with my sluggish iPhone 5, and did a reinstall clearing
all my data, and it runs really great now, as if it were brand new!

Makes me wonder how many people will think they have the battery issue when in
reality they have features turned on that will inherently bog down the older
phones. You'd think Apple would auto detect the model and by default have
features like animation turned off. But perhaps their motivation is not to
give their customers the best experience?!?

f you want to speed up your older iPhone, this article covers most of what I
did for my iPhone 5 last year: [http://bgr.com/2017/09/19/ios-11-features-
iphone-how-to-spee...](http://bgr.com/2017/09/19/ios-11-features-iphone-how-
to-speed-up/))

Totally aside from the above, I turned off the animations on my iPhone X and
it seems to run slower. Not sure what that is all about.

~~~
nkristoffersen
Apple did disable some graphic effects for older phones during one of the big
changes. I recall the iPhone 4 didn't blur the backgrounds like newer phones.

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_sdegutis
So basically it does what’s reasonable to protect your hardware. Not really
worthy of the ominous clickbait title here.

~~~
for55
If you buy a car with a V8 engine, and after a few months it decides to become
an L4 engine, without telling you, is that ok? The headline is completely
correct.

~~~
rubbingalcohol
I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted when Apple advertises performance as
a selling point of their devices.

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grzm
I suspect because it's not a completely fair comparison from an account
created apparently to post this criticism. Apple is apparently trying to
mitigate the phone from shutting down under load the battery can no longer
support. I'm not sure how to mangle the metaphor to make it more appropriate
(my imagination is flagging), but one could argue Apple is trying to make sure
the car still runs, even if it's limping along, rather than leaving you
stranded on the side of the road at an inopportune time.

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heavenlyblue
So instead of making you turn your car to the service; they make you buy a new
car by omitting the fact that your car’s performance is degraded due to
another reason?

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grzm
As has been pointed out in multiple other comments here and elsewhere and in
other articles, you can actually get the battery replaced as opposed to buying
a new phone, which would be bringing your car into service.

I had a phone which was exhibiting poor performance. I called up support, and
they were able to run diagnostics remotely, and determine the battery needed
to be replaced, which I was able to have done the following day.

There are plenty of people who would rather Apple made a different tradeoff
with respect to batteries in general, which is fine, and people are free to
buy a different phone. My comment was trying to answer the question posed to
my parent as to why someone might have downvoted their parent. Let's not
continue to abuse this already poor metaphor.

~~~
philipwhiuk
"As has been pointed out in multiple other comments here and elsewhere and in
other articles, you can actually get the battery replaced as opposed to buying
a new phone, which would be bringing your car into service."

But the ordinary consumer has no idea. They just see their phone is slower
than the fancy new ones. Why would they assume it's a battery problem.

~~~
grzm
> _" They just see their phone is slower than the fancy new ones."_

I really don't know how to respond to this. Isn't that going to be the case
regardless? New phones are going to be faster.

If they see a performance degradation on their phone, they've got some options
to them. The easiest would be to have the phone looked at, as I did. They
could also search the web for ideas as to what's wrong. Or they could give up
and buy a new phone, maybe not Apple.

There's a whole host of things going on here. Some people want user-
replaceable batteries. Some people want better diagnostics in the phone. Some
want better control over what's going on in the phone. I understand and in
some cases sympathize with these positions. I also understand that Apple has
to make tradeoffs when designing their products, both hardware and software,
keeping in mind how people are going to use them and how they'll interpret
different behaviors. Same thing with every other manufacturer out there.

I'm bowing out of this. I intended just to point out why someone might have
downvoted the comment above, and I've let myself get dragged into justifying
alternative ways of thinking about the situation. I guess this is what leads
to a lot of comments asking why something was downvoted or flagged or
whatever: some people aren't willing to take the time to think through what
alternatives might be, and whether they might be be reasonable, even if you
don't agree with them. That's a shame, because it's crucial to being able to
understand people you don't already agree with or how others may perceive your
own actions. I'm not here to argue for argument's sake.

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mankash666
Let's cut into Apple's bullshit. LiOn ageing is not unique to Apple. The
problem is that their batteries are so horribly low powered (1800 mAh for
iPhone 6s), especially for the price of the overall phone, that normal known
ageing patterns would render the battery below spec of max power the iPhone
draws at peak performance. It's BAD design. Note 8 ships with 3300mah and
iPhone X with 2700mah. Both cost a $1000. Which one do you think will last
longer if 2500mah were the max power threshold?

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ericzawo
Why aren't more people talking about this? iPhones are wildly popular and this
is a gigantic confirmation of something the public has suspected for years.

~~~
analogmemory
It’ll be all over the news tomorrow.

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funwie
I see no situation where slowing phone‘s performance is better compared to
giving the user options to improve phone’s performance. Something is fishy.

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sjg007
Queue class action lawsuits.

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goombastic
They should change their marketing; 50% faster than before*

In small letters: *for 500 charge cycles. After that it will run at the speed
of your coffee maker.

