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Apple's Alleged Throttling of Older iPhones With Degraded Batteries Causes Controversy (macrumors.com)

Posted by msmash on from the what's-happening? dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A Reddit post over the weekend has drawn a flurry of interest after an iPhone 6s owner reported that a battery replacement significantly increased the device's performance running iOS 11. The ensuing discussion thread, also picked up by readers in the MacRumors forum, has led to speculation that Apple intentionally slows down older phones to retain a full day's charge if the battery has degraded over time. According to TeckFire, the author of the original Reddit post, their iPhone had been very slow after updating to iOS 11, especially compared to their brother's iPhone 6 Plus, so they decided to do some research with GeekBench and battery life apps, and ended up replacing the battery.

8 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. Might be a nice option by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But they shouldn't force it.

    1. Re:Might be a nice option by pastafazou · · Score: 5, Informative

      Because the cables from the old PSU are run under the motherboard, through all sorts of openings in the chassis, and zip tied to everything? It's 5 minutes to actually change the power supply, but 25 minutes of cable management.

  2. Huh - a subject I'm entirely divided on by jareth-0205 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    On the one hand it's eminently sensible to slow the device if that will eek out enough battery for the expected usage - a dead phone has zero performance. And batteries degrade as they get older, that we know... but if the user has no visibility of this, if they have no idea that it's happening or how to fix it then their device is being hobbled without an obvious fix.

    Everybody knows that if battery doesn't last, you should replace the battery. But if the phone gets slower... the fix isn't visible. And we know Apple employees aren't the most honest when you ask for diagnosis...

    Sensible thing to do, but as all closed-source bundles, if the user isn't informed then it's still pretty anti-consumer.

    1. Re:Huh - a subject I'm entirely divided on by jareth-0205 · · Score: 5, Funny

      "eke". Not "eek". That's the sound a mouse makes.

      Actually, the original spelling was correct. I use a hamster-wheel generator to charge my phone.

    2. Re:Huh - a subject I'm entirely divided on by marcansoft · · Score: 5, Informative

      This isn't about making the battery last longer. It's about making the phone work at all. It has to do with battery chemistry.

      Old batteries don't just "last less". They also have an increased internal series resistance. That resistance actually limits the amount of power you can pull out of it. The more current you draw, the more energy is wasted as heat, and the lower the output voltage. As internal series resistance increases, it becomes physically impossible to get more than a certain amount of power out of the battery, and this limit also decreases as the battery drains during a given discharge cycle. It's a hard physical limit. The I-V curve just never hits your power target. If you try, your voltage sags and then the phone shuts down. This is what triggers a common syndrome in old devices, where the battery meter shows 30% but then you try to open up a CPU-intensive app and the device immediately shuts down. Chances are that's not the battery meter being wrong or miscalibrated: there really was 30% charge remaining in the battery. It just wasn't capable of handling that much power draw at that charge level. There's 30% charge remaining and there's a hidden limit as to how fast you can drain it.

      It's almost certain that what Apple did here was start throttling phone performance when battery voltage sags below a critical threshold, to prevent hard shutdowns. On older batteries, this would appear as a performance limit as the battery empties. But it was never about making the phone last longer. It's just a physical limitation. The alternative is your phone shuts down. That's obviously not good.

      The right solution, of course, is to have a notification or something that tells users when this is happening. Something along the lines of "Your battery cannot supply enough power to keep your device working at full performance. To maintain optimum performance, a battery replacement is recommended.".

  3. Why is this a problem? by leeosenton · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So Apple checks my battery voltage, sees that it is below spec, and then they limit performance to ensure the phone keeps working. Sounds like a good plan to me. Perhaps they could/should add a battery health report in settings>battery so I know when to take it in for a new battery. Not a Apple freak, unlike many that act like phone OS is a religion. I have a 6S Plus 64GB and a Pixel XL 128GB. Love both and switch daily driver every few months.

  4. Re:No real controversy, IMO by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The real controversy is the lack of communication to the owners of the devices. They should be fully informed of this 'innovative technology' so they can spend the $40 to get a new battery installed, instead of giving up and buying a new iGadget.

  5. Give us OPTIONS by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yes I know, most Apple users aren't nerds, etc.

    However, it would be nice to do the same thing Tesla does with their cars: always keep the battery between 30~70% (or was it 40~80%?). Letting the phone charge its battery to 100% every time and letting it drop to 0% just kills lithium-ion batteries.

    Just let the user set "maximum battery run time" or "maximum battery longevity".

    --
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