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HTC, Motorola Say They Don't Slow Old Phones Like Apple Does (theverge.com)
After Apple confirmed last week that it reduces the performance of older iPhones to improve battery life, it has left many wondering whether or not other smartphone manufacturers do the same. HTC and Motorola are the two most recent OEMs to say they don't throttle their phones' processor speeds as their batteries age. The Verge reports: In emails to The Verge, both companies said they do not employ similar practices with their smartphones. An HTC spokesperson said that designing phones to slow down their processor as their battery ages "is not something we do." A Motorola spokesperson said, "We do not throttle CPU performance based on older batteries." The Verge also reached out to Google, Samsung, LG, and Sony for comment on whether their phone processors are throttled in response to aging batteries. A Sony spokesperson said a response would be delayed by the holidays, and a Samsung spokesperson said the company was looking into it. The responses begin to clarify whether or not throttling processor speeds is typical behavior in smartphones -- as of last week, we knew that Apple was doing it, but not whether it was common practice among competitors. HTC and Motorola's responses start to suggest that it's not.
So while the vendor may not be slowing your old phone down to encourage you to buy a new one, any hacker with the right exploit can compromise your device via SMS and make all sorts of trouble.
You want the latest Android? You should buy a new phone from us. Your HTC M7 with purple camera is old. Why would you want new software on it?
It's hard to slow down old hardware if you stop supporting it the second I buy it.
Only Apple has the courage to throttle older phones like that.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Apple does this by creating new firmware which then activates this for phone models that are approx. 2 years old at the time of the firmware release. They obviously know that after ~2 years, batteries are beginning to go bad.
After two years, neither HTC nor Lenovo (a Motorola that sells phones hasn't existed for years, bought out ages ago) don't support phones that long typically, so when there are no updates, there obviously is no artificial downclocking either.
As an aside: whenever we pointed out that a built in battery on phones is moronically stupid and ensures planned obsolescence after a few years (batteries are the main wear part by far), then various people, among them Apple users but also Android users point out how it's not true and how they are using their phone 4 years now or whatever and it still keeps a charge over a full day. Guess it's easier to hold a charge when the CPU doesn't actually run at its rated clockspeed.
The big problem with Apple is that they take decisions on behalf of users because most of them don't know any better.
However, what they should be doing is giving us options and making their decision be the default setting.
Example:
When your battery becomes older, it will not hold a charge as long as when the phone is new. When that happens, would you like to:
[x] Keep using the phone for the same amount of time as much as possible to the detriment of processor speed and screen brightness
[_] Keep using the phone at the same processor speed and screen brightness with a shorter daily battery life
That's a bit verbose, but you get the idea.
Another example: in the older OS X versions, Preview was able to save files in SGI, SGI, TGA and other older formats. In the most recent versions (at least 10.9 and above), those older formats are no longer listed when trying to save an image. However, if you hold the [Option] key, you get them back. But you have to know that holding this key will magically give you the list of all formats supported by Preview. Why can't they display "(Hold [option] for more formats)" next to the pull-down menu?
#DeleteFacebook
And they did neither of these, which is why people are now complaining.
#DeleteFacebook
The whole reason Apple does this is so people don't realize their battery is dying and begin to wonder why they can't replace such a simple thing.
The issue two-fold, and many vendor are guilty of the first one:
1) They aren't sizing the batteries in such a way so that the peak voltage can be sustained more than two years from release under normal use.
2) They didn't provide details of WHY the phones were slowing down, so people would understand that a cheaper battery replacement would restore performance.
The fact that they slowed it down without detailing why tells me it was a play to get more sales AND to prevent warranty work. The Nexus 6p had a similar issue where after the battery wore down, it was causing the phone to turn off due to low voltage. Google usually replaced the phone, often with a new Pixel phone as well. Apple was trying to make sure this didn't happen with this change, and by the way, once it got slower, people would tend to BUY the upgrade, not send it in for repairs.
"I guess what this means is if you want your phone to still last a solid day in a year or two, better not buy Motorola!"
With Turbo Charging, who cares? I can top up in minutes, not hours.
Good-bye
This is incorrect. It has nothing to do with battery life, and nothing to do with older iPhones per se. Put a new battery into an old iPhone and the slowing will go away. It's a matter of the battery degrading over time (which they do), and limiting the maximum power drawn from it. This means that the phone can't operate at top performance, since it can't get the power. The alternative was to risk the phone crashing at such times, not to let the battery drain faster.
Apple had the choice between limiting current draw, allowing the phone to crash, or changing the laws of physics.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I guess what this means is if you want your phone to still last a solid day in a year or two, better not buy Motorola!
Hate to say it, but my samsung has a power savings feature that if turned on increases the battery life significantly. As my phone is slightly over 2 years old now (Waiting for the Galaxy 9 early next year) I have had this setting turned on for about 6 months
As others have said - if apple had simply made it an option, and allowed users to turn it on/off... they would have been declared geniuses, as it is time to go to the genius bar and get a fix
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
This strikes me as similar to the "this accessory is not supported" message when trying to charge with a non-apple cable? Most any charger on the market would be capable of charging an iPhone--but the speed of charging will vary. Apple's decision to give the user a "no charging" experience rather than a "slow charging" experience sometimes left me with an unusable phone. And much to everyone's shock and surprise--padded Apple's wallet with additional sales of chargers and cables that were often no better than the no-name versions.
No you don't want to have an option for every damn thing on the phone. I want a senible set of well tested choices made for me then present me with the most useful ones.
not having my batttery run out or having it make it to the next upgrade cycle is great priority over the absolutely fastest iphone. if I need fast computing I'll use a computer or replace my battery.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If you could disable it people would, and then they would complain that their phone kept turning off. I suspect if I still had an iPhone I'd turn it off immediately when I heard about it and forget about it if I started having issues later.
They really should tell you that there's a battery issue and that batteries can be replaced, though. Most people would just tap the "okay" button without reading it (my parents do that all the time), but for those who do read dialogue boxes it could help.
which I'm sure also comes with a lawsuit waiver. As someone who's replaced 3 iPhones over the years due to degraded performance I'd like to get back about $700, which is what my carrier charged me to 'swap' those phones...
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that rules out most of the /.'s audience.
TLDR: apologies, update with battery state coming, next year, battery change is $29 (instead of $79) https://www.apple.com/iphone-battery-and-performance/
If you are non-technical, you simply go to an Apple Store. I've only had to do this once, for a three year old phone. It doesn't cost much more than a standalone battery and lasts longer (in all respects).
If you are technical you can simply buy a replacement battery and enjoy many more years of service than I ever got from the replaceable batteries I had to buy quite often for my old flip phones. I hate replaceable batteries, as they represent space wasted on casing that could have held a larger battery.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Of course Samsung, Motorola, and HTC don't do it. Their phones are usually dead due to stale software or manufacturing defects long before the battery starts to degrade.
This is a sizing issue of the original battery, where it can sustain voltage after a reasonable amount of use in the lifetime of the product. It is a DEFECT they were covering up.
Incorrect.
The issue is current draw, not the size/capacity of the battery.
In many cases, the battery has the same capacity as before. But if you are mining Bitcoin on your iPhone, or running badly written software, then it will be CPU intensive enough to draw more current than the battery can sustainably supply.
This issue is that the peak current demand by the CPU utilization for some apps is no longer sustainable.
Note that Apple throttles the CPU down all the time. What the change does is cause the CPU not to throttle up all the way, when it would draw too much current.
There's actually no reason -- other than bad programming -- that you would need that much CPU power on a cell phone -- even one as nifty as an iPhone.