Other The myth of Apple intentionally slowing down older iPhones…

[Al Rukh]

I was talking to a friend of mine and he briefly mentioned that Apple intentionally slows down older models of iPhones - ‘planned obsolescence’ - and that it’s a known phenomenon. Let’s talk about it.

Before I carry on, I’m totally aware that he’s entitled to his opinion and I don’t think there’s a need to bash someone else’s opinion just because it differs from mine.

I have to disagree with him of course. I’ve thought about it, and on the surface it may seem true to an extend but I feel that people have manipulated the facts to suit a certain narrative. A narrative whereby Apple wants you to upgrade to their latest iPhones and to do that, they have to slow down your older iPhones under the pretence of improving your battery life. So I wanna break this down and see if you guys agree or disagree with me.

Fact: Apple has admitted that they lowered peak performance on iPhones with older and partially degraded battery as a way to avoid unexpected shutdowns during performance spikes.

I believe this saga surfaced in late 2017 when some tech geek discovered lower benchmark scores in older iPhones after upgrading to the latest iOS, or something a long that line.

However this saga is layered by this narrative that Apple is somehow forcing people to upgrade to their newest iPhones - it just didn’t make sense. As far as I know, these lowered performance was first noticed by someone looking for something, using a benchmark tool to compare certain metrics. A scenario that majority of consumers would never do and hence, this is not representative of a real world issue. The people that I know in my social circle, only upgrade to newer iPhones due to: expired telco contracts, just because they could and lastly, because their phones do not last as long as they did due to degraded battery health.

Degraded battery health - the very same issue Apple has been looking to remedy. None of those people I know told me that they upgraded because their older iPhones were slow. Could they have been slow? Yes, but I reckon it’s not noticeable in day to day use. I support the idea that Apple ’throttles’ the performance not because they want user to upgrade, but they want the user to be happy with their current iPhone they’re using by optimising the performance with the reduced battery health.

 

[TriciaMacMillan]

I‘d say you nailed it.

 

[JPack]

However this saga is layered by this narrative that Apple is somehow forcing people to upgrade to their newest iPhones - it just didn’t make sense. As far as I know, these lowered performance was first noticed by someone looking for something, using a benchmark tool to compare certain metrics. A scenario that majority of consumers would never do and hence, this is not representative of a real world issue. The people that I know in my social circle, only upgrade to newer iPhones due to: expired telco contracts, just because they could and lastly, because their phones do not last as long as they did due to degraded battery health.

Degraded battery health - the very same issue Apple has been looking to remedy. None of those people I know told me that they upgraded because their older iPhones were slow. Could they have been slow? Yes, but I reckon it’s not noticeable in day to day use. I support the idea that Apple ’throttles’ the performance not because they want user to upgrade, but they want the user to be happy with their current iPhone they’re using by optimising the performance with the reduced battery health.

You have the cause and effect reversed. The speed of iPhone 6S dropped by 60%. That means A9 dropped to the speed of A6. iPhone 6 went from 1.4 GHz to 600 MHz. People definitely notice that in day to day use. People realized how slow their phones had become and ran Geekbench to confirm.

I don't think Apple slowed down old iPhones for the sake of slowing them down. But they were wrong and heavy handed. Apple "fixed" an unexpected shutdown issue by hiding the fact the battery needed replacement. Apple significantly reduced the performance because it only benefits Apple if the phone is slower.

If your car's engine unexpectedly shuts down on the highway and the manufacturer reduced power output by 60% as a fix, you'd probably want to know. Apple was completely silent on this issue until someone found out.

 

[Al Rukh]

You have the cause and effect reversed. The speed of iPhone 6S dropped by 60%. That means A9 dropped to the speed of A6. iPhone 6 went from 1.4 GHz to 600 MHz. People definitely notice that in day to day use. People realized how slow their phones had become and ran Geekbench to confirm.

I don't think Apple slowed down old iPhones for the sake of slowing them down. But they were wrong and heavy handed. Apple "fixed" an unexpected shutdown issue by hiding the fact the battery needed replacement. Apple significantly reduced the performance because it only benefits Apple if the phone is slower.

If your car's engine unexpectedly shuts down on the highway and the manufacturer reduced power output by 60% as a fix, you'd probably want to know. Apple was completely silent on this issue until someone found out.

I do get what you’re saying. However, we don’t need Apple to tell us when or if the battery requires a replacement. The user would have noticed based on his or her day to day usage pattern. What the user wouldn’t know is that their phones are ‘slowing’ down because Apple is optimising the performance with the available capacity of the batteries. In any case, I do agree that Apple should have been transparent with their intention from day one, however I’m of the opinion that their intention was correct and a very pro-consumer one at that.

 

[JPack]

I do get what you’re saying. However, we don’t need Apple to tell us when or if the battery requires a replacement. The user would have noticed based on his or her day to day usage pattern. What the user wouldn’t know is that their phones are ‘slowing’ down because Apple is optimising the performance with the available capacity of the batteries. In any case, I do agree that Apple should have been transparent with their intention from day one, however I’m of the opinion that their intention was correct and a very pro-consumer one at that.

How would users know app usage hours or screen on time? Battery and app usage info wasn’t available until 3 months after the world found out about the throttling behavior, in iOS 11.3. It was clearly reactionary. That’s a full year after iOS 10.2.1 was released, which started the whole problem.

Based on surveys, some of the top reasons consumers replace smartphones is because of reduced performance, either battery or otherwise. People should know when their battery capacity is diminished and when their device has dropped in performance.

Dropping performance by 60% and not letting users know? If Apple had spent half as much effort on this as they did on letting users know about third party cables, this wouldn’t be a story. It’s clear where their priorities lie.

 

[Al Rukh]

How would users know app usage hours or screen on time? Battery and app usage info wasn’t available until 3 months after the world found out about the throttling behavior, in iOS 11.3. It was clearly reactionary. That’s a full year after iOS 10.2.1 was released, which started the whole problem.

Based on surveys, some of the top reasons consumers replace smartphones is because of reduced performance, either battery or otherwise. People should know when their battery capacity is diminished and when their device has dropped in performance.

I would think you don’t need a set of numbers like SoT to tell you your battery life has taken a hit. If you end your day around 30% or so and over time you realise you’re ending your day with 10% then that’s when you know your battery life has been reduced.

 

[JPack]

I would think you don’t need a set of numbers like SoT to tell you your battery life has taken a hit. If you end your day around 30% or so and over time you realise you’re ending your day with 10% then that’s when you know your battery life has been reduced.

How many people perform the same actions on their smartphone every day? Charge to the same percentage, visit the same websites for the same amount of time, and play the same media? Travel through the same areas of cellular coverage and signal strength? Apps get updated everyday.

Battery capacity diminishes gradually. Most people simply wouldn’t notice until it’s pretty obvious. By then, they’re likely to replace the iPhone. How would anybody know battery affects GHz?

 

[Al Rukh]

How many people perform the same actions on their smartphone every day? Charge to the same percentage, visit the same websites for the same amount of time, and play the same media? Travel through the same areas of cellular coverage and signal strength?

Battery capacity diminishes gradually. Most people simply wouldn’t notice until it’s pretty obvious. By then, they’re likely to replace the iPhone. How would anybody know battery affects GHz?

You don’t have to perform the same tasks everyday to notice a ballpark difference. You don’t need to have your battery to be on 34% daily and anything below that equates to a poorer battery life. You’re not being practical with your arguments.

Yes batteries diminishes gradually the moment it uses its first charge but at what point does one would think ‘hey I need to replace my battery soon’? That point is when they notice that their phones do not last as long as it used to.

 

[JPack]

You don’t have to perform the same tasks everyday to notice a ballpark difference. You don’t need to have your battery to be on 34% daily and anything below that equates to a poorer battery life. You’re not being practical with your arguments.

Yes batteries diminishes gradually the moment it uses its first charge but at what point does one would think ‘hey I need to replace my battery soon’? That point is when they notice that their phones do not last as long as it used to.

There are a number of confounding factors as I described. Why should users guess whether it’s a rogue app, bad celluar coverage, buggy iOS, or a bad battery? A battery usage graph fixes much of that. It’s an obvious solution to a simple problem. It’s as ”practical” as it gets.

You might as well argue Apple shouldn’t offer a battery charge percentage or icon at all. When the phone dims and goes to low power mode, they should head for a charger.

 

[AlixSPQR]

Apple intentionally slows down older models of iPhones

That is so, but not in a malevolent way, which is implied. Since newer iPhones also get new and/or extended features all the time it is natural that older iPhones won't keep up. It is intentional of Apple doing this. But that doesn't mean it's planned obsolescence. I'd say Apple supports older iPhones longer than any Android brand supports their models.

 

[Al Rukh]

That is so, but not in a malevolent way, which is implied. Since newer iPhones also get new and/or extended features all the time it is natural that older iPhones won't keep up. It is intentional of Apple doing this. But that doesn't mean it's planned obsolescence. I'd say Apple supports older iPhones longer than any Android brand supports their models.

Yes I agree. It’s a fact but like you said, there’s no malicious intent from Apple.

 

[GuruZac]

The problem is in how Apple went about it. The fact they said nothing about throttling the users phone until they were essentially forced to come clean left a very bad taste in people’s mouth. To many people, your friend included, it felt like a deliberately sneaky way of slowing a phone down. There’s no way for me to cite actual numbers but how many thousands if not millions of phones were replaced because they slowed down so much when all people needed was a new battery? Apple made hundreds of millions on that you can be sure. Whether it was intentional is not for me to say, but how they went about it was wrong. There was zero transparency on Apple’s part, which to embed a software code that had such a drastic effect on performance without saying anything seemed a little crony to me.

 

[ApplesAreSweet&Sour]

Not a lot of sense in intentionally making performance on older iPhones slower as most of them do it on their own as a consequence of key hardware specs being really bad.

The mid-tier iPhones only got 6GB of RAM with iPhone 14, and the Pros only jumping to 8GB for iPhone 15.

Apologists will say iOS is so optimized that you don’t need more than 4GB.

But considering what we’re increasingly doing in apps and on the web, with more and more visual, high def audio, gaming, etc., the 4GB of RAM on your older iPhone will most certainly be the main culprit holding it back from running the latest iOS and high end apps smoothly, not the SoC or the slower wireless radios, aging batteries.

No need to manipulate our experience using iOS to be slower if the (not user-upgradable) hardware already does it so well.

Like, iPad 10, released in 2022, legitimately can’t run Final Cut Pro for iPad because of its super low specs.

When Apple has been releasing so many under-spec’ed, overpriced devices for so many years, why would it need to also go out of its way to obsolete these devices through software?

Every new SoC has been a good improvement over the last. But that doesn’t mean a lot when the rest of the specs are so poor.

 

[Abazigal]

I was talking to a friend of mine and he briefly mentioned that Apple intentionally slows down older models of iPhones - ‘planned obsolescence’ - and that it’s a known phenomenon. Let’s talk about it.

Before I carry on, I’m totally aware that he’s entitled to his opinion and I don’t think there’s a need to bash someone else’s opinion just because it differs from mine.

I have to disagree with him of course. I’ve thought about it, and on the surface it may seem true to an extend but I feel that people have manipulated the facts to suit a certain narrative. A narrative whereby Apple wants you to upgrade to their latest iPhones and to do that, they have to slow down your older iPhones under the pretence of improving your battery life. So I wanna break this down and see if you guys agree or disagree with me.

Fact: Apple has admitted that they lowered peak performance on iPhones with older and partially degraded battery as a way to avoid unexpected shutdowns during performance spikes.

I believe this saga surfaced in late 2017 when some tech geek discovered lower benchmark scores in older iPhones after upgrading to the latest iOS, or something a long that line.

However this saga is layered by this narrative that Apple is somehow forcing people to upgrade to their newest iPhones - it just didn’t make sense. As far as I know, these lowered performance was first noticed by someone looking for something, using a benchmark tool to compare certain metrics. A scenario that majority of consumers would never do and hence, this is not representative of a real world issue. The people that I know in my social circle, only upgrade to newer iPhones due to: expired telco contracts, just because they could and lastly, because their phones do not last as long as they did due to degraded battery health.

Degraded battery health - the very same issue Apple has been looking to remedy. None of those people I know told me that they upgraded because their older iPhones were slow. Could they have been slow? Yes, but I reckon it’s not noticeable in day to day use. I support the idea that Apple ’throttles’ the performance not because they want user to upgrade, but they want the user to be happy with their current iPhone they’re using by optimising the performance with the reduced battery health.

I agree with everything you said, but ultimately, the issue was that Apple wasn't transparent about it. They introduced the throttling effect with a software update (iOS 10.2 with the iPhone 6, 6s and SE, then iPhone 7 with 11.2). I believe Apple when they say their goal was to prolong the life of Apple devices, but the statement they gave at the time came across as extremely vague and evasive (and only came after a reddit user did some testing of their own and then highlighted the issue publicly). That they referred to "throttling" as a feature clearly didn't sit well with many people as well.

As with any conspiracy theory, there is often just enough truth to keep the theory going. It's a fact that lithium batteries degrade over time, and it doesn't help that at the time, it wasn't very easy to get an iPhone battery replaced. It's not hard to put these 2 observations together and conclude that Apple is trying to push forced obsolescence.

From what I see, Apple's engineering team was presented with that they felt was an engineering problem (older iPhones running iOS 10 shutting down unexpectedly) and so they came up with an engineering solution to it - alter the iPhone's power management system in such a way so that when the iPhone experienced sudden spikes of activity or performance, the battery would be able to handle the requests. This led to fewer instances of iPhones shutting off in order to avoid additional damage caused by the power spikes. It seemed like a convenient software solution that could easily be pushed out to any smartphone that required it.

I can also understand why Apple was quiet about it. At the time, replacing the battery was a fairly tedious process taking a few days (not every user can afford to go without their phone for that long). Ignoring the issue and simply letting iPhones shut off was also unacceptable (what if you were in the middle of some emergency?). Including larger batteries and improving the power delivery system were longer-term design goals. Throttling was the best of all the options (in my opinion), but I still feel Apple could have been clear about this upfront.

IMO, the real problem wasn't throttling (that was just the symptom), but that users were starting to hold on their phones for much longer than before. It likely wasn't an issue before when users were upgrading their phones every 2 years like clockwork, because their phone batteries wouldn't degrade to such a point. Now with more users starting to hold on to their iPhones beyond 2 years, the problem becomes more pronounced, as this may not have been factored in to the design of the product.

And as customers are holding on to their phones for 4 years or more, Apple has also adapted the design of the iPhone by including larger batteries and making it easier to replace. I was just checking the Apple Store the other day and it seems you are now able to request a technician to come to your home to perform the battery replacement for you.

 

[MauiPa]

The problem is in how Apple went about it. The fact they said nothing about throttling the users phone until they were essentially forced to come clean left a very bad taste in people’s mouth. To many people, your friend included, it felt like a deliberately sneaky way of slowing a phone down. There’s no way for me to cite actual numbers but how many thousands if not millions of phones were replaced because they slowed down so much when all people needed was a new battery? Apple made hundreds of millions on that you can be sure. Whether it was intentional is not for me to say, but how they went about it was wrong. There was zero transparency on Apple’s part, which to embed a software code that had such a drastic effect on performance without saying anything seemed a little crony to me.

I do think apple should have disclosed the problem with inadvertent shutdowns, but apple does not hide battery health issues. There is an easy to find battery health display in Settings. also I kept my iPhone X with the original battery for a long time. It finally got degraded and I got all sorts of messages about needing a replacement. Instead of continuing with an old phone, I upgraded to an iPhone 14Plus (great phone BTW). No way was I forced to do that. I could have replaced battery and continued on with a phone that did not have neural engine and other stuff to support iOS 17, but why?

 

[ikir]

I was talking to a friend of mine and he briefly mentioned that Apple intentionally slows down older models of iPhones - ‘planned obsolescence’ - and that it’s a known phenomenon. Let’s talk about it.

Before I carry on, I’m totally aware that he’s entitled to his opinion and I don’t think there’s a need to bash someone else’s opinion just because it differs from mine.

I have to disagree with him of course. I’ve thought about it, and on the surface it may seem true to an extend but I feel that people have manipulated the facts to suit a certain narrative. A narrative whereby Apple wants you to upgrade to their latest iPhones and to do that, they have to slow down your older iPhones under the pretence of improving your battery life. So I wanna break this down and see if you guys agree or disagree with me.

Fact: Apple has admitted that they lowered peak performance on iPhones with older and partially degraded battery as a way to avoid unexpected shutdowns during performance spikes.

I believe this saga surfaced in late 2017 when some tech geek discovered lower benchmark scores in older iPhones after upgrading to the latest iOS, or something a long that line.

However this saga is layered by this narrative that Apple is somehow forcing people to upgrade to their newest iPhones - it just didn’t make sense. As far as I know, these lowered performance was first noticed by someone looking for something, using a benchmark tool to compare certain metrics. A scenario that majority of consumers would never do and hence, this is not representative of a real world issue. The people that I know in my social circle, only upgrade to newer iPhones due to: expired telco contracts, just because they could and lastly, because their phones do not last as long as they did due to degraded battery health.

Degraded battery health - the very same issue Apple has been looking to remedy. None of those people I know told me that they upgraded because their older iPhones were slow. Could they have been slow? Yes, but I reckon it’s not noticeable in day to day use. I support the idea that Apple ’throttles’ the performance not because they want user to upgrade, but they want the user to be happy with their current iPhone they’re using by optimising the performance with the reduced battery health.

Users are just ignorant and usually tend to believe bad things. This happens in all sections of our society. Apple did the right things for batteries.

 

[Al Rukh]

The problem is in how Apple went about it. The fact they said nothing about throttling the users phone until they were essentially forced to come clean left a very bad taste in people’s mouth. To many people, your friend included, it felt like a deliberately sneaky way of slowing a phone down. There’s no way for me to cite actual numbers but how many thousands if not millions of phones were replaced because they slowed down so much when all people needed was a new battery? Apple made hundreds of millions on that you can be sure. Whether it was intentional is not for me to say, but how they went about it was wrong. There was zero transparency on Apple’s part, which to embed a software code that had such a drastic effect on performance without saying anything seemed a little crony to me.

I get you. But all these talks about the older iPhones being ‘slow’ could be overblown. I’ve used an iPhone 6 when the 6S and 7 were already out and I’ve noticed little to no slowdowns at all. Albeit I was using my iPhone for web browsing, emails, messages and social media. I think it’s fair to conclude that my usage is probably the same as say 80% of the population. Also, there were no reports of people complaining their phones have been slow overnight after updating the latest whatever iOS version that was available then. There’s no way to cite numbers but in 2015-2018, there should only be a minority upgrading their iPhones due to the phones becoming slow to use.

Though I’m with you about how Apple should have been more transparent. It wouldn’t make a difference still because majority of upgraders do so just because they wanted to.

 

[Al Rukh]

I agree with everything you said, but ultimately, the issue was that Apple wasn't transparent about it. They introduced the throttling effect with a software update (iOS 10.2 with the iPhone 6, 6s and SE, then iPhone 7 with 11.2). I believe Apple when they say their goal was to prolong the life of Apple devices, but the statement they gave at the time came across as extremely vague and evasive (and only came after a reddit user did some testing of their own and then highlighted the issue publicly). That they referred to "throttling" as a feature clearly didn't sit well with many people as well.

As with any conspiracy theory, there is often just enough truth to keep the theory going. It's a fact that lithium batteries degrade over time, and it doesn't help that at the time, it wasn't very easy to get an iPhone battery replaced. It's not hard to put these 2 observations together and conclude that Apple is trying to push forced obsolescence.

From what I see, Apple's engineering team was presented with that they felt was an engineering problem (older iPhones running iOS 10 shutting down unexpectedly) and so they came up with an engineering solution to it - alter the iPhone's power management system in such a way so that when the iPhone experienced sudden spikes of activity or performance, the battery would be able to handle the requests. This led to fewer instances of iPhones shutting off in order to avoid additional damage caused by the power spikes. It seemed like a convenient software solution that could easily be pushed out to any smartphone that required it.

I can also understand why Apple was quiet about it. At the time, replacing the battery was a fairly tedious process taking a few days (not every user can afford to go without their phone for that long). Ignoring the issue and simply letting iPhones shut off was also unacceptable (what if you were in the middle of some emergency?). Including larger batteries and improving the power delivery system were longer-term design goals. Throttling was the best of all the options (in my opinion), but I still feel Apple could have been clear about this upfront.

IMO, the real problem wasn't throttling (that was just the symptom), but that users were starting to hold on their phones for much longer than before. It likely wasn't an issue before when users were upgrading their phones every 2 years like clockwork, because their phone batteries wouldn't degrade to such a point. Now with more users starting to hold on to their iPhones beyond 2 years, the problem becomes more pronounced, as this may not have been factored in to the design of the product.

And as customers are holding on to their phones for 4 years or more, Apple has also adapted the design of the iPhone by including larger batteries and making it easier to replace. I was just checking the Apple Store the other day and it seems you are now able to request a technician to come to your home to perform the battery replacement for you.

You couldn’t have said it any better. I wish I can pin your post. Cheers for sharing your thoughts.

 

[FeliApple]

Apple was wrong to throttle devices silently without disclosing it, because like other users said, the difference was massive. I do think that they were trying to solve a problem with that (unexpected shutdowns), and I have no reason to think their intent was malicious.

I do think that Apple has gotten one aspect of this so massively wrong that it undercuts all of their efforts for transparency and software efficiency: downgrading. iOS updates obliterate devices. This isn’t a secret and this isn’t new. This has always happened. Update far enough, and battery life is garbage. Performance will be significantly worse, too. Nothing like in the 32-bit days, but still very poor. Apple’s response has been non-existent. Continue to obliterate devices through irreversible iOS updates as if nothing happened.

This throttling issue started with the iPhone 6s, right? Can you downgrade an iPhone 6s from iOS 15 to iOS 9 or 10? No. How does it run on iOS 15? Like garbage. Battery life is extremely poor. New batteries give 4 hours of screen-on time. Slightly degraded batteries plummet and are unusable. Performance is very poor, especially when compared to iOS 10. If you run an efficient iOS version, battery health will be irrelevant and the phone will maintain good battery life for many, many years. With newer iPhones with larger batteries, this is even more pronounced. Battery life is excellent on original versions of iOS, yet, without failure, it always drops when updated far enough. The all too dreaded keyboard lag always shows, and frame drops are ubiquitous. At this point, I won’t ask for perfection. If Apple cannot guarantee perfect performance and battery life throughout iOS updates, then they should allow downgrading.

The only way to maintain a good iOS device forever is to never update iOS. It shouldn’t be like this, but it is. Since battery health is irrelevant if the device isn’t updated, the issue is even more pronounced.

 

[minimo3]

only Apple can get away with this BS. Imagine you bought a Tesla and every year when a new model comes out your current car becomes slower. 5 years in and you floor the accelerator just to keep up with 50Mph traffic. Would you shrug and say “oh well the new software update added new features for the new models so I understand it’s not optimized for my old car.”

 

[chris53]

only Apple can get away with this BS. Imagine you bought a Tesla and every year when a new model comes out your current car becomes slower. 5 years in and you floor the accelerator just to keep up with 50Mph traffic. Would you shrug and say “oh well the new software update added new features for the new models so I understand it’s not optimized for my old car.”

Unless you want the car to shut down in middle of road

Apple was wrong to throttle devices silently without disclosing it, because like other users said, the difference was massive. I do think that they were trying to solve a problem with that (unexpected shutdowns), and I have no reason to think their intent was malicious.

I do think that Apple has gotten one aspect of this so massively wrong that it undercuts all of their efforts for transparency and software efficiency: downgrading. iOS updates obliterate devices. This isn’t a secret and this isn’t new. This has always happened. Update far enough, and battery life is garbage. Performance will be significantly worse, too. Nothing like in the 32-bit days, but still very poor. Apple’s response has been non-existent. Continue to obliterate devices through irreversible iOS updates as if nothing happened.

This throttling issue started with the iPhone 6s, right? Can you downgrade an iPhone 6s from iOS 15 to iOS 9 or 10? No. How does it run on iOS 15? Like garbage. Battery life is extremely poor. New batteries give 4 hours of screen-on time. Slightly degraded batteries plummet and are unusable. Performance is very poor, especially when compared to iOS 10. If you run an efficient iOS version, battery health will be irrelevant and the phone will maintain good battery life for many, many years. With newer iPhones with larger batteries, this is even more pronounced. Battery life is excellent on original versions of iOS, yet, without failure, it always drops when updated far enough. The all too dreaded keyboard lag always shows, and frame drops are ubiquitous. At this point, I won’t ask for perfection. If Apple cannot guarantee perfect performance and battery life throughout iOS updates, then they should allow downgrading.

The only way to maintain a good iOS device forever is to never update iOS. It shouldn’t be like this, but it is. Since battery health is irrelevant if the device isn’t updated, the issue is even more pronounced.

I had an iPhone X and was upgraded all the way to iOS 16 and worked as new. Same as OG iPhone SE to 15 and was fine in my experience

Also keeping old iOS is bad for security and app support. And new iOS versions can improve on efficiency performance battery
And sometimes ppl say to hard reset after new version if there are issues (I've never done it)

 

[Al Rukh]

only Apple can get away with this BS. Imagine you bought a Tesla and every year when a new model comes out your current car becomes slower. 5 years in and you floor the accelerator just to keep up with 50Mph traffic. Would you shrug and say “oh well the new software update added new features for the new models so I understand it’s not optimized for my old car.”

It’s a poor comparison. One costs tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars and the other is slightly higher than a grand. I don’t get your logic.

 

[I7guy]

Apple was wrong to throttle devices silently without disclosing it, because like other users said, the difference was massive. I do think that they were trying to solve a problem with that (unexpected shutdowns), and I have no reason to think their intent was malicious.

The difference wasn’t really all that “massive”. I had one of the 6s.

I do think that Apple has gotten one aspect of this so massively wrong that it undercuts all of their efforts for transparency and software efficiency: downgrading. iOS updates obliterate devices.

True before the a12. Not so much after.

This isn’t a secret and this isn’t new. This has always happened. Update far enough, and battery life is garbage. Performance will be significantly worse, too. Nothing like in the 32-bit days, but still very poor. Apple’s response has been non-existent. Continue to obliterate devices through irreversible iOS updates as if nothing happened.

This throttling issue started with the iPhone 6s, right? Can you downgrade an iPhone 6s from iOS 15 to iOS 9 or 10? No.

You have never been able to downgrade, nor should one. Anymore than using Windows ME to run a modern desktop environment.

How does it run on iOS 15? Like garbage. Battery life is extremely poor.

I agree prior to the a12 performance on later operating systems wasn’t great. The cpus and hardware just weren’t up to the task to run a modern operating system effectively on older hardware. You could if you wanted, and those who weren’t perfectionists found this to be acceptable.

New batteries give 4 hours of screen-on time. Slightly degraded batteries plummet and are unusable.

Performance is very poor, especially when compared to iOS 10. If you run an efficient iOS version,

An efficient ios version is one that does nothing. If you're benchmarking ios 10 against ios 17, you are benchmarking a model T against a Ferrari.

battery health will be irrelevant and the phone will maintain good battery life for many, many years.

Not true. Usage is adjusted and as long as the phone can limp along doing virtually nothing, battery life is good. But use the phone as intended and battery life will tank.

With newer iPhones with larger batteries, this is even more pronounced. Battery life is excellent on original versions of iOS, yet, without failure, it always drops when updated far enough.

Before I got rid of our XR and replaced it with a 14PM, I will say the hype didn’t live up to the expectation. From the get go out XR was not a battery sipper. Maybe it’s the way we used it but it still had the same (lousy)battery life when we got rid of it.

The all too dreaded keyboard lag always shows, and frame drops are ubiquitous.

My xs max has neither — or they are so infrequent I don’t notice them. Either way it’s been reported that lag and frame drops are present on original versions.

At this point, I won’t ask for perfection. If Apple cannot guarantee perfect performance and battery life throughout iOS updates, then they should allow downgrading.

The only way to maintain a good iOS device forever is to never update iOS.

The only way to maintain a good ios device is not to use it. Use it and it goes downhill. Even components age by just sitting on the shelf.

It shouldn’t be like this, but it is. Since battery health is irrelevant if the device isn’t updated, the issue is even more pronounced.

It is said software always catches up with hardware and Apple proves this to be true. Older hardware takes more oomph to run modern software than modern hardware. You are taxing older hardware more as new ios versions does more than older ios versions. It’s not like battery life decreases for some unknown reason. The reason is known, iOS is doing more.

 

[FeliApple]

I had an iPhone X and was upgraded all the way to iOS 16 and worked as new. Same as OG iPhone SE to 15 and was fine in my experience

The iPhone X probably has good performance on iOS 16, but battery life isn’t as good. The 1st-gen SE is a lot worse, not even close to iOS 9.

Also keeping old iOS is bad for security and app support. And new iOS versions can improve on efficiency performance battery
And sometimes ppl say to hard reset after new version if there are issues (I've never done it)

iOS updates never improve when it comes to efficiency, performance, or battery life. Name one when compared to the original iOS version.

 

[FeliApple]

It is said software always catches up with hardware and Apple proves this to be true. Older hardware takes more oomph to run modern software than modern hardware. You are taxing older hardware more as new ios versions does more than older ios versions. It’s not like battery life decreases for some unknown reason. The reason is known, iOS is doing more.

Finally, we agree on something.