Re:IPhones start slowing down after a year
by bluedino on Thursday December 21, 2017 @12:38PM
(#15980872)
>> But I think Apple needs to have iOS alert you that it's slowing your phone down because the battery has degraded.
I see so many Mac laptops with the service battery warning on. People won't replace them until they have to, even to the point of the laptop needing to be connected to the wall outlet to run.
Re:IPhones start slowing down after a year
by TeMPOraL on Thursday December 21, 2017 @01:01PM
(#15981142)
It's exactly because they don't magically lose CPU speed because of battery issues; people can adjust to failing batteries if the device remains useful (even for phones with fixed batteries, powerbanks exist).
With iPhones, Apple decided to make the device less useful instead.
Re:IPhones start slowing down after a year
by bluedino on Thursday December 21, 2017 @01:21PM
(#15981366)
Mac laptops actually used to work in a similar way, however I'm not sure if that is still the case.
If you had a dead battery (or no battery), your CPU frequency would be limited because the AC adapter could not supply enough power on it's own
The link is dead, but it was documented on Apple's support site: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2332
You call the decrease artificial, but I don't see evidence of that. I'm not sure what your "reduced by 8%" number is -- capacity? -- but in any case, it wouldn't necessarily scale linearly with the amount of CPU throttling needed to make the CPU stable.
Also, I'm not sure where the "significant decrease in performance after just one year" is coming from. The article says performance starts to degrade after a year, which isn't the same thing. The article doesn't even have a cite for that (that I saw), so I wouldn't take that claim seriously yet.
Of course, I'm sure there are batteries out there that are aging prematurely, but that's not the same as a device being designed to degrade after a year. Personally, my iPhone 6 plus began slowing down really noticeably at close to three years old, which is acceptable, IMO.
But I think Apple needs to have iOS alert you that it's slowing your phone down because the battery has degraded. Then you know what to do: * If it's less than the normal service life of the battery (2 years, I guess), you should get a free battery replacement. * If it's later than that you can choose to replace the battery on your own dime. * Or you can choose to get a new phone after all.
By not telling people what's going on, people with a prematurely degraded battery probably won't know to get it replaced under warranty and people with normally aging batteries are more likely to buy a new phone rather than replace their battery.