iPhone performance ageing
For those who haven't noticed some of the recent articles on the web, it appears as though some iPhones are degrading in performance, apparently in correlation with battery ageing.
https://wccftech.com/iphone-issues-b...age-geekbench/
https://wccftech.com/iphone-battery-...r-performance/
At first it looks like clickbait but after reading into it it seems like there's more to it, and there are reports that replacing the battery restores performance.
Now, it's not necessarily completely without reason - perhaps Apple have reason to believe that particularly degraded batteries are unable to deliver as much power safely, or perhaps they just want to keep battery life consistent throughout the life of the device. However it does seem pretty underhanded if true - having your device conveniently lose performance before a new 'faster' thing is released. :rolleyes:
Either way it warrants further investigation and some sort of explanation. IMO it would be far better to alert the user to this and perhaps offer an option to maintain performance or battery life.
Re: iPhone performance ageing
BBC have now reported it to be true:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42438745
I dont believe this is just down to iPhones, I'm sure this is done on Android phones as well, and pretty much every type of electronic device connected to the web (bluray players, audio amps etc...)
All to do with the economic cycle.
Re: iPhone performance ageing
Love how they spun it and now offering to replace your battery and undo the slow down for a mere £80...
Re: iPhone performance ageing
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AGTDenton
BBC have now reported it to be true:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42438745
I dont believe this is just down to iPhones, I'm sure this is done on Android phones as well, and pretty much every type of electronic device connected to the web (bluray players, audio amps etc...)
All to do with the economic cycle.
I've not seen it on a single Android phone I've owned, from LG (Nexus), Samsung, Huawei or HTC. All of the score essentially equal on benchmarks now compared to what they did when brand new.
Edit: I'm not buying their 'explanation' either, it sounds like a lame excuse for an engineering oversight at best IMO (giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming nothing more sinister). If high transient currents are an issue they should have used more input capacitance, if continuous power draw is too high then the batteries are either rubbish or too small for the job they're doing. Either way there's no way that should have spanned several generations before some engineers noticed the problem, and hiding it would have been stupid - someone running benchmarks was bound to notice eventually.
Re: iPhone performance ageing
Batteries do age and the capacity reduces. So you either run at the same power draw for shorter time or reduce the load to extend the time between charges. This solution optimises life between charges. I would be nice to have the option in the software to select which option though.
£80 for a professionally fitted QA product seems reasonable to me - and preferable to fitting some cheap knock off from Ebay with unpredictable performance, and the risk of doing a Samsung.
Re: iPhone performance ageing
Quote:
Originally Posted by
peterb
Batteries do age and the capacity reduces. So you either run at the same power draw for shorter time or reduce the load to extend the time between charges. This solution optimises life between charges. I would be nice to have the option in the software to select which option though.
£80 for a professionally fitted QA product seems reasonable to me - and preferable to fitting some cheap knock off from Ebay with unpredictable performance, and the risk of doing a Samsung.
I would probably disagree. If you've made such poor design choices that you have to downclock yer phone to preserve a battery that's only 1.5 years old or whatever, you don't have excuses, you've messed up the market. In this case, VERY badly. I mean how hard is it to pick a battery that can sustain your device for 3-4 years? Maybe not too hard now, especially for a company floating in a sea of money and good intentions like crappy Apple.
I guess £80 to restore your device functionality is 'ok' (read: not quite the worst outcome) but this doesn't seem to apply to the majority of other smartphone vendors, including android VARs/OEMs, and I don't doubt that if one of them had pulled this kind of rubbish, even a medium/small one like Xaomi or Uliphone or whatever, it would have been much bigger news. Yet, people always seem to settle. ?
Re: iPhone performance ageing
Quote:
Originally Posted by
peterb
Batteries do age and the capacity reduces. So you either run at the same power draw for shorter time or reduce the load to extend the time between charges. This solution optimises life between charges. I would be nice to have the option in the software to select which option though.
£80 for a professionally fitted QA product seems reasonable to me - and preferable to fitting some cheap knock off from Ebay with unpredictable performance, and the risk of doing a Samsung.
The thing is, it seems Apple's explanation is centred around having to do this as a last resort to stop the phone browning out and resetting, not about preserving battery life. Depending on workload, limiting peak clock speeds won't necessarily help battery life much if at all anyway - race-to-sleep, etc - being stuck in a lower-performance active state for longer with leakage present as long as the core isn't gated.
Re: iPhone performance ageing
The down clocking is such a great feature they neglected to mention in for a year or errrrrrr so
Re: iPhone performance ageing
From 2 January until December 2018, you can get an iPhone battery replacement for just £25, that’s £54 less than the normal £79 cost of an out-of-warranty replacement battery normally.
This is only for
- iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus
- iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus (Though you may be eligible for a free replacement, see below)
- iPhone SE
- iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus
A small number of iPhone 6S devices manufactured between September and October 2015 have been known to unexpectedly shut down. Apple is giving users of these iPhone 6S devices a free battery replacement. Put your serial number into Apple’s website to see if you’re eligible - and you won’t even have to pay £25.
Re: iPhone performance ageing
Apple really deserve to be punished to the full extent of the law. Having a death clock in your code to down clock the processor by like half and not tied to battery health but a period of time to ost likely coincide with newer phone releases is evil. The battery replacement is only a plaster on a gushing wound.
Re: iPhone performance ageing
Quote:
Originally Posted by
outwar6010
Apple really deserve to be punished to the full extent of the law. Having a death clock in your code to down clock the processor by like half and not tied to battery health but a period of time to ost likely coincide with newer phone releases is evil. The battery replacement is only a plaster on a gushing wound.
The period of time was linked to the battery ageing.
Re: iPhone performance ageing
Quote:
Originally Posted by
peterb
The period of time was linked to the battery ageing.
I don't think that's true. They have lithium ion batteries in them which probably only have less than 10% wear on them after 2 years. I've bought many used android phones over the years and none of them, have had the issues that apple have claimed, ageing lithium ion batteries have.
Re: iPhone performance ageing
Quote:
Originally Posted by
outwar6010
I don't think that's true. They have lithium ion batteries in them which probably only have less than 10% wear on them after 2 years. I've bought many used android phones over the years and none of them, have had the issues that apple have claimed, ageing lithium ion batteries have.
The capacity of any battery - regardless of chemistry - reduces over time, and the internal impedance tends to rise which limits the peak current, so high current pulses would cause the voltage to drop. Apple claims that this could cause data corruption and that underclocking the processor as the battery aged reduced that risk and maintained the time between recharging.
Now you can argue that that might be poor battery design, or an under capacity battery necessitated by the fashion for ultra thin phones, but there is currently no evidence that this was to prematurely age the device - in fact it would extend the life before the requirement to change the battery.
While the reduction in the cost of battery replacement might be a PR exercise, it is still a real eduction in price and gets a warranted battery fitted by the mfr, rather than a battery of unknown provenance fitted for a similar price by some back street pop-up shop.
Re: iPhone performance ageing
This saddens me. iPhone is not working on its battery heating issue that causes its users to pluck away from iPhones to any other smartphones. I have to say, iPhone is not a good gadget for a gaming, battery is something to concern about.