Apple specifically slows down old iPhones

The Internet is boiling up. Reddit-user TeckFire accused Apple of slowing down its iPhone 6S. And this is not a joke, the company really reduces the processor's clock speed with its old, used devices. True, there is a way to fight this, and some models were not subject to a drop in speed.

The theory that Apple deliberately slows down old iPhones during the release of new models, to make people "switch", has been on the Internet for years. It seemed that all this is fiction of people with a foil on their heads. The company Futuremark, the creator of various software for performance testing, throughout the year conducted a test , trying to confirm or refute this idea of ​​users. The test involved more than one hundred thousand iPhones, from 5S to 7, and as a result, the theory was not confirmed. The performance of the devices did not change over time, from April 2016 to September 2017. A slight change in the GPU and CPU indices with the release of iOS 11 was tied to new shell features (with the iPhone 6, with the update, on the contrary, they increased).

Futuremark brought its findings in October:

Our results show that Apple not only does not degrade the performance of its models, on the contrary, its old devices are well supported, and regular updates allow them to show themselves well in different versions of iOS.

True, there are other factors because of which people might think that their smartphone began to work more slowly. An iOS update can add new features that require more processor power. Applications developed for new models may not work smoothly on old devices, and old applications, on the contrary, do not take into account optimization in recent versions of the shell. And, of course, there is a psychological effect - the knowledge that there is a new and improved model on the market, which makes the user device seem overly cumbersome.

But an investigation into Reddit puts Futuremark’s findings into question. Apparently, the company used fresh devices that were not in use for a long time. And with the "zayuzannymi" the situation is different. The more times you charge and discharge your iPhone, the slower it seems to work. Because it's all about the battery.

What enthusiasts found

TeckFire user felt that his iPhone 6S began to work much slower after the update to iOS 11. He picked up his brother's iPhone 6S Plus, and he, surprisingly, was much faster, although the hardware and OS in it are the same. TeckFire decided to replace the battery (it was worn out by 20%). And - lo and behold! - his apparatus began to work again, as expected. According to the Geekbench test, the iPhone showed 1466 on one core and 2512 on several, and after replacing the battery - 2526 and 4456. Almost twice as fast!

Collective intelligence reddit-geeks found that the corporation reduces the performance of their smartphones as their batteries lose capacity - it seems that the charge continued to last for one day. This is most pronounced on the iPhone 6 / 6S, on the “sevens” - weaker, the “fives” - almost untouched. Perhaps the reason is that in the iPhone 7 there are A10 processors with energy-efficient cores, and their performance even with a worn out battery is reduced only on intensive tasks.

Deeper and deeper

Last year, many iPhone 6S owners began to complain that their smartphones began to turn off without warning, as if they had a dead battery. Apple said that the reason - in the factory error, which affected the "very limited" number of devices. The company offered a free battery replacement to those who had problems with smartphones, and a couple of months later, in January 2017, released an iOS 10.2.1 update to fix the problem.

Apparently, the problem concerned a much larger number of devices than Apple wanted to advertise. Instead of admitting this, the company in the update just quietly cut the speed of the devices to show how “all is well”. Apple said that iOS 10.2.1 eliminated more than 80% of the problems with shutdowns on the iPhone 6S and 70% of the problems on the iPhone 6. As they say on the redit, the OS began to dynamically change the processor clock frequency depending on the battery voltage. According to them, the same scheme works in iOS 11. Apple’s priority for older models is “minimum battery life a day”, and not the quality they work with.

How to check what to do

If you suddenly have one of the old iPhones, and you want to check if your wings are not clipped, you can do this with applications like DasherX CPU , showing the processor clock frequency in the device. If your benchmarks are much lower than expected - you probably have an old battery, and Apple decided for you that the processor should work at its pace. For example, iPhone 6S should default to 1,848 MHz.

If the smartphone is slow, you need to change the battery. There are three options, from the most reliable to the most risky:

1. Order a replacement battery from Apple. This service is included in the one-year warranty. In America, the battery is also replaced for $ 79 - much cheaper than buying a new iPhone.
2. Find a good repair shop and ask them to replace the battery. The battery can be both from them, and yours. Replacing the battery lasts no longer than an hour, and if the repair shop is decent, you will also be given a guarantee.
3. Change the battery yourself. Need tools and very straight arms. The instruction is on iFixit , the whole procedure takes less than 30 minutes, but it looks more like breaking into a safe, here you need at least 150 IQ.

PS

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