Why Does Apple Slow Down Older iPhones?
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2018-05-06
·
879 words · ~4 min read
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thanks for watching Techquickie click the subscribe button then enable
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notifications with the Bell icon so you won't miss any future videos so when you
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clicked on this video you might have noticed that in the title we didn't ask
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if Apple was slowing down their phones we asked why because it turns out that
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the conspiracy theories are real
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sort of even though it's pretty common
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knowledge that older devices don't perform as well due to the higher
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demands of newer software many people have noticed this in a more profound way
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after a system update issued by Apple in 2016 this fueled speculation for well
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over a year about whether Apple was slowing down their phones on purpose
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until the company finally admitted that this was indeed the case in December
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2017 now the explanation that Apple gave
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revolved around the way that phones with older batteries perform you see even
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though smartphones use rechargeable batteries these have a limited lifespan
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you can learn more about it up here but the main thing to keep in mind for now
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is that these batteries recharge by reversing the chemical reaction that
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normally generates power for your phone now since this reaction isn't perfectly
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reversible your battery won't be able to hold a charge as well over time as you
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discharge it and recharge it over and over again and if your battery is really
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old your gadget can end up shutting off due to a dead battery way before you
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might expect it to so this is what Apple claimed it was trying to prevent but
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wait a second how does slowing down a
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phone help with a sudden shutdown well
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if you're putting a load on your phone's processor like streaming HD video or
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playing a game it draws more power from
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your battery draining it more quickly so Apple says that some workloads are so
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hungry that they can ask for more power than an aging battery can provide in a
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given moment so similar to how a laptop
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CPU might down clock itself to preserve battery life newer versions of iOS will
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make the CPU spread tasks out to take
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longer to prevent those power spikes that can overload older batteries which
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has caused the frustrating performance issues and the leg that we mentioned
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earlier now this does make sense
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probably more sense than a conspiracy theory about Apple crippling its own
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products to force consumers to buy the latest model which would carry
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significant legal consequences if they were caught by the way you definitely
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don't want a battery that you think has an adequate charge suddenly dropping
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dead in the middle of something important but that doesn't mean we're
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ready to let Apple off the hook one issue is that Apple waited well over a
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year before disclosing this fix leaving
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their customers wondering why the heck their iPhones were performing so poorly
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this has driven speculation that Apple is effectively overclocking their phones
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knowingly delivering performance out of the box that isn't typical of what you'd
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expect in the longer term and they've also faced criticism for not giving
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their users a choice they could have an
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option in the settings menu that allows you to choose between the safety valve
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that prevents shutdowns and more performance at the risk of your battery
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dying suddenly when it's low now Apple has offered cheap battery upgrades for a
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year but unless they extend that offer indefinitely you could argue that that's
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more of a PR move than a long-term solution so what can be done in the long
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term well it is possible to grab a
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battery online for cheap and swap it at home to alleviate the lag issue I fix it
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excuse me sorry but it requires specific
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tools risks damaging your device and also avoids any warranty that you might
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have remaining so unless the smartphone market as a whole moves back towards
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bulkier phones with user replaceable batteries and away from slim sleek and
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emoji machines that need to be replaced every couple of years
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not much I fix it loves to take stuff apart and
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