Apple Reveals Why Old iPhones Are Slowing Down Over Time

Since the launch of iOS 11 particularly, users have been crying foul over the diminished fluency of the iOS experience on their older iPhones. And it hasn’t been telling people about it; people have been inferring that something is slowing their phones down, and that it’s the new software. It turns out I was wrong. And so it turns out that Apple has been quietly managing power in these older iPhones in order to spare the batteries.

“Although it feels like a bug, it’s actually a feature”, Magid says.

First, about that complaint. It specifically stated that it throttled iPhones to prevent unexpected shutdowns when the lithium ion battery got older.

On Monday, the blog Primate Labs, a company that makes an app for measuring the speed of an iPhone’s processor, published data that appeared to show slower performance in the Apple’s iPhone 6s and iPhone 7 models as they aged.

The software is said to slow down devices to keep them functional, but only when needed.

Stefan Bogdanovich, an L.A. resident and Apple customer, and Dakota Speas, are starting a class action lawsuit against the tech giant, Mercury News reports.

The battery replacement problem is an example of why a growing community of gadget lovers are calling for laws to ensure that consumers have a legal “right to repair” their own electronics. As we all know, if it was all a ploy, someone would figure it out eventually.

Apple has admitted that it throttles performance on some mobile handsets as a precautionary measure, to stop them from shutting down unexpectedly or breaking altogether. The tests were based on 100,000 benchmark results. Apple says to prevent the iPhones from shutting down, it tweaked iOS to slow certain tasks that require more power.

The company has now aceepted that a few models do slow down but only due to diminishing battery performance over the periode of time. So if Apple is to be believed, it silently started this practice a year ago, to compensate for battery degradation, and not to push frustrated users towards buying new iPhones faster.

It seems odd, though. Having a slow iPhone is admittedly better than one that will not turn on but neither are desirable outcomes. If your battery is fine, it should run at about the same speed. There might be a warning message if you dig into the settings menu for the battery.