Apple iPhone Battery Throttling

Cluster discusses Apple's practice of intentionally slowing down older iPhones with degraded batteries to prevent shutdowns, including controversies over planned obsolescence, lawsuits like Batterygate, poor communication, and user experiences with performance drops after OS updates.

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Keywords

theverge.com CPU NTP www.bbc arstechnica.com ARM OnePlus OS money.cnn SE battery apple phone iphones phones batteries slowing cpu iphone slower

Sample Comments

kappaseven May 4, 2018 View on HN

This makes some sense. A few months back Apple was found to be limiting the performance of iPhones with degraded batteries. A fresh battery wouldn't have that issue.

user5454 Mar 12, 2018 View on HN

Apple is intentionally slowing down phones with every OS upgrade to "preserve the battery" [1].[1] http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/21/technology/apple-slows-down-...

simion314 Dec 27, 2017 View on HN

Usually in the user manual of product you get informed about the battery life decreasing with time, maybe Apple did not mention that also CPU performance will drop with time. From the article it seems that customers wanted to get a new battery from Apple if the current one degraded while in the warranty so phone shutdown but Apple decided to hide the problem with an update that slowdown the CPU.

asQuirreL Dec 25, 2023 View on HN

Sounds like the kind of planned obsolescence that Apple has been [sued for in the past](https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/2/21161271/apple-settlement-...).

riiii Jul 10, 2024 View on HN

Didn't Apple stop slowing people's old phones down when they were caught a few years ago? That probably plays a factor.

justusthane Nov 12, 2023 View on HN

No, that did not happen with iPhones. Apple throttled the CPU once the battery health dropped below a certain threshold to prevent unexpected shutdowns caused by drawing too much current from an old battery. In my view, the only thing they’re responsible for in that occasion is poor communication.

speedgoose Feb 29, 2020 View on HN

You don't remember the iPhones slowing down to protect their old batteries?

basch Apr 8, 2019 View on HN

Apple didnt "slow down phones with old batteries", they capped the power output to the cpu of batteries that couldnt deliver reliable peak power anymore, so the phone didnt panic and crash as the cpu usage redlined. Their actions are much preferred to the alternative.

samtheprogram Sep 20, 2021 View on HN

This too, but Apple was caught a while back slowing down older phones at major version updates (their reasoning was to extend battery life / device on time).https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51413724

jey Feb 7, 2020 View on HN

Background context: This is because Apple throttled down the maximum CPU speed of phones whose batteries were old/weak. The (claimed) intent was to prevent old phones from suddenly shutting off while running CPU-intensive apps like games.