Poll: Apple throttling older phones - your opinion?

swabbo · Dec 26, 2017

The secret is to stay on a firmware and cross your fingers and wait for a jailbreak, I've got a 64GB iPhone SE on 9.3.2, happily jailbroken with no slowdowns because I'm on a relatively stable firmware

SG854 · Dec 26, 2017

Foxi4 said:
If the battery hasn't dropped below 2.6V much, it can be recovered if it's charged "gently", modern smart devices call this a "pre-charge", "pre-conditioning", or in the cases of deep discharge "reconditioning". This process minimises the risk of permanent capacity loss by limiting charge current in the initial charging stage. Charge them without actually turning the device on, there's hope, battery circuits are pretty smart these days.
Normally they just say to charge the device as soon as possible, they never explain why. The battery chemistry is a mystery to most users even though it's technically an explosive device that you keep in your pocket. I'm yet to see a device that has a storage mode too, since batteries feel most comfortable when stored at nominal voltage, not peak which they normally charge to. A storage mode would be pretty great, but at the end of the day, storing at peak is still better than storing flat.

Well I read some that says charge it every few months to prevent battery damage.

I think they purposely don't give an explanation because people bitch and complain if the words becomes to complicate to them.
They want laymen's terms text. Charge or Damage.

Foxi4 · Dec 26, 2017

SG854 said:
Well I read some that says charge it every few months to prevent battery damage.

I think they purposely don't give an explanation because people bitch and complain if the words becomes to complicate to them.
They want laymen's terms text. Charge or Damage.

At that point you're wasting cycles, Li-ion batteries have extremely low self-discharge rates and shouldn't require "topping up" very often. According to Battery University, your average Li-ion battery will self-discharge 5% in the first 24 hours (peak down to nominal), followed by 1-2% per month, plus whatever the consumption of the protection circuit is, which they suggest is 3% for an average cell. If we take these parameters, a fully charged cell will fully discharge after 19-23 months of storage, and that's a pretty conservative value in my opinion. That's nearly two years of no servicing at all. You are right though, certain details can be omitted since anything science-y tends to scare/bore people, but the bare minimum should be there. The technology is pretty fragile and requires care for optimal performance.

grossaffe · Dec 26, 2017

VinsCool said:
Let's be honest, who ever reads instruction manuals?

I miss the days when games would come with instruction manuals. The smell of a freshly opened manual... reading it in the car on the way home from the store... such sad times we live in now.

FAST6191 · Dec 26, 2017

Foxi4 said:
At that point you're wasting cycles, Li-ion batteries have extremely low self-discharge rates and shouldn't require "topping up" very often.

Self discharge is one thing, quiescent current is another and that can lead to timeframes of a few months, especially if "power off" is in reality more "slightly more hardcore sleep mode" and you chuck in some low temperatures (box in the shed/garage/attic sort of thing). Obviously this can vary dramatically by device though.

VinsCool · Dec 26, 2017

grossaffe said:
I miss the days when games would come with instruction manuals. The smell of a freshly opened manual... reading it in the car on the way home from the store... such sad times we live in now.

I know that feel so well.
I miss those.

DSAndi · Dec 26, 2017

Well deserved to people that still buy this overpriced junk. The sad thing is, they still buy it.

Foxi4 · Dec 27, 2017

FAST6191 said:
Self discharge is one thing, quiescent current is another and that can lead to timeframes of a few months, especially if "power off" is in reality more "slightly more hardcore sleep mode" and you chuck in some low temperatures (box in the shed/garage/attic sort of thing). Obviously this can vary dramatically by device though.

That's where the 3% comes from - the battery protection circuit. With no protection circuit at all there's no quiescent current and you're left with 1-2% self-discharge. Whatever the device draws in standby is minimal, but yeah, it obviously further decreases shelf life. I don't think it's by much though - 3% is pretty generous.

gamefan5 · Dec 27, 2017

Foxi4 said:
It's a bit of a catch-22 situation. If you connect a battery like that to a meter, it will show nominal parameters... *until* you connect a load to it. Normally Li-ion cells have a very predictable discharge pattern - they charge to peak, usually around 4.2V, quickly discharge to nominal voltage, around 3.6V, and continue to discharge linearly until they release most of the stored energy, at which point they rapidly drop to 2.6V, the safety cut-off. Once a battery reaches that state, the battery protection kicks in and disconnects the load to protect the cell. If the cell shows nominal voltage and drops to that level randomly due to damage, the system has no idea what to do because it's unexpected behaviour.

This is a safety note to all Tempers, since no manual mentions this explicitly - never leave your Li-ion devices discharged for an extended period of time. Li-ion batteries can last for a really long time if you take good care of them, and while the self-discharge rate is very low, a discharged Li-ion cell will get damaged irreversibly if it's stored in a discharged state.

View attachment 109363

Is taking out the battery safer? In xase it has a removable battery?

FAST6191 · Dec 27, 2017

That's fine for my drill, phones do like their SRAM settings, onboard clocks, some kind of remote wipe/security protocol and while it is more user problem if they continue to stick proper turn it off modes behind a more complex UI and the basic "turn it off" does something short of that then it ends up at threshold before too long.

Edit. On taking out the battery. If you are sure you won't lose it then it is not a bad plan, and if it does go all puffy then hopefully it will have some space to do it into rather than deforming its housing.
Depending upon the model Apple batteries are not always so bad to remove, or at least unplug which is effectively the same thing, either. Something like an iphone4 which is the backplate screws and an internal screwed connector right there, rather than some of the laptops which are potentially... a bit more fun.
At the same time if someone said it was overkill I don't know how strong an argument I could make for against it for most people under normal circumstances.
If it is a tool with simple to remove batteries then absolutely.

spotanjo3 · Dec 27, 2017

It is still wrong and it is not my opinion. It is an ABSOLUTELY 100 PERCENT FACT! ITS WRONG!

Foxi4 · Dec 27, 2017

gamefan5 said:
Is taking out the battery safer? In xase it has a removable battery?

Not a whole lot of difference in my opinion as long as the battery is at room temperature. Fast is right, phones do run basic hardware from the battery, however the current is really minimal and simply checking the device every now and then should be sufficient. We're talking about mere miliamps here, it's really no big deal. A battery won't "puff up" unless it rapidly discharges due to an internal short (unlikely to occur during storage unless it goes into extremely deep discharge and the copper ions start forming large dendrites which pierce separators, it's very rare), gets overcharged (beyond peak) or charged too quickly (high current). The first situation is extreme and, fortunately, at that stage the battery doesn't store much energy anyways, so it's unlikely to become volatile unless you charge it, the latter two situations should be prevented by the protection circuit and are only applicable to charging. Not only that, a battery is required to keep all data saved on volatile memory, removing it is counterproductive. In fact, I would suggest not to remove any pouch-style batteries at all as they're normally affixed with adhesives and it's very easy to bend or puncture them - you don't want to do that, it's just not safe. If it's easy to remove and designed to be removable, go nuts as long as you can guarantee that the battery terminals won't be shorted in storage, although smart batteries do have short-circuit protection measures.

Taleweaver · Dec 27, 2017

To be honest, i think the poll intends well but imho misses the root cause of the problem. If the phone really preserves an old battery, then it in itself makes rational sense*. It's the action in combination with the lack of simple battery replacement (shouldn't there be a standard for these things? Hundreds of devices use standard batteries but none go flakey if i use an AA battery i already recharged since the nineties.). The fact that this option was hidden also makes the total outcome unethical.

*But... Does it really? Slowing down the phone doesn't make much sense to preserve the battery in the long run if the tasks remain the same. Meaning: if it runs 10% slower on any given task, isn't that them counteracted by that task taking longer to finish?

froggestspirit said:
Ive never heard of other companies doing this.
^I really haven't^

Not exactly alike, but try getting a 5+ year old hp printer to work.

Subtle Demise · Dec 27, 2017

You are all so entitled! How else is poor old Apple supposed to move their next annual phone with marginally better specs? Did you expect to be able to use the hardware you paid $500-$1000 for the way you wanted to? You should be grateful Apple even granted you the opportunity to rent the phone from them!

Using the same model iPhone for more than a year? Might as well be piracy!

FAST6191 · Dec 27, 2017

Taleweaver said:
It's the action in combination with the lack of simple battery replacement (shouldn't there be a standard for these things?
...
Slowing down the phone doesn't make much sense to preserve the battery in the long run if the tasks remain the same. Meaning: if it runs 10% slower on any given task, isn't that them counteracted by that task taking longer to finish?

Ignoring https://xkcd.com/927/ then batteries right now are moving at a fast enough pace* that you would either over constrain them or make it weak enough to be useless. You might also risk the USB problem -- you can buy in a FTDI chip for basic USB comms and similar such things but to actually make a legit USB device takes quite a bit of effort. Going further I can have a nice cell monitor in my charger and charge regulators in my devices and the cells themselves can be dumb as a rock, though at the same time having said regulation on the cell is also good. I am happy for regulation such that they avoid their best Arthur Brown impression but this sort of thing gets tricky at this point in time.

*a laughable notion if you go by energy density, energy volume and cost, go for the problems it considerably lessens (charging is faster, chance of puffiness is less, lifetime can be better if handled properly, conditions they can handle are greater, max output current is greater and so on) and that is a different matter. Also as mentioned the ecosystem is also better -- I can buy a wonderful charge controller to handle all aspects of charging and recovery for next to nothing today, something that even half the functionality of would have either had to be hand built 10 years ago or cost the earth.

As for the other thing there are two concepts at play

When batteries get old their internal resistance, something people can be a bit hazy on but basically discharged cells often end up so full of reacted chemical that the electrons still have to navigate that the cell itself provides significant resistance in the circuit (electrons full of energy don't magically appear the metal pads after all) and as V=IR and R in series is R1+R2+R3... you can then lack the necessary current to do anything (if R1 is your battery's resistance which is high and V is reasonably fixed** then basic algebra tells you that you aren't going to have much I). Current draw is not always proportional to clock speed either and lower clocks can lower the power requirements considerably for what appears a more modest clock drop. On the other hand many devices already operate within that curve and the drop may have to be something more significant to achieve still notable gains.

**Foxi4 already started on loaded vs unloaded voltage and voltage as things discharge on a previous page. It goes a bit further as the current you try to draw may also change the voltage it can kick out, more draw, lower voltage being the model. For a battery on the way out this is even more significant. As your batteries already operate not so far about the necessary voltage (seen many chips that run on much less than 3V lately?) this becomes even more troubling.

As you and many others said though this is not that it is there but that it was not so much as mentioned that is the problem.

Deleted User · Dec 27, 2017

I feel that throttling down your phone to save performance makes sense, but Apple should have been more transparent about it. At least give users an option to throttle down performance or disable it if they so wish.

This whole fiasco all stems down to Apple's signature lack of transparency with its consumers. People have a right to know what's going on with their devices, and why it's happening. We should be the ones making decisions about our tech, not the company.

RedBlueGreen · Dec 27, 2017

I still stand behind my stance that it's not okay. Maybe if users could choose it, it would be fine but of course they won't be able to because it's was easier for them to let people think they needed to buy a new iPhone (because most people aren't going to think it's being slowed because of a battery).

Let's also remember that the iPhone 7 is about a year old. I really doubt that within a one year time frame people's batteries are going to shit unless Apple is using incredibly low quality batteries. Yeah, batteries deteriorate and the more you charge it the less life it has left, but I've had Android phones for years at a time without seeing decreased battery performance.

ov3rkill · Dec 27, 2017

Deep inside we already know they're doing this. Now that they're transparent about it, it totally sucks without giving an option and crippling the capabilities of older phones. Batteries my ass, it's cheap to replace them. It's a hundred time expensive to buy a new smartphone especially if you jumped on the bandwagon of flagships. They should've been transparent in the first place.

xdarkx · Dec 27, 2017

Apple (or any companies for that matter) should be giving their customers the self throttle option or at least let them know a head of time the new update will throttle the phone.

Foxi4 · Dec 27, 2017

xdarkx said:
Apple (or any companies for that matter) should be giving their customers the self throttle option or at least let them know a head of time the new update will throttle the phone.

I'm totally fine with self-throttling as long as it's transparent, optional and well-explained. We already have that, it's called a "balanced power plan".

Wot u doin readin dis m8?

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