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I haven't posted here in a while (hey all!), but this really ground my gears!

https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/20/16800058/apple-iphone-slow-fix-battery-life-capacity

Hmm, perhaps providing the best experience for customers would look like what Android does, where, you know, the user is allowed to choose whether they'd like performance or battery life. For Pete's sake!

Now knowing about this, I can safely say that I will never own an iPhone.

I liked iPhone for a long time, but after using a Samsung android the last couple of years I'm a convert and doubt I'll ever go back

Bad news...
There are worms in them there Apples.

Good news...
I only found half of one in mine while eating it.

I have never been an Apple fan, and they have a long history of doing things backwards.


That is the whole point.

If the phone is shutting down because the battery has deteriorated over time, then replace the battery.

Not, slow the processor down to hide the bad battery and give the illusion that I should buy a new phone.

Just another gimmick for them to sell more phones, as if putting out a new phone with each new feature wasn't enough.

Apple is all about their bottom line, and not the consumer's best interests, just some folks take longer to figure it out than others.

But hey, " a sucker is born every minute", and with the population boom that is about 4 or more every minute nowadays, so Apple will continue to have fans.


This is a greedy plot by Apple, and they should face a class action lawsuit over this type of fraud.

Making their operating system slow down certain devices to make the user think they need a new phone when they only need a new battery is fraud IMO.

If the bad battery is the cause of the shutdowns, then the consumer should be told that so they can replace it with a new one, instead of disguising it as something else by hindering the performance of the device's processor.

Some batteries are known to catch fire when being used beyond their normal life cycle, so prolonging the replacement could be dangerous for the consumer.

No reason for this move by Apple unless the alternative motives are considered, which make it dubious.

It's like having your mechanic telling you that you need a new engine when you only have a case of fouled spark plugs. (fraud)

I've been saying for many years that updates purposely cause older models to start slowing down, in a trick to get people to buy a newer model. If my device works fine today, it should work the same way 10 years from now. That's why when I have any kind of equipment that operates to my satisfaction, I won't ever update beyond that unless I see a good reason to. Mostly with phones than anything, but I avoid certain PC updates as well.

I agree! People buy iPhones, often times, because of their high performance. Having that last only so long as the battery lasts is completely misleading and, indeed, fraudulent.

Honestly, I'm running an OEM copy of Windows 7 that's never been updated. Not a single time... But it works great! Too many times an audio driver or something has stopped working when I've allowed it to update.

I think one of two things should have happened in this scenario. One Apple advertised this is how they were resolving the issue with battery life. Or two, make it an option.

The reason I give two answers and one of them not giving the customer choice, is because coming from a customer service background within the electronics industry, I have often found people complain if you give them choice and they also complain if you don't. And I get the feeling Apple and their customers tend to fall into the category of "fewer choices confuses fewer customers". Giving customers choice who don't understand the thing they're using can often give them something to complain about, especially if their 'choice' was the one that doesn't suit them and often they're less understanding of technical limitations and that some types of technology will have their downsides and how there's things they can do to aid that, but instead just want them 'solved' by the manufacturer, so they can just use it with as little configuration or customisation as possible. so I would not blame Apple if they put in a 'fix' for a technical limitation without letting users have the choice to use it or not. As ridiculous as it may seem...some people's level of technophobia can be that ridiculous, dealing with said types of people regularly. Consider the number of people who then complain about loss of data when their phone breaks down, even though there's an option to set up back-up services when they're going through the phone's initial boot. You should never take any device with data storage for granted, no matter how good the quality, a percentage will fail and there's a chance you're that unlucky person...plus if somebody accidentally breaks it or it gets stolen. When it comes to technophobia, I also like to remind people it was 27 minute phonecall I had with a guy where all I needed him to do was swap his HDMI cable from the HDMI 1 port to the HDMI 2 port.


The idea itself isn't completely bad if it is what they suggest is what they intended. If you can put extra battery life by reducing its performance and using less power may be seen as a benefit in some circumstances. On sealed handsets replacing a battery may be an extra expense they don't want to make or want to milk it out for longer for whatever reason. But...the bit I am holding issue with here is the lack of awareness, because if you are noticing some slow down, instead of taking it as a sign your battery is dying, people a more likely to take it as "my phone is dying" and thus the more expensive to replace. And personally choice will have been even nicer. And personally, I'd like the choice too. So bad form there Apple, if they didn't keep this secret, then I might be willing to stick up for them here.

If my battery is dying, don't reduce phone performance to prolong or hide that fact. It's easy enough to replace the batter, I've done it before. This was clearly done to trick people into buying newer phones so they can make more money. I've disliked Apple for awhile now, however, I really hate how android navigates. I considered switching to a Fire phone but since amazon stopped developing it I no longer see a point in buying one.

I agree, I think that is the reason.

My Sony Xperia does it when it gets down to 15% battery and is completely optional and I find it useful as it means I can still get use out of it before it runs out completely, though it the performance drop is quite noticeable. So I could see the logic of doing something like that for when the battery life is coming an end too.

But as they didn't make it a choice and kept it a secret to me say it's dubious. As I say, if people didn't know it was a battery life issue, the chances are they'd replace the phone & not the battery.

Good point. If somehow Apple had the phone pop up a warning that says something along the lines of "Performance reduced to preserve battery, replace battery soon" I'd be more understanding. But still, I think the notion of power vs battery life and degrading battery performance with time is something that anyone could understand and be given the option of controlling. At the very least, they could have the operating system default to this behavior but bury a setting somewhere to allow performance to be favored over battery life.

Definitely a sneaky money grab from Apple!

Don’t ever get a job that involves providing tech support to the general public. People have new ways of surprising you of how technophobic a person can be. There are people out there who would like it to do everything for them and giving them choice and any form of configuration would confuse them or give them something to complain about later because they made the wrong choice. For example most people get the option to set up their phone to run back ups in the background for free, it talks you through some very, very simple steps to do this, it will then run backups automatically, they skip this step, and later suggest they didn’t know to back things up and complain they cannot recover their data after their phone’s broke. It is literally there in the set up when you first turn your phone on, what else can developers/manufacturer’s do except create an account for them on an online back up service and force backups without their permission and add a clause to the T&C’s they don’t read to allow them to do this...which too would be a bit on the dodgy side.

IMO people are generally quite daft though and am of the opinion choice rules over lack of choice, after all people will complain either way, it’s either not idiot proof enough and needs to provide fewer choices or the choices it makes aren’t what they would have chosen.

Haha, I do totally understand. I work in retail, and the utter stupidity and daftness of some people is astonishing -- I assume there are some parallels there.

So I wonder, do you have any experience with providing tech support for devices with, say, and easy mode? An old Android phone I used to have (and maybe my current one) had an "easy mode", which you could select and it would automatically apply a bunch of default settings. What's your perspective on the idea of Apple doing something like that? Perhaps they could provide a default easy mode, along with an optional full control mode that allows the user more options. Do you think some people would end up selecting that and then getting upset that they messed with some setting they don't understand? I wouldn't be surprised, myself.

Heck, I'd be tempted to press that easy mode on a phone. If only to remove all the integrated garbage apple has added. Firstly, remove FB and twitter from the core system, it's not necessary. Secondly, I don't want my text messages to display fireworks and fancy animations whenever it detects a trigger word or phrase like "happy birthday" or "happy new year". Just show me plain boring text!

I wouldn’t be surprised, the person who thinks they’re smart enough but aren’t. That said, it’s a good middle ground I think, gives the choice to just have it “do” and also open up options for those who’ don’t want something dumbed down.

I think a colleague made a good funny once at least, why do stupid people buy smart phones?

The integrated stuff I’d like gone too. And from PC’s too, I did appreciate that my ThinkPad asked me when I set it up for the first time, including asking if I wanted to install Norton, my mind was blown.

That said, I don’t think my iPad Pro came with any of that stuff, it was pretty bare when I set it up, except standard Apple apps.

You and I see eye to eye!

Haha nice, I like that!