Ever had the feeling your smartphone has slowed down since you first bought it? You’re not alone. And, as Apple confirmed this week, you’re not wrong either.
Allegations originally made by Reddit user TeckFire led to an investigation by Geekbench, published by its founder John Poole. It showed a significant decrease in performance once an iPhone passed the year mark, and once the user had downloaded a new version of iOS.
Apple stalled for a few days, before confirming that it does indeed throttle older devices. In a letter published on December 28, it apologized for the “misunderstanding” and said the reason for throttling was due to lithium-ion batteries faltering after a year, impacting performance. Sounds like a reasonable response, but many customers are livid that Apple has slyly changed the performance of older iPhone models without consulting them first. Now, the question on most non-iPhone owner’s minds: does my smartphone maker do the same?iPhone performance and battery age: https://t.co/OVWD2MWQz7
— John Poole (@jfpoole) December 18, 2017
Has your smartphone been slowed?
A few Android manufacturers have come out early to declare they aren’t throttling devices. HTC and Motorola both denied throttling older smartphones to The Verge. Samsung and LG also denied throttling devices to Phone Arena. SEE ALSO: Google finally brings Assistant to Android tablets, plus even more phones Motorola said: “We do not throttle CPU performance based on older batteries.” HTC said throttling older smartphones “is not something we do.” Samsung said: “We do not reduce CPU performance through software updates over the lifecycles of the phone.” LG said: “Never have, never will! We care what our customers think.”