this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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Didn't Apple push updates to older devices that made them slower so that you'd buy their newest?
This myth keeps propagating online and it seems people never try to even Google what the issue was.
I think the main issue (amongst the tech community) was that they did this with out making it known to users (patch notes don't count - especially with autoupdates, who reads them?) the device just started getting slower.
If there was an option that was presented to users once the device got below 80% battery health to slow down the system to make daily batter life longer, then that would be an actually welcome feature. The problem was Apple just went a did it, and to a normal non-technical user, that means their phone is dying and they need to upgrade.
This isn’t why they did it. Degraded Li-ion batteries cannot sustain their rated voltage at high currents due to increased internal resistance. Sufficiently undervolted CPUs/memory cells produce errors (specifically bit flips), which can rather quickly lead to memory corruption and a crash.
Reducing the CPU frequency (thereby reducing the peak current draw) is practically necessary in the face of a degraded battery. Various laptops were infamous for not doing this, because it resulted in a ~20-30 minute battery life, as the voltage drop became too great once the battery charge drops below 80-90%. Within the context of a smartphone, neglecting to use the remaining 80-90% would make it basically useless.
What Apple (and the rest of the smartphone industry, at this point) really needs to do is make their batteries replaceable.