Smartphone manufacturers want users to change their phone frequently so as to make more sales and Apple seems to be no different because the company has been knowingly slowing down older iPhones.
However, the company has an extremely different perspective on it and seems to be justifying their action through various means. Reddit users managed to make this discovery a couple of weeks ago by comparing multiple older iPhone models with one another. As some of them were released years ago, they had very limited battery capacity.
Throughout the years, Apple iPhone users always complain that their phones get slower and feel laggy with every iOS update. It has now been confirmed after lots of practical testing. The manufacturer seems to be throttling the processor speed every time they release an update. Eventually, it will become slower every few months and in the end will become unusable forcing you to buy a new phone.
John Poole, developer of the popular app Geekbench that benchmarks the performance of all flagship and other smartphone models, compared the iPhone 6S with iPhone 7. He discovered that compared to the Apple iOS 10.2.1 and the newly launched 11.2.0, the phone showed some significant changes. It was evident on the older iPhone 6S. The 10.2.1 update was rolled out to fix random shutdown issues found in the phone but it fixed the issue by reducing the speed of the processor.
On the company’s front, the developers claim that they fix the shutdown issues by ensuring the processors don’t demandtoo much battery power. It also helps them provide the best battery life for users by throttling the speed of the processor. Some Reddit users took to the advice made by Apple and realized that as the battery gets older, it continues to affect performance.
When they replaced the batteries in the older iPhone 6S and the iPhone 7 models, they discovered that the slower speed of the processor was fixed and it ran as fast as it used to be on launch day. While this is an option to specifically replace the battery and not have to buy a completely new device, most owners will not think of it and they will consider purchasing the latest iPhone 8 or the iPhone X so as to experience latest technology.
At the end of the day, Apple will make more sales and they also seem to have a reason as to why they make iPhones slower every year encouraging people to upgrade to newer models, at least indirectly.