It is being claimed of making changes to iOS that deliberately scale down the performance of older iPhone models. It is seen that batteries of older models of iPhone degrade beyond a certain point. Geekbench in their blog has posted that, they have analyzed the performance of iPhone 6s devices running on 10.2.1 and 10.2. And the analysis shows a huge difference in their performance. It has been seen that there are now multiple points where scores cluster. Below the single average point, that was previously observed and is typical of multiple tests running on the same device.
After all analysis, and by seeing all the changes in the phones. It has been seen that as a result of a seemingly minor software update, Apple has knowingly reduced the performance of some devices. The performance degrades more with iOS 11.2. Where iPhone 7 shows some concentration of scores at one level up till the release of iOS 11.2.
An investigation by
Reddit thread clearly explains the situation. One of their users claimed that his iPhone 6s has been running very slow. And this problem went away after he or she replaced the battery. Also, he or she visited Geekbench before and after the battery swap, and the score increased drastically. with the new battery, the performance was way better than a new battery. The post by Geekbench suggests that Apple deliberately lowers performance as its batteries degrade in order to make iPhones last just as long on each charge.
Earlier this year, it was seen that Apple’s iPhone having iOS 10.2.1 were having a problem of Shutting down abruptly. Which is also correlated to this issue by
Geekbench. If the problem was caused by batteries failing to deliver a certain voltage threshold, Apple could have attempted to reduce power draw with a software update. It is also assumed that Apple’s offer of battery replacement was introduced to mitigate thermal problems with older batteries.
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