Geekbench Data Shows Old Batteries are Slowing Down iPhones

According to John Poole, the Toronto-based founder of Primate Labs, Apple seems to be limiting the processing speed on phones with older batteries. Citing benchmark data from his company’s industry leading performance analysis software Geekbench, Poole says that some kind of software limitation is restricting certain iPhones with older batteries to a slower processor speed.

Iphone 6s  1120

It was highlighted by some users on Reddit last week that shortly after replacing the battery on an old iPhone, benchmark tests saw a dramatic and noticeable increase in performance. Poole found out that the benchmark distributions of iPhone 6, iPhone 6S, and iPhone 7 units running any version of iOS newer than 10.2.1 seem to back up the theory of Apple slowing down the processor on phones with older batteries, presumably to boost performance.

However, some people may suggest that Apple is purposely slowing down older iPhones to sell new phones. Here’s how Poole addresses the issue:

“If the performance drop is due to the “sudden shutdown” fix, users will experience reduced performance without notification. Users expect either full performance, or reduced performance with a notification that their phone is in low-power mode. This fix creates a third, unexpected state. While this state is created to mask a deficiency in battery power, users may believe that the slow down is due to CPU performance, instead of battery performance, which is triggering an Apple introduced CPU slow-down. This fix will also cause users to think, “my phone is slow so I should replace it” not, “my phone is slow so I should replace its battery”. This will likely feed into the “planned obsolecense” narritive.”

Do you think Apple is deliberately limiting the processing speed on iPhones with older batteries to encourage upgrades?

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