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United States Businesses Apple

Arizona Leads Multi-State Probe Into Older iPhones Slowing, Shutting Down (reuters.com) 54

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
Arizona is leading a multi-U.S. state probe into whether Apple's deliberate slowing of older iPhones violated deceptive trade practice laws, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing documents. From a report: Last week, a separate document released by a tech watchdog group showed the Texas attorney general might sue Apple for such violations in connection with a multi-state probe, without specifying charges. In the ongoing probe since at least October 2018, investigators have asked Apple for data about "unexpected shutdowns" of iPhones and the company's throttling, or slowing down, of the devices through power management software, documents Reuters obtained through a public records request showed. Apple came under fire in 2017 when Primate Labs, the maker of software for measuring a phone's processor speeds, revealed that some iPhones became slower as they aged.
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Arizona Leads Multi-State Probe Into Older iPhones Slowing, Shutting Down More

Arizona Leads Multi-State Probe Into Older iPhones Slowing, Shutting Down

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  • stupid (Score:1, Informative)

    by sectokia ( 3999401 )
    Why do apple get attacked over this? They go out of there way to keep the phone running and even offer a decent battery replacement service. I got 4 years from my 4, then 4 from my 6. So no reason why my XR wonâ(TM)t get 4 as well. What they did stops your phone turning off when you have an old battery are low on charge and attempting to draw high current.... Wish idiots would stop this constant attack against them over this which has been going on for years and years now, seemingly by people who ne

    • Re: stupid (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Bearhouse ( 1034238 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2020 @03:19PM (#60344879)

      Well, I've had every generation of iPhone, (although the most recent ones were imposed on me by my various clients, who did not like Android security) and generally they're great products, if our course overpriced.
      What I don't understand is how my old iPhones and iPads - which I have replaced the batteries in - have become painfully slow and unresponsive, whereas they used to be wonderfully fluid.
      It's not like they're getting the latest updates either, so I think they is some legs in the this case.

      • Yes, the case has legs. While "planned obsolescence" is legal in the USA there are still laws against sabotage of products, even if you so-called "own" them.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          My understanding is that while the customer owns the physical phone they only hold a license to use the OS, so Apple has the right to do whatever they want with it. If you want to keep them from messing with "your" phone you have to take off "their" OS and put your own on. That's always been one of the annoyance for me of purchasing software licenses rather than having the right to purchase the actual software and do what you want with it.

      • My old ipad air still gets updates. Its gotta be 5yr old at least at this point.

      • Well, I've had every generation of iPhone, (although the most recent ones were imposed on me by my various clients, who did not like Android security) and generally they're great products, if our course overpriced.
        What I don't understand is how my old iPhones and iPads - which I have replaced the batteries in - have become painfully slow and unresponsive, whereas they used to be wonderfully fluid.
        It's not like they're getting the latest updates either, so I think they is some legs in the this case.

        1) Code keeps advancing while you OS and hardware remain the same.
        2) You "thought" it was snappy at the time, then you saw snappier , and now you have a new standard.

        People used to think a Pentium II was "snappy" Go run something on it now. Even a program that it came with.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I have a 4 year old phone and it's actually a bit faster than it was when it was new. Slow down is not inevitable and many apps actually get faster, e.g. web browsers have been steadily improving for decades.

      • Late to the party but could it be code optimization focused only on the newest devices and compile/run checks on the older ones? That might explain some of the general "why is this so sluggish now?" feeling. You might design something for current gen hardware potentially differently from (gen - n) hardware whether it's processing time, data transfer rates, screen resolution, etc. I don't know enough about Apple hardware evolution though between versions.

    • Re:stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sims 2 ( 994794 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2020 @03:32PM (#60344925)

      Because they did it without telling anyone.

      That way you would assume your phone was an old slow piece of shit and buy a new one instead of having the battery replaced.

      If the phone had displayed a message anywhere with something like "battery capacity low, system will run at reduced speeds to compensate".

      No one would have had a problem with it.

      • That way you would assume your phone was an old slow piece of shit and buy a new one instead of having the battery replaced.

        Given that the alternative was to have your phone spontaneously shut down because it was incapable of providing the required current, I find your statement wholly unconvincing. Spontaneous shut downs are FAR more likely to drive sales of new devices than an infrequent, barely perceptible slowdown.

        Moreover, most people experienced no difference whatsoever in everyday use. And I'm not just speaking about their perception. I mean there would be effectively zero difference in performance for the simple reason t

    • ... full of willfully ignorant, magical thinking morons.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xforce ( 1172421 )
      Just imagine car manufacturers software limiting your car max speed, just because they want to sell new models. After 5 years from purchase start decrementing top speed by 10 MPH every six months.. until your max speed is 20 MPH.

    • Why do apple get attacked over this?

      Because they are one of the only phone manufacturers that appear to be having this problem. While other manufacturers have had problems with sudden, unexpected shutdowns, those are usually the fault of solder joints breaking down. In Apple's case, the shutdowns appear to be caused when a sudden demand was placed on the processor and the natural degradation of the battery over time prevents the battery from providing the processor with the necessary amount of power.

      They

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        demand was placed on the processor and the natural degradation of the battery over time prevents the battery from providing the processor with the necessary amount of power.

        I seem to recall that the Huawei Nexus 6P phones had a boot looping issue caused by this very issue

        The fix was to get a new phone under warranty because it was happening while the phones were under 1 year old.

        But older phones? Nope. No luck. No fix either. There was a community fix which disabled the performance cores and only used the p

        • But to say it didn't happen to any other phone is false.

          Which is exactly why I never said it didn't happen to any other phone:

          Because they are one of the only phone manufacturers

          almost all of the other phone manufacturers manage

    • The user was not informed their phones were being slowed down to prolong battery life as the battery life shrank. This is the root reason behind all the others. Apple probably followed the design philosophy to keep things simple (as they do) and part of that is hiding complex options from users when a reasonable default will work for most people. In this case, Apple decided most people would rather have a device last the whole day with reduced performance than the alternative. And usually this approach is f

    • "Why do apple get attacked over this? "

      Exactly! Other companies just brick the fuckers and don't say 'sorry'.

    • Because they started the trend of eliminating the swappable battery? Either you catch grief for removing a useful feature. Or you catch grief for the problems caused by removing that feature. You don't get to remove the feature, then secretly modify the software to try to hide the flaws caused by removing that feature.

    • Because they did it without giving the user any input into the process.

  • Arizonan here. I see so many people leaving their phones in direct sun, it surprises me that the phones last as long as they do. I have a 4-1/2 year old iPhone 64GB 6s, for which I changed out the battery about 2 years ago, and it continues to plug along fine. The biggest challenge is that the phone has run out of memory and I've had to delete bloated apps, one of which was a game and slowly consumed 11 GB of memory...

    • Hmm that brings up a interesting thought. On a firetv box i can clear an apps cache. Ive noticed space being consumed by a category marked other. Have you ever tried an old fashion backup and restore whereby it wipes everything and then reapplies your backup? Maybe this would clear available space.

    • "delete bloated apps, one of which was a game and slowly consumed 11 GB of memory..."

      What game was it so people know to avoid it?

  • good and bad (Score:4, Interesting)

    by aRTeeNLCH ( 6256058 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2020 @03:36PM (#60344937)
    It is good, perhaps even excellent, engineering, when the phone is throttled to avoid a hard crash. It is inexcusable if the phone doesn't run at full speed when plugged into a proper power source. Either it's bad engineering by design, to mislead the customer, or it is bad engineering out of carelessness. For a company with the resources of Apple I don't see any excuse.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's bad engineering to have this problem in the first place. Most other phones have batteries that can deliver enough current even when aged. My Pixel XL is 4 years old and runs better than it did on day 1.

      Aside from issues later in life having batteries running near the limit reduces their lifespan too. They picked a marginal battery to make the phone 0.01mm thinner.

  • Since like windows 95 microsoft has made their OS run slower over time, encouraging you to buy a new PC because its -outdated- moores law says technology doubles every 18 months. After 3 years we are usually annoyed enough to upgrade a Laptop and turn out old Laptop into an Ubuntu workstation that suddenly boots in seconds.

    Microsuck has done this so long people dont even question it. Why is Apple held to a different standard? My laptop currently is an hp Envy i7 with 8gig ram, maybe 4yrs old. Yet I can tak

    • I can install Linux on my pc easy not with apple arm

    • That was true all the way up until Windows Vista, which performed *much* worse than Windows XP, continuing a long trend. And it suffered from some negative reviews due to Microsoft being a bit too "optimistic" about the stated minimum hardware specs.

      But with Windows 7, MS focused quite a bit on internal optimizations, especially in multi-core performance, and in fact, it performed significantly BETTER than Vista. Since then, you can expect Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10 to run about equally well on

  • Hasn't happened, at least to the same degree, since.

    My current phone is a quite old Samsung Galaxy S5. I bought an S7 a year or two ago but haven't migrated; getting old. :)

    I had an iPhone 3S. Pretty sure it was right around when the iPhone 5 was coming out, that my phone got really slow.

  • Yup, despite signal strength the device no longer can serve hot spot duty. Features such as Facetime breakup on 4 bars at the other end. Don't ask me how long it takes to simply open an app. I quit waiting and manage it as a two step process now.

    But the radio works when T-mobile isn't saturated. Definitely, doesn't work in weak signal areas when newer Samsung devices have no problem. I suspect carrier's have rank order QoS filtering for newer hardware priority on the network simply for throughput consi

  • Could the "unexplained" slowness in my ancient iPad be down to sites using heavier client-side javascript processing? Chrome bloats, javascript bloats, iPad1 can't cope due to RAM and CPU problems?
  • I had an iPhone 4 that worked perfectly. Battery lasted 36 - 48 hours before needing a charge (unless I got a lot of calls). iPhone 5 came out and I decided to skip on it. I upgraded iOS to the latest one that was made for the iPhone 5 and suddenly my battery lasted 6 to 8 hours and everything was noticeably slower. Decided at that point to never upgrade iOS if a phone newer than mine was out unless I was forced to because of an app I'm using (and Apple ensures your apps made for slightly older versions of

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