Old iPhones become faster if you change the region to France

https://www.gizchina.com/2021/08/23/old-iphones-become-faster-if-you-change-the-region-to-france/

by fomine3 • 5 years ago

305 137 5 years ago

syspec• 5 years ago

Using this trick, the phone will also die suddenly at 30% power if the cpu draws too much power at once and the old battery cannot keep up.

The throttling is there to prevent the instant shutdown due to old batteries having a lower peak output

gattilorenz2• 5 years ago

The throttling is there to prevent the instant shutdown due to old batteries having a lower peak output

Sure, but it would be nice to be informed about it (so I can choose to get my battery replaced instead) and to be able to turn it off without changing the location to France

duskwuff• 5 years ago

it would be nice to be informed about it

You are. When the phone reboots as a result of power problems, you get a notification that says:

"This iPhone has experienced an unexpected shutdown because the battery was unable to deliver the necessary peak power. Performance management has been applied to help prevent this from happening again."

Describing CPU throttling as "performance management" is perhaps a little stilted, but all the basic information is there.

to be able to turn it off without changing the location to France

You can. It's in the Battery settings. It's not super obvious (small text link that says "Disable..." after a description of the throttling), but it's there.

Daedren• 5 years ago

Without the trick, you don't know if you require a new battery or a new phone.

jazzyjackson• 5 years ago

Settings > Battery will show you whether a new battery is recommended

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207453

6gvONxR4sf7o2• 5 years ago

Old iphones become more stable if you change the region from France!

In all seriousness, it frustrates me how much of the focus was on the bad half of the tradeoff rather than the lack of messaging. Now you have people who believe apple deliberately slowed old models for no reason other than because they're old.

sixothree• 5 years ago

Twice in my life an irreversible update has made an iPhone slow to the point of being unusable.

People are skeptical for a reason.

SLWW• 5 years ago

In the defense of those who like a faster phone.

My iPhone would die randomly whenever it would try to draw too much on an old and dying battery.

Thing was, it was slowed down already. If i was in France i would have replaced the battery sooner because i imagine it would happen a lot more frequently, and earlier on.

yyyk2• 5 years ago

No, the focus was exactly where Apple wanted it to be. Talking a lot about 'tradeoffs' when the real issue was Apple cheating its own customers - Apple denied the throttling, so people would buy a new iPhone instead of a cheap battery replacement.

trainsplanes• 5 years ago

I experienced this for the first time, coincidentally, when traveling around France. Sometimes the battery would suddenly drop 20% or more and then shut off.

throwawayswede• 5 years ago

Great to see blind fanboy-ism up and at it again.

TurkishPoptart• 5 years ago

Is this because France launched the lawsuit against alleged planned obsolescence?

sodality2• 5 years ago

"The reason for the smoothness is that Apple has been fined by France for the frequency reduction incident. This means that the company can not temper the performance of old iPhones in the country."

greatgib2• 5 years ago

Some people are pretending that it is a user feature to throttle and that it is to have a more stable phone when the battery becomes older.

But, if my memory is good, when Apple was fined in France, it was shown that the throttling was performed without consideration for the battery state. So was done even with a new battery (or the power cord plugged)

Also, for people having Stockholm syndrome, if they would have to throttle to preserve stability when the battery is old, it is not a "nice" user feature but a consequence of having made the battery not removable and easily swappable!

1123581321• 5 years ago

Your memory is a bit off. You could use a CPU monitoring app to see different speeds on newer and older batteries. You’re right that it didn’t speed up when plugged in.

kemayo5• 5 years ago

I think iPhones don't run directly off external power even when plugged in -- they charge the battery, and run from that. For evidence, note that if your battery is completely dead, you need to provide power for a few minutes to get it some baseline amount of charge before you can turn the phone on.

It feels plausible that a battery with bad peak voltage could still be unreliable even while being actively charged, so it'd make sense if the throttling remained.

8bitsrule• 5 years ago

Battery not removeable was a stopper since year one. (Why would anyone not want to wait for a charge?)

A "nice" user feature would be a preference to self-throttle a step or two. Else it's like they think they own the phones you bought years ago... or don't trust their own developers to do it right.

emodendroket8• 5 years ago

Besides the more obvious reasons, making the battery swappable would compromise other things like thickness, weight, waterproofing, and so on.

ummonk4• 5 years ago

But, if my memory is good, when Apple was fined in France, it was shown that the throttling was performed without consideration for the battery state. So was done even with a new battery (or the power cord plugged)

That doesn’t make any sense. It’s not throttling if that’s already what it’s like out of the box. Or is every manufacturer that doesn’t overclock the chips in its devices guilty of throttling?

vladvasiliu2• 5 years ago

Meh, I don't know. I have one of those older iPhones (a 7) whose battery health went somewhat down (around 80% or below) and the phone felt kinda sluggish. I then disabled the "peak protection" or whatever it was called, and then it started randomly shutting down, while not being particularly smoother. It should be noted I don't use intensive apps, such as games.

After I had the battery changed, everything went back to normal. Smooth, no random shutdowns, etc. And the battery change cost me a whopping 60 euros out the door at an Apple authorized service center (I even booked the repair through the Apple website).

Now don't get me wrong, if I had the choice between a phone with or without a removable battery, I'd go for the former every time, even if it meant it would be bigger. Before the iPhone, I had a Galaxy S5 and I never had an issue with its thickness.

But, in more practical terms, all the phones I had before the iPhone (Galaxy S 1, 3, 5) had removable batteries. The 1 I actually bought used, and it came with 2 spare batteries. The only reason those batteries saw any action was because I tried to use them from time to time to not let them die.

Now cost-wise, by the end of the GS5's life, the battery started bulging and didn't last as long, so I was looking to buy a new one. A replacement Samsung battery costed 60 to 70 euros, the same price as the iPhone replacement battery, and indeed, most other phone batteries. So I wouldn't say Apple is gouging customers on this particular issue, at least not any more than other brands.

baby• 5 years ago

The reason the battery replacement is possible and cheap is because Apple was sued to oblivion due to these throttling issues.

f6v2• 5 years ago

I think it has less to do with battery and more with each OS version packing more features and being more resource-hungry.

tsjq• 5 years ago

and more with each OS version packing more features and being more resource-hungry.

planned + designed obsolescence

mnd9992• 5 years ago

Always buy the model with the most RAM and it’ll last a long time. iPhone 6s (from 2015!) is still a perfectly functional phone.

greatgib2• 5 years ago

There is also another point that I forgot, and that is a main point of the french fine I think.

In itself, if explicitly warned and controlled by the user, throttling to work better with an old battery would not be so bad.

But the thing is that, if your phone (or laptop) does not last long anymore on battery before shutting down, but otherwise works normally, you know that it is just the battery that is dead and that needs to be replaced.

But, if the phone becomes slower/sluggish, most non tech users will think "my phone is slow because it is old, it's normal aging, so I need to change it with a new one".

And worse, some will even think that their memory was wrong and that it is just that the new models are so fast and reactive that they realize how slow was their previous phone without them realizing.

This makes me think about the case of Windows. It is well known that a computer with Windows will go slower and slower time after time as the system get messy. Based on that, I can't count the number of persons that I have met that were thinking of changing their computer for a new one because the old one "became slow because of its age". When the real solution was simply to reinstall Windows to have a fresh system!

zinekeller• 5 years ago

This makes me think about the case of Windows.

A certain graphics card manufacturer has claimed that graphics cards (in continual use) reduces their performance by around 10% each year. Of course, its a near-myth, only saved by the fact that certain components (like fans and the thermal interface on certain cards) loses their performance due to factors beyond their control.

The solution is obviously to clean the damn thing.

deergomoo• 5 years ago

But, if my memory is good, when Apple was fined in France, it was shown that the throttling was performed without consideration for the battery state. So was done even with a new battery (or the power cord plugged)

I don't think you're correct here. The way this behaviour was initially discovered was that a reddit user ran a benchmarking app before and after a battery replacement, showing a substantial increase to performance afterwards.

It would not surprise me if this only applied to first party batteries, though I have no information one way or the other.

Abishek_Muthian• 5 years ago

I have couple of iDevices lying around in need of battery replacement, I decided to remove the bulged battery from iPad Air 2(for safety) and in the process destroyed the display, The ribbon cable tore like tissue paper) and cut my finger(I've been repairing my electronics all my life, this was the first time with Apple devices).

My next plan was to order replacement display, batteries for that iPad and iPhone from iFixit but after a hard-thought I decided to not put any more money into this ecosystem and rather buy a PineTab (which cost cheaper than the replacement parts for the iDevices).

thebruce87m4• 5 years ago

Your memory isn’t good, but there is a constant stream of misinformation regarding this so I don’t blame you.

The issue was referred to as batterygate for a reason - it was entirely to do with battery condition.

diebeforei485• 5 years ago

What's the difference between changing the region to France and simply disabling the performance management function?

peteretep• 5 years ago

Whether or not someone will click on the title of an article

alacritas0• 5 years ago

I don't know, but I've had performance management disabled for about a year on my 1st gen SE. After switching to France as my region, my phone died at 15% for the first time in a long while so there seems to be some difference.

wb14123• 5 years ago

Anyone understand Chinese read the source article at the end? The source article clearly says this is not the case. Whether it’s true or not, I don’t like a report that changes the information from its source.

ytch• 5 years ago

Yes, the Chinese news says someone in Weibo posts about this, then the reporter tests:

1. at first the score is lower after switch region, they guess the reason is thermal throttling because they tested multiple times, after cooling down, the score is only improved a little.

2. they thought the battery capacity is 100%, so there is no throttling. Therefore doing the test on a 80% phone, but there is also no significant difference.

3. Finally they come out an assumption, iPhone will do a soft restart and kill a background process after changing region, so the performance is improved.

Therefore the title from gizchina is a little misleading.

lsiebert• 5 years ago

Old iphones become faster if you reboot them, like most devices. This is true whether or not you change the region. There's no qualitative difference when you test repeatedly.

https://knowtechie.com/want-to-speed-up-your-old-iphone-try-...

ummonk4• 5 years ago

Oh good point

MrBoomixer• 5 years ago

If you’ve got an older iPhone that’s seeming to slow down, it’s more likely that your device is just aging.

I was under the impression that technology doesn't "just age". The software running and apps being updated for new platforms might make it feel "slower" but in general using the phone itself shouldn't ever feel like it's aging.

kemayo5• 5 years ago

The interesting thing about this story is that "batterygate"[1] represents a period from January 2017 (when Apple added the throttling behavior in iOS 10.2.1, in response to bad press about old batteries causing shutdowns) to March 2018 (when Apple added the messaging explaining the throttling in iOS 11.3, and letting you opt-out of it). I'd speculate that the HN crowd skews towards being the type who'd buy new phones pseudo-regularly, so we're probably less likely than the average person to have actually experienced the throttling on an old battery.

Despite the status quo having been the "fixed" state for 3.5 years now, that one year period has left an indelible mark on some people's perceptions of Apple, such that stories claiming performance-shenanigans will always have an audience.

And, to be fair, the messaging about an old battery is probably confusing[2]. You get a popup explaining it after your phone restarts from poor battery performance for the first time, and then it's buried in the battery-health segment of preferences. Disabling the performance-throttling is even done just as a text-link, rather than a toggle or button. There's also no call-to-action suggesting that you might be able to get the battery replaced. (That's reserved for when the overall battery capacity drops.)

[1] https://www.ifixit.com/News/11208/batterygate-timeline

[2] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208387

IIAOPSW2• 5 years ago

I suspect HN tends towards less likely to be enticed by shinny things and marketing hype cycles. My phone is pushing 4 years at this point. I always buy with the expectation that I will get 3-5 years out of any phone/laptop.

Really want to see data on this one.

haimez• 5 years ago

It would certainly be interesting to see the data, but I’m not sure if I’d expect the results to point towards any particular monolithic user trends. I think a lot of users (perhaps the majority?) are using flagship devices released within the last year.

kemayo5• 5 years ago

My logic is mostly that we're on a site which is targeted at people who're in a fairly high-earning profession, with the added bonus of it being a fairly change-friendly profession.

If you're making Silicon Valley engineer money, whether you buy a new flagship phone every year is pretty much a matter of whether you want to, without money being a strong factor.

dehrmann2• 5 years ago

My iPhone 6s had the issue where a random CPU burst would crash it. Experiencing that, knowing how batteries age, and knowing how CPU throttling works, I actually believe Apple's explanation. I don't have a great explanation for why it's not a problem for my laptop other than bigger battery, though.

kaba03• 5 years ago

A blind guess is that what actually matters is the number of charge/discharge cycles. Greater batteries will go through less, but also you probably use your laptop on a charger from time-to-time which won’t count towards the cycle-count.

fleventynine• 5 years ago

Fun the article:

"The GeekBench running score before changing the location to France is 286,632. However, after changing the location to France, the running score is 298,321."

I have a hard time caring about a 4% difference in performance.

jeffbee• 5 years ago

Conditions aren't even controlled enough to measure the difference. Phone would have to be at exact same temperature, exact same time since boot, same radio conditions, laying on the same surface at the same temperature and with the same ambient air flow and temperature.

Y_Y2• 5 years ago

If I was doing a test like this I'd run the benchmark a large number of times (at least ten) in various (not necessarily strictly controlled) typical usage scenarios. Ideally there would be a variety of handsets of the same model too (assuming variance between those is small). Then I'd filter for outliers and take a mean. I like this kind of testing, because you account for confounds that may only appear in a single highly-controlled lab setup, and won't reflect the results that people are expected to see when they use their phone in a typical way.

f32jhnjk33jj2• 5 years ago

Why is Apple so far behind the competitors regarding hardware? They still have huge notch on the top, but competitors have invisible cameras behind display (Xiaomi Mi Mix 4). No fingerprint behind the screen like competitors. No foldable body frame. The only thing Apple do better than competitors is CPUs / SoCs.

f32jhnjk33jj2• 5 years ago

and don't forget missing USB-C connector! I can charge all my 15 devices in a travel via a single cable, but Apple users have to carry another charger (or adapter) just for smartphone...

Y_Y2• 5 years ago

But if you have 15 devices and a single cable you are going to spend all day charging, right? and the adapter for iphone to usb-c is pretty small.

Not that I don't love usb-c ubiquity (thanks EU). It rwally grinds my.gears that my new kindle was syill micro-usb. Anyway, for those cases I have a couple of cheap adapters that do lightning/usb-c/micro/mini that I got free as marketing promos. Pretty handy to keep in your bag, especially for taking pity on people with dead iphones.

thebruce87m4• 5 years ago

I have no doubt in my mind that the people calling out Apple to move to usb-c will be first in line to shout “planned obsolescence” if they did make the swap.

dlivingston• 5 years ago

Simple: branding. If you see the notch, you know it’s an iPhone. If every phone was a slab of glass, there’s no product differentiation.

On hardware: Apple’s flagship phones are parity or better on most aspects of hardware. The SOC, camera module, material construction, screen color accuracy, and speaker quality meet or exceed just about everyone. I didn’t realize this was still an open question for people.

dehrmann2• 5 years ago

Not sure how your comment relates to the article but...

Apple's done this for a long time. They wait for something to be ready before launching it. They're rumored to be working on removing the notch, and foldable phones don't have enough consumer interest, yet.

dzhiurgis2• 5 years ago

No 120fps screen, no ultrahigh resolution cameras, no periscope lens, no microscope lens, yet I'd never buy Android.

malshe2• 5 years ago

While you are listing features from different phones and complaining that iPhone doesn’t have them, add to your list 7-day battery life from Kindle, and VR capability of Oculus, and 400+ mileage range of a Tesla

dzhiurgis2• 5 years ago

It's amazing how much fluff was made about it this when battery replacement in random shop costs about $20-50.

kemayo5• 5 years ago

The main reason for the hubbub, back in the day, was that Apple completely obscured (a) that they were throttling performance, and (b) that replacing the battery was the fix.

I completely believe that they made the decision to throttle performance thinking it was the best action for their customers, and I agree with them. Throttling is better than random shutdowns. However, it's very easy to imagine that they dragged their feet so long on explaining what was going on because throttled phones were driving upgrade sales, while explaining throttling only drove battery sales.

I've never seen anyone claiming to have insider knowledge of the decisions around this inside Apple, unfortunately.

jdlyga• 5 years ago

It only seems that way because French time is in decimal.

ummonk4• 5 years ago

This article seems to suggest that the throttling happens outside France even when the user sets the phone not to throttle? That is pretty big news and hard to see a good faith reason this would happen.

Edit: maybe there is an innocuous explanation after all https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28296812

aetherspawn• 5 years ago

OK, the performance varies by 2%.

What is the tolerance of the performance test, even? Those things vary like crazy. I could change the language to Chinese and run the test over and over until I see a 10% improvement and report on that.

This level of "performance difference" will not even be noticeable, if it isn't immaterial to begin with.

sebyx07• 5 years ago

Just tried on a iphone 7, it really does the trick

gabrielblack• 5 years ago

I could be ok with all those Apple "features" if only they give me the power to disable them, if I want. This could make the difference between keep me as customer or not.

Old iPhones become faster if you change the region to France

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