Apple’s decision to throttle CPU speeds on iPhones with older batteries isn’t a feature its competition is eager to copy.
Both Samsung and LG have come out with statements today saying that none of their phones use similar power management tactics. Their claims echo other Android makers Motorola and HTC who made the same claim yesterday.
“Never have, never will! We care what our customers think.” said Samsung in a statement to The Verge. “We do not reduce CPU performance through software updates over the lifecycles of the phone.”
Apple has come under fire from customers after the company confirmed that it slows CPU performance in order to prevent random reboots from occurring. As an iPhone’s battery ages it isn’t able to provide as much peak demand for a CPU. In an iOS 10 update, Apple added a feature that lowers CPU demand as the battery ages.
In an apology to customers yesterday, Apple said that it will offer $29 iPhone battery replacements throughout 2018. The company also plans to come out with an iOS 11 update in early 2018 that gives users more battery health information.
It’s clear that Apple’s practice isn’t an industry-wide behavior. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a bad thing though. Apple claims by making the CPU adjustments it prolongs the life of iPhones so that customers enjoy their devices more.
Despite its public apology, a number of lawsuits have already been filed against Apple by iPhone customers seeking damages for having their iPhones slowed down.
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
21 responses to “Samsung and LG don’t throttle their phones like Apple does”
You can choose, early bricked phone or (even) exploding phone, or slower phone.
I’ll take slower any day. Not to mention slow is a relative term. Unless you’re using iMovie or other intensive apps on a regular basis, you’re likely to never know even if/when your phone slows down because the common apps most folks use (Facebook, YouTube, Messages, etc…) aren’t processor intensive. Not in such a way that the affected devices would have a noticeable difference…
Exactly people don’t get that Apple is and always will be looking out for users’ best interests!
Bullshit
They never get software updates to have a chance to throttle anything!! And a throttled iphone processor still beats theirs in Geekbench.
Pure savage! So true though.
Maybe you have this problem in the USA but in Canada with Telus and Rogers etc we get our Samsung updates. I have a Samsung Galaxy S6 and I am getting soon the official Android 8.0 Oreo. On Nougat the 7.0 I have had ZERO problems.
Android has improved a heck of a lot and each update I have received is as smooth as silk. My phone is faster than your slowed down iphone with ios 11.2.5 ROFL. Apple said they won’t even fix it.
Yes I have had the iPhone 6s for a while…ran back to my Samsung S6 and put the sim card back in as fast as I could shut off iMessage ROFL. Thanks Samsung, thanks Google.
Once Google adds better power management to android, you will see Samsung, HTC, etc.. all speaking glowingly how their phones no longer blow up and run longer on depleted batteries.
Haha…yeah that will be the day. Android is the most inefficient OS out there IMO.
As soon as Google does a lot of stuff to Android it will make a better phone, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
I Never said it would work, having non working features has never stopped any Android Manufacturer for making outrageous claims.
They “claim”? Wait till someone has to run geek bench before their next update lol!
Look it’s simple I love and hate TECH gadgets probably as much as everybody else. YOUR COMPANY ALREADY GOT MY MONEY ! I just want things on the up and up when it comes to what is going on with MY gadget! It isn’t a NEW thing that just happened yesterday but when customer concerns of poor performance after an update were brought to the attention of Apple tech support the usual reaction was to deny (like a politician caught cheating, lying and stealing) any involvement ! TILL THEY COULD NO LONGER DENY IT !
wow, no wonder this site is called CULTofmac.
Guys, apple screwed you over. there’s no getting around it, they pushed their devices too far or used subpar batteries. Another thing, there’s probably a hundred people working on and researching batteries at their HQ and Lithium batteries aren’t a new invention. you’re telling me that no one at any point looked at the data and raised some questions? No one out of those people heard of degrading batteries, their performance slowly falling? No, just a honest mistake, right?
And again ” oh but you won’t even feel it because you probably just use iMessage and facebook” Oh really? then how come so many people were complaining about reboots and why was there a free repair at first? Clearly enough people did notice. with a slowed down cpu everything you do will take just a little bit longer, not much, just a little bit, but damn if i bought a device for a grand i’d be quite agitated for getting shafted like that. Also would be lovely if someone put out some data how that affected games performance
Also, just to defend androids a little bit, because i don’t think anyone will dare. ONE phone model exploded. ONE. When did the last *insert thirty major manufacturer names here* explode? Samsung got enough of a financial bleed from that to make it a once in a lifetime mistake that they won’t dare to let something like that happen again.
One last thing, i’m not using a samsung, i was using iPhone until i jumped to Xiaomi. My casual use pattern allows me to use pretty much anything
Throttling doesn’t slow down “everything” all the time. It’s designed to happen only at moments of peak processor demand, when a battery can no longer deliver the level of power that would be drawn, and the alternative is shutdown. People who run benchmark software will be the most outraged but also the most detached from real-world use, because benchmarks, by design, test hardware’s maximum possible performance. If your phone isn’t throttled most of the time, but would be at maximum stress, then it’s going to be throttled when you run a benchmark. Mobile devices are not designed to run at top speed all the time, they’re designed to provide the most-important functionality for the longest time possible. Apple advertises the regular and “turbo boost” clock speeds of its Mac products but almost never talks about specific speeds or other specific performance specs of its iOS devices, because they’re not selling a guaranteed, constant level of speed in those products.
I wish there was a real-world-use type of benchmark data out. I would love to see a comparison of battery managed vs. battery not. How long much longer would the “slowed” iphone take to complete the same tasks as an unadjusted iphone? Over an hour for example, how many times was the peak performance hit and adjusted, and how many full seconds, if any, were added?
You can choose, early bricked phone or (even) exploding phone, or slower phone.
I’m pretty invested in Apple products and I’ll take their model of selling me consumer products over Googles model of selling me to advertisers any day. This was still a dumb move that could really impact their bottom line over time.
Apple, its greed is killing it. Taking away ports and selling you over priced adaptors to get the ports back lol. Releasing rubbish BETA software to the world. Come on Linux world, catch up quicker so I can bin Apple
The Linux world? Haha! The Linux world will never catch up. People have been saying this for years…once the linux world catches up, XYZ is gonna happen. Well in the over 15+ years I’ve been in the computer industry, I have yet to see Linux come anywhere close to Windows or macOS.
your icon says who you really are. Obviously you have not even used Ubuntu 17.10, very mac like, better than windows
they don’t have to throttle, Android does it for them. By nature of it’s design. LMAO.