Apple to Let Users Control CPU Throttling on iPhones
- Mehedi Hassan
- Jan 18, 2018
-
24
Apple was recently found to be intentionally slowing down older iPhone devices. The company later apologized for poor communication with its users over the intentional slowdowns, claiming that it made changes to iOS to prevent unexpected shutdowns on phones with ageing batteries.
At the time, Apple said the company will be releasing a new iOS update early this year to provide users with more data over their iPhone’s battery health. It also cut down the price of iPhone battery replacements by $50 to let users avoid the slowdowns on their old iPhone by getting a new battery.
Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox
Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!
"*" indicates required fields
In a new interview with ABC News announcing the hardware maker’s massive $350 billion contribution to the US economy, Apple CEO Tim Cook said a new iOS update will make the intentional slowdowns optional. The toggle will let users prevent iOS from automatically throttling their CPU because of poor battery health, but Cook isn’t recommending users to actually use the feature as it could result in unexpected shutdowns.
“We will tell somebody we are slightly reducing, or we are reducing your performance by some amount in order to not have an unexpected restart. If you don’t want it? You can turn it off. Now, we don’t recommend it, because we think people’s iPhones are really important to them, and you never can tell when something is so urgent, and so our actions were all in service of the user. I can’t stress that enough. Maybe we should have been clear at a point in time, but our actions were always the purest,” Cook said in the interview.
Cook declined allegations against the company for intentionally slowing down iPhones in order to drive customer upgrades, for those wondering.
Apple expects to ship a beta of the new iOS update sometime in February, and a public rollout is expected to happen shortly after, possibly sometime in March. Of course, we can’t exactly say if the new toggle will actually make your old iPhone faster yet, so that remains a mystery.
Conversation 24 comments
-
Stooks
<blockquote><a href="#238821"><em>In reply to RonH:</em></a></blockquote><p>The power management change came out with version 10.2.1 on January 23, 2017…..about a year ago. As in 5 days from now it will be exactly 1 year.</p><p><br></p><p>I would link the actual Apple web page but that link won't work here or my post won't post with a link in it. This is the release text below. It was a minor release hence the three line list. At the end to the 3rd line there is another link to the security fixes in this release.</p><p><br></p><p>Anyhow line 2 states the power management change.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><strong>iOS 10.2.1</strong></p><p>iOS 10.2.1 includes bug fixes and improves the security of your iPhone or iPad.</p><p>It also improves power management during peak workloads to avoid unexpected shutdowns on iPhone.</p><p>For information on the security content of Apple software updates, please visit this website</p>
-
Stooks
<blockquote><a href="#238849"><em>In reply to HellcatM:</em></a></blockquote><p>Tin foil hat much?</p><p><br></p><p>So we believe Apple or HellcatM of the Internet.</p><p><br></p><p>If you turn off the feature the phone will go back to its normal clocks but possibly crash when the battery uses something that is CPU or GPU demanding, IF the battery is old and can't provide the power it needs during those spikes.</p><p><br></p>
-
dontbe evil
<p><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent;">Wow apple is so nice…ah of course after few class actions</span></p>
-
wocowboy
Premium Member<p>Evidently, from the gigantic hue and cry from the tech press over this subject, people should want their phones to just die or stop working in their tracks when their batteries get old and weak instead of letting the OS have the capability of mitigating the effects of that aging and weaker battery on their daily use until they either choose to have the battery replaced or buy a new phone with a fresh battery. So be it. For my purposes, I will gladly let iOS manage the situation for me, as long as it notifies me when it begins to make the changes it is designed to do, so I will know that it is time to either replace my battery or look at getting a new device. If the OS is smart enough to keep itself going as my battery ages instead of just shutting itself down every time it wants to do something more processor-intensive, I believe that is a good thing, but the OS should let me know that this is happening so I can make my own decision on what to do about it. I would not allow my car to just die and never run again when the gas tank gets below 1/4 full, I would expect the car to run until the tank was empty, even if it would throttle itself to 50 mph below 1/4 tank if that meant I could make it the 50 miles to the next gas station because of higher mileage at 50 mph rather than 80.</p>