Article: Apple slows old iPhone models on release of new models?

[cbrunny]

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/0...lows-down-old-iphones-when-new-ones-come-out/

Not conclusive by any means, but an interesting read.

 

[KentState]

The article just pointed out a correlation in Google searches. My theory is that Apple owners love a reason to upgrade and use slowness as an excuse

 

[Ravynmagi]

Well I think the article is stupid... but yeah, I've always jokingly felt the same way about Windows myself.

 

[luv2liv]

to me, its pretty obvious apple intentionally cripples their older model so you want the newer model.
remember when iphone 4s came out? it was ridiculously fast. everyone drooled. what does iOS7 have that made that model crawling now? once you update the OS, you cant even downgrade/revert back! ouch.

 

[nickbits]

new version of ios generally run like shit on anything but the last 1-2 models.

 

[nickbits]

to me, its pretty obvious apple intentionally cripples their older model so you want the newer model.
remember when iphone 4s came out? it was ridiculously fast. everyone drooled. what does iOS7 have that made that model crawling now? once you update the OS, you cant even downgrade/revert back! ouch.

a lot more background stuff is happening in ios7

 

[Ravynmagi]

to me, its pretty obvious apple intentionally cripples their older model so you want the newer model.
remember when iphone 4s came out? it was ridiculously fast. everyone drooled. what does iOS7 have that made that model crawling now? once you update the OS, you cant even downgrade/revert back! ouch.

Well the iPhone 4S is almost 3 years old with only 512MB of RAM. I don't think it's Apple intentionally trying to gimp it's older phones as it is Apple adding more features to iOS (a lot of it seeming to catch up with Android).

Though we have a lot of 4S phones at work and to me iOS 7 still seems to perform just fine on it considering how old the hardware is. However the iPhone 4 is definitely not able to handle iOS 7 from what I've experienced.

On the Android side you won't even find a 3 year old phone running the latest version of Android officially. Though I suspect the 1GB Galaxy Nexus would probably do about as well with Android 4.4 as the iPhone 4S does with iOS 7.

 

[bearxor]

I don't know but, man, does my iPhone 5S seem awfully slow recently... I sure hope Apple does something to alleviate that soon...

 

[Unoid]

My original Iphone 8gb 2g was purposely obsoleted by both AT&T and Apple when the 3g came out allowing MMS of pictures.

I jail-broke a to add MMS and was able to MMS but AT&T would block them on purpose (from apples request)

I went android after that and have been much happier.

 

[Ravynmagi]

I don't know but, man, does my iPhone 5S seem awfully slow recently... I sure hope Apple does something to alleviate that soon...

Something is wrong with that phone. 5S should definitely not feel slow.

 

[mmntech]

Apple's been doing this for years. They release a new version of iOS that's "compatible" with the older models but chugs like cold molasses. The iPhone 3G has this problem when iOS 4 came out. I remember my phone being almost unusable. Fortunately, this was before Apple started signing the IPAs, so you could still downgrade. Was a huge problem though, and IIRC, Apple did get sued over it. The 3GS and iPhone 4/iPad 1 had similar issues with their final iOS versions. The original iPad runs okay on iOS 5 but the keyboard is laggy.

Why the iPhone 4S is still hanging on is due to how commonplace the Apple A5 is. Apple just discontinued the iPad 2 back in March. However, they are still selling the non-retina iPad Mini, which is essentially a supersized 4S. So A5 will be supported at least through iOS 8. Probably until iOS 9.

 

[Bateluer]

to me, its pretty obvious apple intentionally cripples their older model so you want the newer model.
remember when iphone 4s came out? it was ridiculously fast. everyone drooled. what does iOS7 have that made that model crawling now? once you update the OS, you cant even downgrade/revert back! ouch.

Pretty sure Apple isn't doing that any more than Microsoft, Google, Red Hat, or Canonical are. Their newer OS versions are just designed with newer hardware in mine. Newer hardware is more capable, faster, more power efficient, and every developer wants to be able to take advantage of that. The 4S is positively ancient, in mobile technology now, dual core 1Ghz A9 and 512MBs of RAM, no 4G.

 

[luv2liv]

Pretty sure Apple isn't doing that any more than Microsoft, Google, Red Hat, or Canonical are. Their newer OS versions are just designed with newer hardware in mine. Newer hardware is more capable, faster, more power efficient, and every developer wants to be able to take advantage of that. The 4S is positively ancient, in mobile technology now, dual core 1Ghz A9 and 512MBs of RAM, no 4G.

on android, i can load any version i want from 4.0 to 4.4 forward, or going backward from 4.4. i decide which works best on my phone. with apple there is no such thing as going backward once you update.

 

[openwheel]

iPhone gets outdated so fast its depressing. They are fully optimized for iOS but don't have the best hardware to begin with. So hardware is at the mercy of software. Whenever a new iPhone comes out with new iOS, previous two I phones suddenly slow and lag.

Been through this too many times myself. One of many reason I prefer Android. My spare phone RAZR M gets faster as it ages. Currently running stock KitKat.

 

[eGeekUniverse]

Interesting article and it just says what many have already said. Apple shows no signs of changing the way they operate. You either have to live with the ay they do things or switch to android. Both have their issues so each person has to decide which route to go. Stay with Apple or switch?

 

[soccerballtux]

honestly I think the software's just getting more complex. We're only now reaching the point where the phones are basically full OSes...there were a lot of features missing that made them optimized installations...for the lower power, mobile phones.

I've noticed the performance slowdown on my PC (well specifically as it relates to RAM usage) in Chrome. It might be some of my extensions that I have installed, so I uninstalled them, but....every time I close a tab it pegs like 3 of my processors to 100% for like a second...wtf is that happening for? angry garbage collector???

 

[Mopetar]

You would think if they really wanted to answer this question they would run an actual benchmark to measure performance rather than looking at Google searches, which isn't terrible useful.

Ars actually had an article that had some simple benchmarks and found that older hardware did end up running slower. The performance went to hell for several common tasks and while the 7.1 release did help to fix some of those issues, there were still a few areas where a noticeable performance hit remained.

The idea that Apple or any other company intentionally hobbles older devices to drive sales is rather idiotic though. All of the major phone operating systems have been adding features and will likely continue to do so over the next few years. Of course that's going to be more taxing for older hardware. At some point they might focus on improving performance over adding features (similar to Google's approach with the latest version of Android and the move to a new VM) which might lead to performance improvements, but those are not the norm and it's likely that with the shift to 64-bit SoCs that a lot of older devices are going to get left by the wayside as there's more of a focus on optimizing performance and tuning the code for the new architecture.

 

[biostud]

They should just allow for older iOS version on old models.

 

[r4sh1d]

Well the iPhone 4S is almost 3 years old with only 512MB of RAM. I don't think it's Apple intentionally trying to gimp it's older phones as it is Apple adding more features to iOS (a lot of it seeming to catch up with Android).

Apple release iDevices with low RAM all the time when it doesn't make any sense. Like their flagship ipad air & mini Retina with only 1GB of RAM. Almost everything else about the device is top notch, except the low RAM. I think this's how they intentionally cripple a device when launching, so that after 2 years when they release a new iOS that require more RAM, tough luck you need a new device to make the OS snappy.

I was set to buy a 128 GB mini retina, $700+ device with a lousy 1GB of RAM.. WTF!! it might run OK now, but a few updates will kill the performance cause of (sorry you have low RAM).

 

[techierv]

I don't think they "slow down" old models. It's well know that every new OS(iOS) is a lot heavier than the old one. I own iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 for over an year now and 4S is truly having some difficulties with iOS 7. Don't want to imagine what will happen if i upgrade to the new one( when it comes out this fall).

 

[Red Storm]

I don't believe they do it intentionally, however Apple and just about all other OEMs most definitely factor in planned obsolescence when designing their phones and/or software.

 

[Mopetar]

Apple release iDevices with low RAM all the time when it doesn't make any sense.

From what I've read, the reason they do it is to conserve power. I takes less battery to run and typically iOS isn't as RAM hungry as Android due to the multitasking and background task limitations on iOS. The newer versions of the OS likely due use more RAM, but it's probably nowhere near enough to make or break performance solely on this metric.

I think the speed hiccups have more to do with the limited CPU power than anything. Older iPhone models used stock ARM cores. The iPhone 4 has a single core running at 800 MHz. The newest iPhone has a dual-core chip running at 1.3 GHz that is faster clock-for-clock, has twice as much cache, and a rather large L3 cache to boot. I can't imagine the older GPU doing to well with all of the flashy animation crap they tried to add either.

I don't think any OS is going to run all that well on an older platform when the new target platform has at least four times as much computational power. Adding anything designed to tap into that is only going to degrade performance on the older hardware.

All of that aside, I think we're reaching a point where most of the killer features have been added and the hardware is becoming exceptionally optimized to squeeze out every last bit of performance. We might eventually get to a point where mobile devices replace desktops and there's a need for more power, but as far as typical mobile use cases go, there isn't going to be a need for that much more hardware. Hopefully this will mean that older hardware stays viable longer, but perhaps there's someone out there who's thought of some have-to-have feature that's going to require even more.

Maybe the modular idea (Phonebloks, Ara, etc.) will catch on and everyone will just upgrade their phone component at a time.

 

[vi edit]

From what I've read, the reason they do it is to conserve power. I takes less battery to run and typically iOS isn't as RAM hungry as Android due to the multitasking and background task limitations on iOS. The newer versions of the OS likely due use more RAM, but it's probably nowhere near enough to make or break performance solely on this metric.

I think the speed hiccups have more to do with the limited CPU power than anything. Older iPhone models used stock ARM cores. The iPhone 4 has a single core running at 800 MHz. The newest iPhone has a dual-core chip running at 1.3 GHz that is faster clock-for-clock, has twice as much cache, and a rather large L3 cache to boot. I can't imagine the older GPU doing to well with all of the flashy animation crap they tried to add either.

Limited RAM is what causes app crashes. The original iPad was crippled with the later versions of Safari included in iOS 5 and above. So many websites would blow up after those updates. That's not a CPU issue. Apps get more bloated with updates to iOS.

The main difference between Apple and most Android devices is that you can get day 1 iOS releases through iTunes and install it yourself. Typically major iOS releases are in sync with new phone releases. New phone comes out, 30 million people also update to the latest iOS.

Not true at all with Android. So many devices stick to their original installed version or are dependent upon inconsistent carrier updates. You don't get this giant push in software updates like you do with the annual iPhone release.

 

[soccerballtux]

We might eventually get to a point where mobile devices replace desktops and there's a need for more power,

I'm with you except that we're going to have to figure out heat dissipation first.
I can count the number of seconds I can run POVRay3.7 benchmark on one hand before it thermally throttles from hitting 85C. Quad core snap800 in Nexus5

 

[Red Storm]

The main difference between Apple and most Android devices is that you can get day 1 iOS releases through iTunes and install it yourself. Typically major iOS releases are in sync with new phone releases. New phone comes out, 30 million people also update to the latest iOS.

Not true at all with Android. So many devices stick to their original installed version or are dependent upon inconsistent carrier updates. You don't get this giant push in software updates like you do with the annual iPhone release.

But on the flip side, you don't have to wait all year for new features, with Android you get those new features and updates throughout the year as soon as they're ready, directly to the apps themselves. Google's decoupling of many apps and the Play Services was a very good move in this regard. This is particularly important for older or low end phones, because you don't have to take in all the bloat of a new major OS update just to have the new features in (for example) the maps application.

There are pros and cons to both methods. I personally prefer Android's approach, but I can understand those who like Apple's way.