Does apple deliberately slow down all but the latest iphone with every ios update?

[Red Storm]

Since we're talking about deliberately slowing down old devices on purpose...

The iPhone 4S is a FOUR (say that again, F-O-U-R) year old device with 512 (say that one more time, FIVE-HUNDRED-and-TWELVE) MB of RAM, and it STILL runs the latest version of iOS well enough to be usable. And if you go to settings, reduce transparency and reduce motion, it's smooth as butter.

Go, find an Android device with those specs that can do that. Or any other device for that matter.

How much of iOS9 does the 4S actually get though? My iPhone 6+ doesn't even get the most standout/useful feature of iOS9 (side by side apps), so when I keep hearing about iPhones having the latest OS it bugs me because if my device isn't getting the advertised features of the new OS, then in my mind it only "sorta kinda" has the latest OS.

Same would apply to any Android phone today without a fingerprint scanner.

 

[zaza]

A 4 year old phone is like a 12 year old desktop in PC years.

Yes it's natural that a phone should suddenly turn from a smooth responsive experience into a sluggish, lagging, overheating turd right after an update that claims to improve performance.

 

[openwheel]

iPhone 4 was laggy by the time iPhone 5 came out. Be realistic folks.

Fact is iPhone become slower and slower and sloooooowwer. Mostly due to hardware limitations. Yes, there are garbage Android devices that are worse. True.

There are good examples of how it should be done. Nexus 7 FHD for example has very capable hardware from launch, and has gotten faster with each update. Soon to get another. I can't say the same with apple products.

 

[Crono]

Yes it's natural that a phone should suddenly turn from a smooth responsive experience into a sluggish, lagging, overheating turd right after an update that claims to improve performance.

Weren't you the guy extolling iPhone performance a few threads ago? What happened? :hmm:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2449486

 

[zaza]

Weren't you the guy extolling iPhone performance a few threads ago? What happened? :hmm:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2449486

I still think the iphone is the best performing smartphone out there.... as long as you don't update ios.

 

[Mopetar]

At first I thought someone necro'd an old thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2396476

See you all again next year.

 

[JAG87]

How much of iOS9 does the 4S actually get though? My iPhone 6+ doesn't even get the most standout/useful feature of iOS9 (side by side apps), so when I keep hearing about iPhones having the latest OS it bugs me because if my device isn't getting the advertised features of the new OS, then in my mind it only "sorta kinda" has the latest OS.

Same would apply to any Android phone today without a fingerprint scanner.

But that's not really the point. There is only so much you can do with the hardware, and like Crono said, 4 year old in mobile is literally like 12 year old in PC years, considering the year-to-year improvements we are seeing in both. And Apple makes mostly (not all the time) correct decisions in what features to omit for the sake of user experience. Safari content blockers are a good example of this.

The point is that you get the latest security fixes, and the latest app support. If the latest app version runs only on iOS 8/9, it will run on any iPhone all the way back to 4S (with feature dependencies of course). But it will run, that's the point.

 

[Rakehellion]

Since we're talking about deliberately slowing down old devices on purpose...

The iPhone 4S is a FOUR (say that again, F-O-U-R) year old device with 512 (say that one more time, FIVE-HUNDRED-and-TWELVE) MB of RAM, and it STILL runs the latest version of iOS well enough to be usable. And if you go to settings, reduce transparency and reduce motion, it's smooth as butter.

Go, find an Android device with those specs that can do that. Or any other device for that matter.

Better yet, find a 4 year old Android phone that can even install the latest version of the OS.

 

[Rakehellion]

4 year old in mobile is literally like 12 year old in PC years, considering the year-to-year improvements we are seeing in both.

Mobile is reviving Moore's law.

 

[Ns1]

I upgraded to iOS 9 and my iPhone5 exploded in my hand. Now I have to troll the internet forums via Siri. Apple, you can do no wrong, even if your firmware causes major life-changing injuries.


*this post transcriped by Siri. Please pardon the typos.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Mobile is reviving Moore's law.

We are hitting the wall again already. The iPhone 4S was the first of many five year devices.

 

[Trader05]

I like when people complain about battery life with every yearly major iOS update. Batteries do go bad and deteriorate.

 

[zaza]

I upgraded to iOS 9 and my iPhone5 exploded in my hand. Now I have to troll the internet forums via Siri. Apple, you can do no wrong, even if your firmware causes major life-changing injuries.


*this post transcriped by Siri. Please pardon the typos.

Apple was for a while designing iphones to explode in your hand after the ios 9 update so they could force people to use siri. They stopped when they found that too many people without hands lead to a drop in apple watch sales.

 

[openwheel]

Better yet, find a 4 year old Android phone that can even install the latest version of the OS.

LOL I would like to introduce you to XDA, where old phones with capable hardware run on greats roms. You would be amazed at how a clean rom wakes up a device with buttery smooth performance.

 

[gorcorps]

LOL I would like to introduce you to XDA, where old phones with capable hardware run on greats roms. You would be amazed at how a clean rom wakes up a device with buttery smooth performance.

that's not the same and you know it, just stop

there is absolutely no guarantee that a 4 year old phone will run a modern OS... that only depends on the community and they drop old phones just as quickly as the devs do anymore

 

[gorcorps]

There's a lot of people that complain that android updates screw up their phone too. Then they do a factory reset and things get better. I'm sure it can happen with iphones, and people just don't know how to fix it (or don't want to bother with resetting the phone to stock) and just whine about it

 

[Exophase]

I doubt they do this deliberately. There has simply been so much CPU and GPU performance change between some iPhones that it's really hard to make a good update for the new one that doesn't ever run poorly on the old one. Nonetheless, I would say Apple has a responsibility to not ruin customer devices with OS updates and should maintain separate older OS branches that they can backport critical security fixes to without also including the expensive new features.

My girlfriend's iPhone 4 had its performance tanked really badly with an update, and this is pretty bad now that she lost her iPhone 6 and has to use it temporarily. I reckon iPhone 4 was one of the worst upgrade inflection points in the device's history and therefore especially susceptible to poor upgrade results. It had basically the same CPU and GPU as its predecessor while sporting 4x the resolution. Meanwhile, its most immediate successor had a huge increase in CPU and GPU performance.

 

[Phynaz]

Why do you care, you claim to have an S5?

You took seven month break in posting, please do so again.

 

[boomhower]

Of course a newer OS with more features and services optimized for the latest CPU/PU is going to run slower on a older phone. If you don't want it don't upgrade, simple enough. I find it somewhat amusing that people will complain the OS update makes their three year old phone slow. Good luck on getting the latest version of Android on your Galaxy S3. If you did I imagine it wouldn't run as well as it did out of the box either.

 

[bradly1101]

I have an Apple-friendly friend and every year she says that same thing, "My Iphone's getting really slow, but that's cool, I like the new one." Sheesh! I never say anything.

 

[Yuriman]

I doubt Apple slows down devices intentionally. I suspect it's a hardware issue instead. Why the heck did the iPhone6 have 1GB of RAM? Why did the iPhone4S come out 6 months after the Galaxy S2, with only half the RAM?

 

[Tegeril]

Unfortunately, for those in this thread talking about the iPhone 4, that was a bit of an anomaly in Apple hardware performance incremental gains. The 4 had the same GPU hardware simply clocked 33% higher as the 3GS before it, yet had to drive twice the number of pixels. From that point onward, GPU performance has scaled in a much better fashion with each release. So if that's the anecdote for bad performance after an update, it's totally legitimate, the iPhone 4 was underpowered and suffered in later OS revisions.

That said, the iPhone 4S and 5 are now quite old considering the mobile phone industry and that those devices continue to receive support is pretty noteworthy. It's not surprising to me that performance is not perfectly optimized to those earliest devices, but by most accounts I've heard, iOS 9 is better than 8 was on older devices, so there are definitely considerations being made.

As for the original question: zzzzzzz

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_iOS_devices

 

[mrochester]

I don't think there's anything deliberate about newer versions of iOS running more slowly on older devices. This is just the nature of hardware and software upgrades over time.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I don't think there's anything deliberate about newer versions of iOS running more slowly on older devices. This is just the nature of hardware and software upgrades over time.

Exactly. This is just a conspiracy theory by those who are ignorant about technology. It is on the same list as the 1990's "my computer has emotions and it hates me."

There is something to be said for the fact that some iOS device generations are WAY underpowered compared to others, and the iPhone 4 is on that list next to the iPad 3 and the iPhone 6+ non S. The blame isn't on updates, it is on technology ignorant consumers who assume every iPhone is as good as the last one.

 

[stockwiz]

I almost went and switched to apple this week.. it's their greed that kept me from doing it... I want a large screen phone but I'm not paying $1000+ for their newest flagship phone.

I wanted to get a lightly used, like new Iphone 6 Plus off ebay but when I saw there was only 1 gig of RAM in it, I went and ordered a NIB Nexus 6 for $250 less.... had they put 2 gigs in that phone I would have been a convert but they are just too greedy for me.

I was shortsighted and never bought the stock... I thought people had more common sense than to spend the increasing price they are charging but clearly they do not... I should probably buy the stock.. clearly people will pay $1500-2000 for a new iphone so they will keep increasing the price.

Why do I want to switch to Apple? I'm really tired of android's poor battery management... my new Nexus 6 drained the battery when I was sleeping down to 92%.. in airplane mode... this time the "google app" did it... so now I have to figure out why it did it and perhaps shut it down.... when in airplane mode sitting in standby the phone should not be draining the battery for any reason... I guess you get what you pay for when you go to Apple... you can set it and forget it without having to diagnose these silly battery drains...