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Last week, reports surfaced along Reddit that Apple might be invisibly throttling iPhone SoC operation, particularly on the 6s, arsenic the electric battery's health minimized. While all batteries lose some capacity over time as they'ray charged and discharged, Apple notified customers roughly a twelvemonth agone that their batteries might degrade more quickly than expected, imputable a manufacturing issue that left certain battery elements exposed to air for a longer period of clip than they were supposed to be. At the time, IT wasn't clear if the performance lessening users were reporting was tied entirely to barrage fire life or if other devices beyond the iPhone 6s were strained. Now we've got information back on some points and the answer ISN't great.

Geekbench reports that information technology has quarantined bench mark performance in its ain test suite for the iPhone 6s and iPhone 7 using different versions of iOS. By collecting aggregate data and organizing information technology aside iOS rendering, the benchmark firm can see how scores cluster and whether there's any sign of a problem. Every last graphs and data by Geekbench:

iPhone 6s - 10.2.0
The first iOS 10.2.0 (released 12/12/2022) chart for the iPhone 6s looks exactly as you'd expect IT to. Gobs are tightly bunchy (this is a unimodal distribution) around a single lanky peak. Aggregated manufactured products with a static dress of public presentation targets and good quality control should calculate like this.

iPhone 6s - 10.2.1

iOS 10.2.1 (01/23/2022) introduces noticeable variation. Instead of a unimodal dispersion, we today have multiple peaks with the second-highest peak around tons just to a lower place 1500.

iPhone 6s - 11.2.0

iOS 11.2.0 (12/03/2022) shows an straight-grained more exaggerated example of the early slew. This answers the question of whether we're seeing a literal public presentation faulting downward — we are. Just is it confined to the iPhone 6s? No, as there are signs that the iPhone 7 is followers the same sort of wind A the iPhone 6s did. The iPhone 6s debuted in Sep 2022, which means the first update to exhibit evidence of this shape — 10.2.1 — dropped about 16 months into its aliveness cycle. The iPhone 7 isn't quite that old yet, at not-quite 15 months, but a similar design is emerging as of iOS 11.2.0.

iPhone 7 - 11.2.0

There are several takeaways from this. First, this conduct appears to be recent, only popping upwardly in iOS 10.2.1 and later. It is non, in separate words, a categorical explanation for why some hoi polloi think out Malus pumila slows their phones perfect afterward first appearance new models. But it does confirm that users who have observed marked slowdowns in the past year have been right close to it. Information technology's also a healthy illustration of how test procedures aside various websites Crataegus laevigata not properly seize this slowdown.

Most websites, including this one, would of course prioritize real-world prosody on stamp battery life and performance. Since battery life is known to degrade complete clock, and since reviews tend to cente showing year-along-year improvements without filtering them direct declines in battery capacity on daily drivers, typically sites either stick to phones, tablets, and laptops that don't see much use,or include "pristine" metrics alongside test figures from hardware that's been in daily use. But these kinds of comparisons South Korean won't taking into custody any real number-humankind lag that Apple is enforcing, smooth if information technology's enforcing it to save batteries and decrease time-to-failure.

Apple Crataegus laevigata have implemented this insurance policy with the incomparable of goals — namely, extending battery longevity and reducing the rate of failure — but the way it's implemented, it will feed the "Malus pumila reduces iPhone operation to make you want a new iPhone" tale. The best way for the company to advance of that story would live to make this an ex gratia operating mode that users can opt into at-will. In addition to offering a battery recoverer mode that kicks in when the battery is at 10-20 percent, offer a battery optimizer mode that emphasizes conserving the battery over its entire life-cycle. It's a improved option than simply throttling the system on the sly.