New iPhone Models Are Less Affected by Controversial Feature
posted Saturday Feb 10, 2018 by Scott Ertz
Ever since Apple admitted to throttling their users' older iPhones, the company has been in hot water. A handful of lawsuits have been filed, with class action status being considered. All of this was expected, though, considering Apple had hidden the practice from the public. The one thing that was uncertain, however, was how future devices would be affected by the practice, if at all.
Apple revealed the answer to that question by way of the support document for the new Battery Health feature, introduced in iOS 11.3 beta this week. The feature in the operating system is to officially notify users of Apple limiting the capabilities of their devices, and to give users the ability to disable Apple's control over their phones. While there is a lot of information contained within the document, the most interesting paragraph deals with the current generation iPhones.
iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X models use a more advanced hardware and software design that provides a more accurate estimation of both power needs and the battery's power capability to maximize overall system performance. This allows a different performance management system that more precisely allows iOS to anticipate and avoid an unexpected shutdown. As a result, the impacts of performance management may be less noticeable on iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X. Over time, the rechargeable batteries in all iPhone models will diminish in their capacity and peak performance and will eventually need to be replaced.
This means that Apple, who was aware of the power management issues long enough ago that they shoehorned a stopgap solution into iOS, was also able to compensate for the issue in their current devices. Obviously this is a major step in the right direction, as the issue that Apple has been "trying to solve" with their throttling program is one that BlackBerry OS, Palm OS, webOS, Windows CE, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, Symbian and Android have never experienced, across hundreds of manufacturers, despite Apple's assurances that this is a natural issue.
Obviously this is not going to make owners of older devices feel any better, though being able to disable the "feature" might, and it certainly won't make the lawsuits go away. It will, however, make current and future generation owners feel a little better about the longevity of their devices.
