Gadgetory

thanks for watching tech quickie click the subscribe button then enable notifications with the Bell icon so you won't miss any future videos so when you clicked on this video you might have noticed that in the title we didn't ask if Apple was slowing down their phones we asked why because it turns out that the conspiracy theories are real sort of even though it's pretty common knowledge that older devices don't perform as well due to the higher demands of newer software many people have noticed this in a more profound way after a system update issued by Apple in 2016 this fueled speculation for well over a year about whether Apple was slowing down their phones on purpose until the company finally admitted that this was indeed the case in December 2017 now the explanation that Apple gave revolved around the way that phones with older batteries perform you see even though smartphones use rechargeable batteries these have a limited lifespan you can learn more about it up here but the main thing to keep in mind for now is that these batteries recharge by reversing the chemical reaction that normally generates power for your phone now since this reaction isn't perfectly reversible your battery won't be able to hold a charge as well over time as you discharge it and recharge it over and over again and if your battery is really old your gadget can end up shutting off due to a dead battery way before you might expect it to so this is what Apple claimed it was trying to prevent but wait a second how does slowing down a phone help with a sudden shutdown well if you're putting a load on your phone's processor like streaming HD video or playing a game it draws more power from your battery draining it more quickly so Apple says that some workloads are so hungry that they can ask for more power than an aging battery can provide in a given moment so similar to how a laptop CPU might down clock itself to preserve battery life newer versions of iOS will make the CPU spread tasks out to take longer to prevent those power spikes that can overload older batteries which has caused the frustrating performance issues and the leg that we mentioned earlier now this does make sense probably more sense than a conspiracy theory about Apple crippling its own products to force consumers to buy the latest model which would carry significant legal consequences if they were caught by the way you definitely don't want a battery that you think has an adequate charge suddenly dropping dead in the middle of something important but that doesn't mean we're ready to let Apple off the hook one issue is that Apple waited well over a year before disclosing this fix leaving their customers wondering why the heck their iPhones were performing so poorly this has driven speculation that Apple is effectively overclocking their phones knowingly delivering performance out of the box that isn't typical of what you'd expect in the longer term and they've also faced criticism for not giving their users a choice they could have an option in the settings menu that allows you to choose between the safety valve that prevents shutdowns and more performance at the risk of your battery dying suddenly when it's low now Apple has offered cheap battery upgrades for a year but unless they extend that offer indefinitely you could argue that that's more of a PR move than a long-term solution so what can be done in the long term well it is possible to grab a battery online for cheap and swap it at home to alleviate the lag issue I fix it excuse me sorry but it requires specific tools risks damaging your device and also avoids any warranty that you might have remaining so unless the smartphone market as a whole moves back towards bulkier phones with user replaceable batteries and away from slim sleek and emoji machines that need to be replaced every couple of years not much I fix it loves to take stuff apart and teach people how to repair their electronics and they're also leading the charge in the electronics repair tools industry with their iconic black and blue Pro tech toolkit and it's now only fifty nine ninety five it features a compact folding design their 64 bit driver kit with a wide variety of plastic opening tools sputters and picks so you can safely poke and pry it's got a suction cup with a fancy new handle to remove display assemblies and ESD safe tweezers and an ESD safety strap all iFixit tools are backed by I fix its lifetime warranty so check out I fix it comm for over twenty five thousand free repair guides and stag they're fully loaded pro tect toolkit and ifixit.com slash tech quickie for just 60 bucks we've got that linked below so thanks for watching guys dislike like check out other channels leave a comment if you have a suggestion for a future video and subscribe