HTC and Motorola say they don’t slow old phones like Apple does

HTC and Motorola say they don’t throttle their phones’ processor speeds as their batteries age, one thing Apple last week acknowledged doing to stop errors when iPhone homeowners documented slowdowns. In emails to The Verge, each corporations aforesaid they are doing not use similar practices with their smartphones. Associate in Nursing HTC proponent aforesaid that coming up with phones to hamper their processor as their battery ages “is not one thing we tend to do.” A Motorola proponent aforesaid, “We don't throttle processor performance supported older batteries.”

The Verge conjointly reached bent on Google, Samsung, LG, and Sony for investigate whether or not their phone processors area unit throttled in response to aging batteries. A Sony proponent aforesaid a response would be delayed by the vacations, and a Samsung proponent aforesaid the corporate was trying into it.

The responses begin to clarify whether or not or not strangulation processor speeds is typical behavior in smartphones — as of last week, we tend to knew that Apple was doing it, however not whether or not it had been common apply among competitors. HTC and Motorola’s responses begin to counsel that it’s not.

Apple aforesaid it introduced this behavior last year, for the iPhone vi, 6S, and SE, as some way to stop random shutdowns of aging phones. because the phones’ batteries naturally degrade with use, they become able to output less power, leading the phone to unexpectedly shut off once the processor fires up to a high and exacting speed. Apple restricted the phones’ processor speed to stop those shutdowns, however within the method, conjointly restricted how briskly a phone will get and did thus while not creating this behavior clear to users.

There have long been conspiracy theories of “planned obsolesce” for iPhones, the concept being that Apple deliberately slows down devices right as a brand new one is discharged to encourage customers to upgrade. whereas this pretty much plays into that theory, it isn’t a similar thing: the behavior Apple introduced for those phones (and recently, for the iPhone seven as well) is supposed to increase their usability, albeit at the price of overall performance.

That said, Apple didn’t create it clear that exchange Associate in Nursing iPhone’s battery may resolve this issue and improve performance. the corporate doesn’t create it significantly simple to exchange batteries, either. And a lot of significantly, it may have designed phones that didn’t would like these guardrails simply a year when their unharness, that is arguably the larger issue.

These issues have clearly pissed off iPhones homeowners UN agency found their phones suddenly slower when Associate in Nursing update, and several other hope to bring a category action cause against Apple for the for the most part unrevealed apply.