It was reported recently that Apple was intentionally slowing down older iPhones. The company didn’t acknowledge the matter for a few days before confirming that it was indeed throttling old iPhones but provided an explanation for it as well. Even though no similar reports were published about their smartphones, both HTC and Motorola have said that they don’t slow down their old phones like Apple.
Both companies responded to The Verge via email with HTC saying that causing its smartphones to slow down as their batteries get older “is not something we do.” A spokesperson for Motorola said that “We do not throttle CPU performance based on older batteries.”
Apple acknowledged that it does this a few days ago, saying that the measure was introduced last year for the iPhone 6, iPhone 6S, and iPhone SE. It said that this was meant to prevent random shutdowns of older handsets.
A smartphone’s battery degrades naturally over time and outputs less power. This can lead to the device shutting down unexpectedly when the processor ramps up for more speed. Apple decided to limit the handsets’ processor speeds in order to prevent unexpected shutdowns. It didn’t make this behavior clear to users immediately which is probably why multiple lawsuits have now been filed by customers.
The scribe has also reached out to Samsung, Google, LG, and Sony to ask whether they adopt a similar method for their handsets as well. A spokesperson for Samsung said that the company is looking into it while Sony said that an official response will be delayed because of the holidays.