iPhones Decrease in Performance Over Time Because of Battery Wear

According to a recent blog post on Geekbench’s official website, iPhone devices do exhibit some decrease in performance over time, and it is mainly due to their battery getting older. John Poole, the president and founder of Primate Labs (the firm who developed the Geekbench processor benchmarking software), explained that as the batteries age and show reduced power capacity, the processors on iPhones are also expected to slow down. We tend to believe that our iPhones will always be capable of fast processing, even after many years of use. Sure, the aging battery will no longer last as long as before, but if we just charge our iOS devices regularly, we can still rely on their processing speed. 

But Poole found that this may not always be the case. By using his own Geekbench iOS speed test, he saw some pretty interesting results. Normally, an iPhone model’s benchmark distribution should register only one peak, representing its optimum performance. Poole’s data, however, shows that the benchmark distributions of models such as the iPhone 6, the iPhone 6s, and the iPhone 7, particularly those that have a version of iOS newer than iOS 10.2.1, are logging multiple peaks (with older units having more peaks). This led Poole to believe that perhaps Apple has put specific software somewhere that somehow is slowing down that iPhone model’s performance. Interestingly, Poole’s data supports a theory that has been making the rounds in Reddit around a week ago. Redditors had posted that after an old iPhone model’s battery was replaced, that iPhone unit’s processing speed recorded remarkable improvements. 

Poole himself believes that his findings may be brought on by a software patch that Apple had rolled out in February early this year, which was released together with the iOS 10.2.1 update. That fix was deployed in the first place because of reports of older iPhone models shutting down for no apparent reason when reaching a battery power level of below 30 percent. The thinking is that if Apple reduces the processor speed of that iPhone model, it could prevent the shut down sequence from happening.

Nothing lasts forever, including batteries used on iOS mobile devices. Still, Apple has claimed that the batteries it uses for its iPhones will still be capable of providing 80 percent of their original power capacity even after going through 500 charging sessions. But the tech giant has also stated that any iPhone is good for around three years of use only. Time, after all, always wins.