According to French And American The courts expressed in 2018, Apple was forced by the software to slow down iPhones to force users to update more frequently. Since then the situation has not changed radically: the new update of iOS 14.5.1 has again led to slowdowns and a decrease in performance.
Mistakes caused a reputation crisis: the blogosphere unanimously remembered the old failure. Let’s remember how it was and understand the current situation.
How is it possible that Apple was caught by the forced braking?
This first happened in the winter of 2017. It received the name “Butteringate” – the company has not entered a clinch and admitted that battery wear causes the smartphone’s fiery motor to slow down.
This caused a colossal scandal; users from all over the planet asked for clarification, and when they were not satisfied with what they received, a chain of lawsuits against the manufacturer ensued. They were convinced that the company was thus forcing customers to update the training.
Users have successfully won the trial first in France and then in the United States. In the spring of 2020, the company paid a total of half a billion dollars to iPhone 6 and 7 users in the United States as part of a losing class action. Another fine followed in February 2021 – at the initiative of the regional office for the protection of users’ rights.
How did Apple respond to the allegations?
MacRumors found on Chinese company portal material, according to which the cause of the battery problems was a manufacturing error. Several batteries were exposed to excessive exposure to air, which resulted in excessive degradation and decreased capacity. Therefore, the company, hoping to reduce the negative factors, began to slow down with the software.
According to the company, this problem is common to a small number of iPhone 6S versions produced in the fall of 2015: the battery cell was exposed for too long in an oxygen environment before being inserted into the device. As a result, they “die” much faster than their siblings who have not survived close contact with the air.
To avoid dangerous parallels with Samsung’s explosives, the company hastily stated that its products are completely safe.
The accusers insisted that everything was different. European consumer protection office Euro Consumers said the mega-corporation is deliberately slowing down older models and asked to pay nearly two hundred million euros – or $ 320 million – to allegedly affected users.
The president of the organization, Als Breugerman, announced that the company had deliberately released a patch slowing the device to hide an existing problem with the batteries and noted that this was not a malicious action against the company, it was only that the Europeans wanted to take measures similar to those taken in the United States.
“Apple released updates to mask battery problems knowing it would slow down phones. IPhone owners just want to be treated with the same respect as users in the US, “said Els Brüggeman, Euroconsumers’ head of policy and enforcement.
Is it possible to disable the unfortunate update?
In 2018 Cupertino allowed users to independently determine the degree of performance of devices with a dead battery: either by reducing the power in safe mode or by using full without any guarantee – it will explode, explode. True, there were no explosions, only unauthorized arrests in the cold.
To change the mode, it was necessary to go to the “Status” (beta) tab in the battery settings and select the necessary option there.
Another way to get rid of the included “stop tap” was to replace the battery. This solution was available at a solid discount, and those who changed it in advance, without waiting for appropriate measures from Apple, were compensated.
All of this was a net loss for the company.
The new smartphones will activate the braking function one year after leaving the assembly line. In September 2019 the “apples” were activated. bottleneck – stone slowdown – for all of their 2018 models, and the trigger was another software update.
Three years later, a jamb with another update, now versions 11 and 12 of the legendary pipe, shook the foundations again and reduced milk production: the old XR model, according to the results of the synthetic benchmark, turned out to be much faster and more resistant to stress in terms of load than the new counterparts. A similar drop in performance was shown by the gaming tests.
According to an anonymous source, the reason for such “brakes” could be different: this is likely not a feature, but a bug. Probably related to options to reduce energy consumption, although for this reason the observed decline in the performance of the stone seems too solid.
The source states that such indicators may be due to various reasons. Most likely the problem is the iOS 14.5.1 update, which, for unknown reasons, slows down the work of new iPhone models. Maybe this is a bug.
Apple recognized the problem and promptly fixed it in the new firmware, both in the technical version and in the software version available for download.
