We are now aware that Apple is throttling the CPUs on our iPhones when we update the iOS version, especially when the software update comes out when there are newer, shinier flagships in the market. It is not a small allegation as Apple is the world’s biggest smartphone company which is loved by millions of fanboys and users alike. Apple devices boasts of top notch build quality and nothing beats the overall UX of their software, both in their Mobile and Laptop offerings.

So Apple had to react and they did so quickly and even swear that it’s solely in our (users) own interest and the device’s longevity that they are throttling the performance, but it wasn’t completely digested by a few, apparently. Apple also made some quick damage control announcements :

A) A discounted battery replacement program — which was confirmed to shoot the performance back to the glory days once again, though the software could slow the device once again when the new battery also shows it’s age.

B) A promise to disable the throttling and/or give a direct control to the users to turn off the “feature” in a future software update. This is obviously the better solution, which if rolled out, might actually enable us to extend the life of our beloved devices for a couple of more years.

Now that the iOS 11.3 beta 2 is out, we did the upgrade on an iPhone 6s and compared the benchmarking scores before and after the software upgrade! And yes, iOS 11.3 did live up to the promise.

The Backstory

My co-founder’s iPhone 6s, which was having noticeable performance degradation after upgrading to iOS version 11.x.

I am a long term Apple user but no way qualifies to be a fanboy who would stand in line overnight to grab a new phone. But I was always amazed at how Apple manages to beat most other hardware manufacturers when it comes to the build quality, consistent user experience and the smoother integration of the hardware and software with timely software rollouts.

However something never felt alright when you update the software on your otherwise smooth performing iPhone, especially when the device is more than an year old. One cannot ignore the visible slowdown but it’s not slow enough to be unusable so many of us end up ignoring it. This cycle then continues for couple of software updates until it becomes barely usable. But by that point the hardware becomes obsolete anyway and most of the users discard their once flagship devices and “upgrade” to the newer flagships.

I felt the same when i had the older iPhone 4s, but never bothered to do a proper benchmark on it before and after an iOS update. I am sure many of us have felt it before but it’s surprising that no one ever put a proper scientific benchmark comparison on the internet, or at least i couldn’t find one..

Fast forward couple of years of going through several Android devices and I am now back on an iPhone 7 and my co-founder got his beloved iPhone 6s and I could barely notice any difference except the lack of audio jack and the updated home button.

However, after an update to iOS 11.2, his 6s was performing noticeably slower. After the news of the throttling spread like wildfire in December, we decided to run an AnTuTu benchmark for ourselves to check it and, voila, the scores were way below the peak score of a brand new iPhone 6s (The peak score as reported by several blogs and Youtube videos , most probably recorded immediately after the launch). What’s more interesting is that the score which showed ~53000 was considerably slower than the reported peak score of ~130,000, almost 2.5x slower to be precise. It’s no surprise the device was crawling after updating to iOS 11.2.

The screenshot of AnTuTu score made on iPhone 6s running iOS 11.2 with battery charged to 72% and no background apps running. The benchmark was way lower than the reported average score of 130k of new iPhone 6s. The bench mark was done after the device was noticeably slower after upgrading to iOS 11.2.

With that much throttling on the CPU and GPU, the phone was performing more like a fish gasping for breath outside the water. It’s a shame that the device, which was once a flagship could easily be throttled to less than half of it’s peak performance through the software with no change to it’s hardware, except the ageing battery.

The promised update and the elixir of life.

This is the fresh benchmark score after upgrading the device to iOS 11.3 on the same version of AnTuTu software. Notice the almost 3x performance gain on the CPU scores alone.

With iOS 11.3 upgrade, the performance is once again back to the 120–130k range, which makes the phone very much useable even by today’s standard. The device also feels pretty smooth with no visible lags and no noticeable performance difference between my newer iPhone 7 device.

Wow, that made the 6s spring back to life again. As evident from the score, the phone behaves smoothly and the apps open quickly. Scrolling through contacts or photos in the gallery has become noticeably faster, with almost no difference felt from the iPhone 7. The software update made in iOS 11.3 has given back the breath and is indeed an elixir of life for iPhone 6s.

Here is a more closer look at the results:

The benchmark figures before upgrading to iOS 11.3 was drastically lower in all the sections.

Why did Apple throttle the iPhone?

No one, except perhaps the top execs and engineers at the Apple know the exact answer for this. Could it be a dark sales pattern to coerce the users to upgrade to the latest hardware devices, which while comes with good performance jumps (20-30%), but are not wide enough to warrant an upgrade as expected by the sales department (200-300%)? Or is it really a hardware issue with their lithium-ion batteries? If that is the case, Apple should have made it public that they are throttling the CPU in order to cover up their hardware issue. Whatever it is, the fact that Apple chose to hide the issue until it was made public by a third party is a shame.

The throttling is probably not much of an issue in certain markets like the United States where the phones are often sold subsidised through carriers and may come with regular upgrades to newer devices. However in developing countries like India, owning a flagship is not a cheap deal as a new flagship device like iPhone is priced without the carrier subsidy and comes to several times the average monthly income of an individual (Flagships are almost always sold at the full price of close to around 800-1200$ or above).

Being one of the biggest manufacturer of mobile devices and certainly the most revered, even outside the US, hope Apple do not trick their users and take them for granted again like they did with iOS 11.2.