HACKER Q&A
📣 qwertyuiop_

Do you feel Apple throttles phones with OS updates?


I bought iPhone 14 pro max. It was zippy until Jan when Apple started pushing new iOS 16 updates. My suspicion is they have a mechanism to slow down the current model slightly so ever so it feels sluggish than the newest model. These phones have bang on hardware and I can’t believe they are the limiting factor in performance.

  👤 sp332 Accepted Answer ✓
They got sued for a half-billion dollars for doing this without telling anyone. They only admitted to slowing phones down to extend their battery life, which you can now disable. Under the battery setting, check uner "peak performance" to see if it's being throttled.
👤 warrenm
People have claimed this off and on for a decade

I've yet to have a "throttle" or apparent slowdown ... and I always update the day (or 2) after an update's released

Have owned a 4s, 6s+, 8, 11, and 14 Pro Max

👤 bell-cot
FWIW - my previous iPhone, bottom-end when brand new, kinda seemed to get slower over the >5 years I used it (and always updated to the latest iOS).

Your suspicion seems like it'd be easy to prove, with access to some benchmark programs, developers' tools, & such.