[Update: Developer Guilherme Rambo has discovered the software system, powerd (short for power daemon), that Apple put in place in iOS 10.2.1. powerd controls CPU/GPU speed and power. It also responds to thermal pressure and helps iPhones from catching fire.
Since powerd was first released in 10.2.1, this looks to be separate from the Low Power Mode feature and directly related to the performance and battery age issues.]
Last week we reported on the news that a new battery could solve performance issues with older iPhone models like the 6s. Today, Geekbench founder, John Poole, published an article describing his findings after diving deeper into the relationship between iPhone performance and battery age.
The Reddit thread that gained a lot of traction with comments from almost 1,000 users included some insightful ideas about what could be happening.
While Apple at first thought the battery issues were limited, it later released an update for the widespread problem.
While many individuals used Geekbench to test out their own devices, founder John Poole set out to do his own in-depth testing to look into the relationship between iPhone performance and battery age.
As can be seen in the results above, Poole notes that the issues become pronounced moving from 10.2.0 to 10.2.1 to 11.2.0.
When it came to the iPhone 7, the issue didn’t appear to be present, until the test with iOS 11.2.
Poole concludes that the performance issues will increase over time and are caused by both battery age and changes to iOS.
Poole believes that Apple added a software adjustment for iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, similar to what it did to correct the iPhone 6s shutdown issues with 10.2.1. He goes on to share Apple may have created a misleading “third state” of slower iPhone performance without any notification that could convince users to upgrade their devices earlier than planned.
Second, the problem is due, in part, to a change in iOS. The difference between 10.2.0 and 10.2.1 is too abrupt to be just a function of battery condition. I believe (as do others) that Apple introduced a change to limit performance when battery condition decreases past a certain point.
Read Geekbench founder, John Poole’s full article here.
