PA/AppleAnother day, another iOS update to really put the nail in the coffin for Apple.
Tim Cook and his tech cronies have had a bad run of it recently, with the news they purposefully run down the batteries on old iPhone handsets to feed the never-ending circle of commercialism they spawned from Silicone Valley.
But, new year, new me, new iOS update; and an opportunity to turn over a new leaf and come up with an update which isn’t totally useless.
PAFollowing Apple iOS 11’s troubled launch and the rushed releases of iOS 11.0.1 (which didn’t help) and iOS 11.0.2 (which made things even worse) and iOS 11.0.3 in the space of just three weeks, Apple have been attempting to rectify the problems with another release of much of the same thing.
We’re now up to iOS 11.2.2 and it’s still causing people problems.
The update is reported to be throttling performance by as much as 50 per cent, according to Forbes.
AppleHaving heard the desperate Twitter cries of users reporting decreased performance, tech developer Melvin Mughal documented a detailed breakdown of his iPhone 6 performance before and after updating to iOS 11.2.2 from iOS 11.1.2.
He found the performance of his device fell, on average, between 39 and 41 per cent after updating to iOS 11.2.2, across 30 different single-core and multi-core benchmarks.
Mughal explains on his blog the decreased performance, which he claims hit hard at every level, may be due to the new Spectre security update included.
PexelsTo make matters worse, Apple has explained this dodgy update is actually of vital security importance, and Mughal adds it’s ‘better to be safe than sorry’.
So it kind of looks like all those with a phone as slow as a brick in tar are stuck with it, for fear of hackers.
This comes just weeks after Apple found themselves in a spot of bother, after a 17-year-old Tennessee high school student, Tyler Barney, revealed the tech giant slows down their old phones intentionally, which could cost Apple billions of dollars in lawsuits.
Fox17Apple users have long suspected the iPhone has the longevity of a hamster, despite the tech giant’s claims of designing smartphones with less lag than other models like the Samsung or OnePlus.
Meet the guy who outsmarted the smartphone: 17-year-old high school student, Tyler Barney, from Mt Juliet, Tennessee, who goes by the Reddit username TeckFire.
In a press release the young genius’ uncle, Rob Blevins, sent to news outlets, Barney explained his suspicions arose when his iPhone 6s started slowing down drastically.
Fox17He said:
It became buggy. That’s the best way to put it. It was a big mess all the time. Even typing was painful. Seconds passed between keystrokes.
Barney assumed the next updated operating system release by Apple would bring his phone back to life and in the meantime, he started investigating whether the problem persisted on his brother’s older model iPhone 6.
PAStill, he said his brother’s phone, which had an inferior processor but was a year newer, was much faster.
Barney turned to Reddit, where some savvy users suggested he replace the battery. He did this and his phone sped back up, so he concluded the decreased performance was due to the phone’s lithium-ion batteries, the Tennessean reports.
So with Apple slowing down their phones deliberately it means customers are forced to turn in their old handsets and buy updated (and by extension much more expensive) models.
PAThe has led to a class action being brought against the tech firm. Stefan Bogdanovich and Dakota Speas claim Apple never requested their consent to ‘slow down their iPhones’.
Android 4eva…
A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.