SEVEN clues signal that your iPhone is making itself run slower – all to protect the battery.
If you’ve got an older blower, it might be limiting itself with some surprising changes.
It’s all part of a feature called iPhone Performance management.
And yes, it might really be slowing your iPhone down – you’re not going crazy.
It might sound terrible, but it’s designed to help your iPhone work better for longer.
The lithium-ion battery inside your iPhone gets worse over time.
That’s not an Apple-only problem: this common battery type will degrade as you charge it up and use it. Excessive heat can .
For instance, after about two years (or 500 full charge cycles), you’d expect the battery to hold just 80% of its maximum charge when it was new. That means – and .
And this chemical ageing can cause other problems too.
“For a phone to function properly, the electronics must be able to draw upon instantaneous power from the battery,”; Apple explains.
“One attribute that affects this instantaneous power delivery is the battery’s impedance.
“A battery with a high impedance may not be able to provide sufficient power to the system that needs it.
“A battery’s impedance can increase if a battery has a higher chemical age.”;
When the impedance is high, the voltage can drop – and potentially fall so low that normal functioning isn’t possible.
This can play havoc with the electronics in your iPhone – and can cause the gadget to shut down entirely.
So Apple uses iPhone Performance Management to avoid these shutdowns.
That means having your iPhone intentionally slow down.
“iOS will dynamically manage the maximum performance of some system components, such as the CPU and GPU,”; Apple said.
“As a result, the device workloads will self-balance, allowing a smoother distribution of system tasks, rather than larger, quick spikes of performance all at once.
“In some cases, you might not notice any differences in device performance.”;
When the Performance Management feature is working at “extreme”; levels, you might notice certain surprising effects.
According to Apple the seven signs to look out for are:
- Longer app launch times
- Lower frame rates while scrolling
- Backlight dimming (which can be overridden in Control Centre)
- Lower speaker volume by up to -3 dB
- Gradual frame-rate reductions in some apps
- During the most extreme cases, the camera flash will be disabled as visible in the camera UI
- Apps refreshing in the background might require reloading upon launch
Apple also confirmed that there are several features that won’t ever be affected by performance management.
So if you’re experiencing issues with any of them, something else is to blame.
Those features include:
- Mobile call quality and networking throughput performance
- Captured photo and video quality
- GPS performance
- Location accuracy
- Sensors like gyroscope, accelerometer, barometer
- Apple Pay
For instance, bad call quality is most likely due to you having poor signal – or because too many people are using the same network as you.
If you’re worried about your iPhone battery, you can actually check exactly how healthy it is.
Just go into Settings > Battery > Battery Health and look at the read-outs on that page.
You can see the battery’s maximum charge capacity compared to when it was new, as well as how healthy it is.
It’ll also flag up if your iPhone is not longer able to operate at peak performance.
If you’re having trouble here, you don’t necessarily need to rush out and snap up a brand new iPhone.
One cheaper option is to get a battery replacement from the Apple Store, which typically costs less than £100/$100 (unless you have a very new iPhone).
That should not only give you like-new iPhone battery capacity, but it can also improve your mobile’s performance too.
And it might let you put off paying for a big iPhone upgrade for a few more years, saving you money.
