Ex-Apple engineer says Apple deliberately slows older phones via updates

Manuel_D

If true, this could be verified by keeping a set of phones on older software and comparing that control group against a set of phones that received the update. That said, I'm totally unconvinced by this video. There's zero details of how Apple allegedly slows down old phones. Lowered clock rate? Artificially increased system call times? Nothing actually explained in the video.

Animats

"pill-shaped cutout ... could disappear entirely." Does that mean "the notch" goes away, too?

joshka

Meh - doubt it. I'm using an iPhone 14, it feels like it works basically the same as it did when I got it. In general slow downs are apps doing and not caring to per tune because the baseline perf expectation of app developers increases to the point where those things don't matter. Use the default apps and you're pretty much ok.

LunicLynx

Any one surprised by this? This was very apparent around the iPhone 4 / 5 era. And the last ones hit were the 11 and 12 series.

sgt

Isn't this the same old myth that we heard about a few years ago, regarding the battery decay and throttling to keep the phone alive? I'd rather the phone be a bit slower than having the phone cut out on me. There's a simple fix to this, and that's just to have a healthy battery in your phone. No need to buy a new phone.

ochronus

Doesn't match my personal experience over a handful of iPhone generations. I know, anecdotal only, but still.

throwa356262

I mean, this is common knowledge: https://theweek.com/59708/does-apple-slow-old-iphones-when-a... Apple claims this is to "keep things stable when the battery ages" and there are tons of suckers out there that belive it. But somehow, it always happens as a new iPhone is being introduced. https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/iphone-slow-do-apple-s-sm... (I except this comment to be flagged or downvoted heavily)

danjc

Plot twist: Apple PR team created this video to make claims that they slow older devices seem less credible.

goldenarm

It became blatantly obvious when Apple redid their entire design system to use expensive GPU accelerated 3D glass.

RASBR89

I don’t want to believe it but wouldn’t surprise me. I pick up my old iPhone 7 and it feels so slick and fast, it 13 mini on iOS 26 is fast in some places but infuriatingly laggy in others. Battery health 90%. What frustrates me is that the CPUs are so powerful but somehow 5 years down the line are slow in basic UI navigation.

SilverElfin

This has been obvious from the start. There is virtually no change in the phone’s core function but the performance degrades everywhere. I wonder if it is to promote new phones or to avoid warranty claims on existing ones.

j_leboulanger

Using an iPhone SE (2016) daily I have a hard time believing this info

butokai

I remember trying an iPhone 12 in 2020 and feeling it was so fast that no phone task would ever be able to use all that power. Definitely not my current experience on my now old iPhone 12. A lot of it can be attributed to ever increasing ram usage by web pages, but that doesn’t seem to be all.

karlmedley

This whole article is lifted credulously from newsx.com, including the "but the iPhone 18 will be great" paragraph at the end. The referenced tweet is a crypto account. Zero effort to verify the claim or the source, which itself provides no verifiable details. I'd love to hear if anyone thinks https://www.tiktok.com/@honeycoolcat is a credible source.

compounding_it

I have been thinking about this for some time now. There is no doubt this happens. My moms iPhone 11 is on iOS 26 and over the last 2 OS updates, its reached that exact point where it is 'glitching' like the twitter video says. Now that it won't get a new update this year it seems it requires an upgrade, not from new features, but from the existing ones no longer functioning efficiently. My theory is that the 'malware' is simply heavier updates on older phones that don't really need it. For example the camera app in iOS26 could be significantly slower than in iOS 15 for example. It may do a few extra things but it could do them just as well on the older code base. Now with the new code base, the exact same feature runs slower on an old phone but runs the same on a newer phone with a relative difference noticeable. This is probably because Apple hardware team is far ahead of the software team. There is a lot of headroom, and instead of doing something innovative with it, apple choses to instead just bloat it to sell more phones. Apple with this strategy becomes the most environmentally unhealthy company. Of course we need a way to prove this. What I would do is get an iPhone 12 with iOS 14 to iOS 27 and compare how fluid and snappy the UI is. its probably hard to get an iPhone with iOS 14 because apple cleverly doesnt sign it.

microtonal

Heh, I'm usually not the one to defend Apple, but... She calls it malware, if she was an Apple engineer, she should be able to give a hint where to look so that interested parties can disassemble the code and investigate. With no specifics, it looks like a former engineer that holds a grudge. Not saying that this is the case, but she would make her position stronger with some specifics. It seems to me that it's much easier to just not optimize new code paths for older devices, introduce changes that require more performant hardware (cough, Liquid Glass), etc. That together with the natural bloating of applications and websites does enough to slow down older phones. Especially because Apple has always been conservative with the amount of memory in their phones. E.g. even the iPhone 17 still has 8 GiB RAM, while comparably-priced Android phones have 16 GiB RAM.

ksec

I keep thinking they turn off certain optimisation for older model in the name of security.

fmajid

A corollary to Clarke's Law: any sufficiently incompetently written software is indistinguishable from malware. Yes, I'm looking at you, Liquid Ass.

yomismoaqui

Wasn't this already confirmed by Batterygate? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batterygate

ofrzeta

Is this news? I think read this about five years ago. Also it's not a scandal but just a way to cope with degrading batteries. Incidentally my own older iPhone noticeably slowed about two weeks ago although it's only a feeling and I have no way to verify this.