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.
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.
Have you considered that the iPhone 11 is just old, and not powerful enough to run modern software? The iPhone 11 was released 7 years ago and is old by smartphone standards. A new iPhone 18 has 2.5x the performance of an iPhone 11. Smartphones are one of the very few aspects in life that improve exponentially year over year.
Apple with this strategy becomes the most environmentally unhealthy company. Of course we need a way to prove this.
Ehm, talk to all the Android vendors who stopped doing security updates after 1-2 years or are only doing security updates every 3-6 months (which is certainly not safe with the current vulnerability rate). New EU regulations are moving them for long support periods. Funnily enough, some of them think they can do some malicious compliance by never releasing any updates at all:
My mom still has an iPhone 11 or 12 and it's definitely running better than Android phones 2019 or 2020. Not only that, it is also still getting security updates.
(Credits go to Google Pixel and a lesser extend Samsung S-series for showing the way when it comes to Android updates.)
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.
Yeah Apple is smart enough to know that large conspiracies tend to leak sooner or later. Your solution would absolutely have been my choice if I wanted to slow down old iPhones, and I’m quite sure the leadership at Apple are smarter than me.
> 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
There is a bunch of HN comments complaining that the new iOS is significantly slower on older devices [0]. It even led to unusually slow adoption [1]. Then, Apple tried to force older devices to upgrade [2]. Previously, Apple deliberately slowed old iPhones down and got fined for that [3]. How can you still give the benefit of the doubt after all this?
> It seems to me that it's much easier to just not optimize new code paths for older devices
The new iOS is much heavier for all devices. There is nothing specific for older devices. It looks like a deliberate attempt to kill older devices though, just like they did before. And it is extremely profitable for Apple to do that.
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.
At that point you're stuck proving intent. Apple probably knows that their bloat slows down old phones and they're probably thrilled that it annoys their customers enough that many will upgrade, but good luck proving that is the reason they're doing it.
> Isn’t their explicit claim that they’re doing this to extend battery life? I thought this was already litigated?
Yes, and yes. Batteries are consumable goods and throttling can make aging, borderline batteries work when otherwise they would cut out and cause unexpected power-offs. It’s the opposite of planned obsolescence because it makes older devices operational for longer.
You can also look at this empirically: Apple support old devices far longer than most of their competitors, and iPhones retain resale value far better than other phones. If Apple actively sabotage older devices, why put in the effort to explicitly support them, and why does the market treat supposedly sabotaged older devices as more valuable than the competition?
Your experiment would not prove that they are deliberately slowing older phones via updates. That's big part of the claim. Your experiment would only show that as you update, your old phones will get slower and slower.
I wouldn't be surprised older phones get slower with updates, in fact, that feels like the most likely scenario for me, based on my experience as a software developer.
But IMO, Hanlon's (maybe Occam's, too?) Razor applies. Most likely, the teams just need to ship features, make fixes, and they mostly test on higher end, recent devices. Sure, at some point, someone tests on a lower end device that everything still works, but they probably either do not notice the issues, or shrug it off, or rationalize it (it might make x worse, but users get y in exchange, so it's fine).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ehm, talk to all the Android vendors who stopped doing security updates after 1-2 years or are only doing security updates every 3-6 months (which is certainly not safe with the current vulnerability rate). New EU regulations are moving them for long support periods. Funnily enough, some of them think they can do some malicious compliance by never releasing any updates at all:
https://www.androidauthority.com/motorola-eu-software-update...
My mom still has an iPhone 11 or 12 and it's definitely running better than Android phones 2019 or 2020. Not only that, it is also still getting security updates.
(Credits go to Google Pixel and a lesser extend Samsung S-series for showing the way when it comes to Android updates.)
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.
There is a bunch of HN comments complaining that the new iOS is significantly slower on older devices [0]. It even led to unusually slow adoption [1]. Then, Apple tried to force older devices to upgrade [2]. Previously, Apple deliberately slowed old iPhones down and got fined for that [3]. How can you still give the benefit of the doubt after all this?
> It seems to me that it's much easier to just not optimize new code paths for older devices
The new iOS is much heavier for all devices. There is nothing specific for older devices. It looks like a deliberate attempt to kill older devices though, just like they did before. And it is extremely profitable for Apple to do that.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45544181
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46548654
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46134965
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18292417
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.
Of course they could give the user options but then they could also let the user swap batteries. Those are just not things Apple does.
Yes, and yes. Batteries are consumable goods and throttling can make aging, borderline batteries work when otherwise they would cut out and cause unexpected power-offs. It’s the opposite of planned obsolescence because it makes older devices operational for longer.
You can also look at this empirically: Apple support old devices far longer than most of their competitors, and iPhones retain resale value far better than other phones. If Apple actively sabotage older devices, why put in the effort to explicitly support them, and why does the market treat supposedly sabotaged older devices as more valuable than the competition?
I wouldn't be surprised older phones get slower with updates, in fact, that feels like the most likely scenario for me, based on my experience as a software developer.
But IMO, Hanlon's (maybe Occam's, too?) Razor applies. Most likely, the teams just need to ship features, make fixes, and they mostly test on higher end, recent devices. Sure, at some point, someone tests on a lower end device that everything still works, but they probably either do not notice the issues, or shrug it off, or rationalize it (it might make x worse, but users get y in exchange, so it's fine).
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.
How great that I can replace my old battery!
What frustrates me is that the CPUs are so powerful but somehow 5 years down the line are slow in basic UI navigation.
Does that mean "the notch" goes away, too?
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)