iPhone Specs News: Benchmark Testing Company Shows iPhones Don't Just Slow Down Over Time
A research released recently proved that speculations that old iPhone models deliberately slowed down over time were inaccurate.
Apple, like many technology firms, has a cyclical approach in making, releasing, and ending support for their hardware products, especially iPhones. These highly popular smartphones are expected to be obsolete after several years from the time they were launched.
This treatment has created speculations among users that Apple was deliberately causing older iPhone models to run slower. However, a recent study by the benchmark testing firm, Futuremark, denied those claims.
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In the research, it was noted that one of the basis for saying that older iPhones become harder to use over time was the increase in Google searches for the term "iPhone slow" as soon as Apple released a newer model. This then created the impression that as new iPhones arrive, the earlier models became slower.
However, Futuremark maintained that a more scientific way to see whether these speculations were true was to place several iPhones in a set of benchmark tests -- which they did with the iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6s, and iPhone 7.
Using the 3DMark benchmarking tool, Futuremark subjected the above-mentioned devices to a "demanding series of tests" to see how they would perform or to check if their scores would drastically change over time.
The said iPhone models were tested based on their GPU and CPU performance. To see if there was a decline, Futuremark had installed several iOS versions per device.
For example, to see how the subject iPhones' GPU and CPU would perform, they monitored these handsets with the iOS 9 for five months from April 2016 to August 2016, for 12 months using the iOS 10 from September 2016 to August 2017, and included the iOS 11 which was released last month.
On all the iPhones tested, Futuremark's scoreboards actually showed a fairly consistent graph with regard to the effect of the changes applied.
"Our benchmarking data shows that, rather than intentionally degrading the performance of older models, Apple actually does a good job of supporting its older devices with regular updates that maintain a consistent level of performance across iOS versions," Futuremark explained.
With that, Futuremark also explained that there were several other factors affecting an iPhone's performance as newer iOS versions are released. "An update might add new features that use more resources or require more processing power. ... Conversely, apps designed for an earlier version of iOS might not take full advantage of optimizations in the latest version," Futuremark said.
The firm also recognized the "psychological effect" of the availability of newer iPhones in the market which could make an impression to someone with an older model that what they have is already outdated.
