After Apple admitted to slowing down older iPhones with software patches due to some misbehaving batteries, it’s only natural to wonder if other smartphone manufacturers do the same. It can’t be just Apple, right?
It’s too early to come to a definitive conclusion, but the list of potential perpetrators got a little shorter today, according to The Verge. Both Moto and HTC have provided comment on the matter, each coming right out and saying that those types of practices are not employed on their respective phones.
On HTC’s end, a spokesperson stated that working in this gradual slowing of its phones’ CPU speed is “not something we do". Moto’s comment is similar but more to-the-point: “We do not throttle CPU performance based on older batteries.”
What about Samsung, Google and others?
Putting aside the controversial aspect of Apple’s secrecy in deploying software that slowed down the performance of certain iPhone models, it’s admittedly a clever method to ensure that its large batch of phones remain looped in with major updates years from their original release.
Compare this to how things typically work on Android. Pushing these major updates through the pipeline can take quite a long time. Over a year, at times. Much to the chagrin of Android fans, the wait is inevitable.
Historically, this is due to the long, arduous process of each manufacturer optimizing their respective hardware and software layers to get things running smoothly, a process that Google claims to be making easier and faster with Project Treble.
But looking at Apple’s dicey solution to quickly disperse a quick fix, waiting might be the only thing we can do to guarantee that no performance is lost in smartphones that we’ve paid a lot for.
It’s encouraging to hear that Moto and HTC don’t participate in slowing their older smartphones. However, we’re still waiting to hear from some even bigger manufacturers, like Samsung, Google, Huawei, LG and Sony.
