Rant: Android OEMs don't slow down their phones like Apple does because they CAN'T.
Preface: I've done smartphone repairs/sold replacement batteries for ~6 years.
Edit: just to be clear I am not defending Apple's throttling in any way. They should have been more transparent and upfront to their customers about it, and at this point justifying or criticizing it is beating a dead horse. I should have made it more obvious that I'm referring to this article titled "HTC and Motorola say they don’t slow old phones like Apple does" where:
An HTC spokesperson said that designing phones to slow down their processor as their battery ages “is not something we do.”
and
A Motorola spokesperson said, “We do not throttle CPU performance based on older batteries.”
They couldn't slow down a phone that had a worn out battery to prevent unexpected shutdowns even if they wanted to. It's not that they won't because it'd upset users; they can't because they have no way of reliably determining if a battery is worn out "on the fly".
iPhones are able to sacrifice performance in favor of not unexpectedly shutting down because iOS is able to check for battery wear in the first place. The OS knows how many charge cycles and wear percentage that the device's battery has sustained, and this information is accessible via Apple's diagnostics or even the end user. CoconutBattery is the go-to Mac OS app for many iPhone users, but for those who don't have an Apple computer there are a plethora of apps on the App Store that can do more or less the same thing (although their accuracy is questionable after iOS 10 closed off the API used to read battery data IIRC).
Battery health information is also accessible via hardware as well, by using a battery tester such as this one. As you can see the battery stores a lot of useful information in addition to cycle count/wear level, such as serial number, manufacture date, temperature etc. Note how the battery doesn't only have two pins like a "dumb" battery does (one for V+ and another for V-); it has four pins - two additional ones for reading sensor info and battery data off the fuel gauge chip in the battery.
Now, as far as I'm aware, Android has no idea how healthy a battery is based on cycle count or wear percentage. You could say that this is an argument from ignorance, but trust me; if there was a way to test an Android phone's battery wear percentage and cycle count at the software level, I'd be all over it. I have looked high and low, and apps like AccuBattery just don't cut it. Any app on the Play Store that claims to be able to provide battery health information are estimating it at best and completely fake at worst.
In my six years of smartphone repair (and selling replacement batteries) this frustrates me to no end. Customers come in and ask for a new battery, and usually I don't question them and do as they say. Surprise surprise! It was Google Play Services all along! The battery replacement didn't help much, and I got the short end of the stick. "The customer is always right", after all! /s
I'll give Android OEMs the benefit of the doubt when it comes to being able to test for battery health at the hardware level. But this is by no means user accessible, and the tools needed to access such data aren't openly available. You have to send it into a service center for x number of days/weeks and then be told something that can't be corroborated. You might even be charged a diagnostic fee if you decide not to go ahead with a repair!
Most Android phone batteries have extra pins that suggest they have a fuel gauge chip or something of the sort that can be accessed using the right tools.
Ironically, Motorola makes phone batteries that only have a positive and negative terminal - nothing more (including but not limited to Moto G4 Plus). Meaning not even Motorola can test for battery health!
TL;DR: refer to title
Submitted December 29, 2017 at 02:06AM by vantt1 http://ift.tt/2E9r21i http://ift.tt/eA8V8J
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