Has anyone else noticed Google slowing down your phone to convince you to update?

I don't mean "update" as in buy a new phone, I mean it as installing an OTA update.

I've had my Nexus 5X for around a year now, and the performance was always snappy and great, and I never thought to not update because, why not?

At one point I switched to my brother's 6P after he upgraded to a Pixel. I used that for a couple of months, but the battery eventually died and I was forced to go back to my 5X.

When I booted my 5X back up, I had an Android software update waiting for me. But when I read that news about Apple slowing down their phones I got curious, and I decided to do a little experiment by ignoring that update as long as possible and seeing what would happen to the performance.

Well, my phone became an unbearably slow mess for around 2 months. Apps would take a good ~3 seconds to start up. Tapping the Google search bar on the homescreen was a shortcut to freezing the entire damn phone. Pressing the homescreen to leave an app took another ~3 seconds. I had to disable screen rotation because anytime it happened, the entire phone would freeze mid-rotation, sometimes for as long as 10 seconds. Surprisingly, I didn't notice apps crashing more than usual.

Well, today I finally decided to upgrade and, lo and behold, it's back to being as snappy and buttery smooth as its always been. You'd think the phone was on its dying breaths if you saw it before the update.

Obviously this isn't concrete proof that they're artificially slowing down phones, but I do find it suspicious. They definitely have incentives to have users on the latest software version. Using positive reinforcement by rewarding users with a faster phone seems like it could be a good way to train people to install updates regularly (or punishing those that don't with a slower phone). Tbh I don't know how to feel about that if it's true, since there are pros and cons to it.

TL;DR: I ignored an OTA update for 2 months to see what would happen, phone became unbearably slow, and when I finally updated things became lightning fast.



Submitted January 30, 2018 at 04:02PM by humanmanguy http://ift.tt/2nrsULh http://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Removable batteries discussion

I have always preferred phones with removable batteries so far, thinking that it will most certainly be the first component in a device to fail. I have even advised people in my circles to do so, until a recent event. A family member of mine still uses a HTC DesireX. Recently, he wanted to replace his battery because of swelling. He bought two matching batteries from different sellers. The problem is, even though they were unopened/sealed packages of original batteries, they were not holding much charge. (I suppose they waited on a shelf for some time.) This made me question myself. In the past, I have used nokia smartphones, and they were easy to replace with fresh batteries, since almost all nokias used the same battery type. Now with android, its all over the place. Is it even worth it to go for a removable battery device when you cant find a replacement a couple of years after you purchase it? What do you think/prefer? PS. I realize this is not exactly fault of android OS, but ...
Read more