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Comment by SilverRed | Hacker News Reader

They slowed down phones to prevent them from crashing on peak voltage. If you remember the android scene around the same time, the Nexus 6P would just crash constantly when the battery got degraded.

If you asked the average user if they would rather that their phone crash, or have the top speed capped. They would all rather it did not crash.

Of course this should have been more visible to notify the user to get a battery replacement. Which it now is and there is a full battery health page. It was also never really secret or lied about. There was a mention in the change logs that no one reads.

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> If you asked the average user if they would rather that their phone crash, or have the top speed capped. They would all rather it did not crash.

Certainly the average user would choose "no crash _and_ not get slower", conveniently ignoring the either-or nature of the question. (Maybe "get less battery life out of a single charge" if they are trying to come up with an alternative.)

That’s not an option. It’s not that the battery was flat. It’s that when the CPU hit peak power consumption the voltage of the battery would drop low enough to cause the CPU to fail. The only option is to limit power draw or to crash.

No, actually, it IS that the battery was flat, and it IS an option. Apple chose to use a battery which was not durable enough for the requirements imposed upon it by their design. I'm not sure why you think that they couldn't have avoided it like LITERALLY EVERY OTHER PHONE MANUFACTURER (including themselves at one time).

I was thinking whether this problem could be alleviated by building in extra capacitors as a reserve for transient high current consumption.

At the time android phones were suffering the same problem. The nexus 6p would randomly crash at 30% charge.

> If you asked the average user if they would rather that their phone crash, or have the top speed capped. They would all rather it did not crash.

No. If you asked the average user if they would rather their phone have the speed decreased, or have a slightly thicker battery (and thus phone), they would all rather it be slightly thicker.

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