Apple users often wonder why the iPhone you bought a year ago is suddenly acting weird and performs poorly. Similarly, iPhones tend to get slower over time with no apparent reason while you use the same apps that you did back when you bought it. This is something easily fixable, and we have a few small things you can try to fix your slow iPhone.
People notice their phone getting slower and ignore it, thinking that its due to newer software updates. At the same time, some new features may be more hardware intensive that is not the only cause of slowing down. After many people noticed that they had slower iPhones in 2017, Apple confirmed many customers’ suspicions that iPhones do slow down with time. According to Apple, this is something that the company does on purpose.
They explained that the intention to slow down devices was not a business move but rather a software optimization. Your phone gets susceptible to accidental shutdowns and malfunctioning as it gets older, and the battery degrades. This explains why some older phones suddenly drop from 40 to 10 percent or straightaway shutdown. Apple has put a software optimization to prevent that. This setting slows down the device to reduce power draw to lessen the strain on the battery.
Turning off Battery optimizations:
After this revelation, Apple also added a way for users to disable this feature and get their devices back to the original speed. To check if your phone has it turned on, go to Settings, click “Battery.” and Tap “Battery Health.” In case this feature is enabled, you will see a message saying, “performance management has been applied to prevent this from happening again.” That means your phone has been intentionally slowed down to aid the degraded battery.
Here you will find the option to turn “Performance Management” off and get your phone back to speed. Current battery technologies start to degrade after just a year of manufacture. This means that the optimizations settings start to apply just after a year of purchase of your new phone, and you only get a year of full performance.
Apple received severe backlash from its customers after this statement and made their replacement batteries cheaper. This means that even today, you can safely turn this feature off and get a new battery once your current one gives away.
Clear Application Cache:
Application Cache is data that consists of redundant tasks that an application has to perform every time it loads up. Modern OS lets applications store this data so that they don’t have to do the process every time and hence work faster. Applications like Facebook and Spotify notoriously store vast amounts of cached data that use most of the phone storage.
Now older phones come with slower memory standards, and even today, all phones have flash storage. Flash storage has a fixed amount of write cycles, and it also degrades with time. If your older phone has low memory space left, it will cause it to slow down. So with a large amount of cache build up in the device, it can eventually slow down instead of speeding up.
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To clear application cache for specific application head over to Settings, find the application, and tap it. From the next screen, turn on the option that says “Reset Cache on Next Launch”. Now the next time you launch the application IOS will clear the cache.
If you are still low on memory, then you might want to uninstall some applications to free up some space on your iPhone.
That is the main two ways you can optimize your iPhone. IOS is an incredibly optimized software and works pretty well on older iPhones. An important tip is to install the newest software version available. Also, keep in mind that devices do get slower over time, and you eventually have to buy a new one. If your phone cant performs the daily tasks, maybe it is time for an upgrade.