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Comment by 0x5f3759df-i | Hacker News Reader

From what I heard, the encryption was having a very noticeable impact on performance.

I tried encryption on my HTC One M7, currently running 4.4, and performance was sufficiently bad to make the phone barely usable. Then I needed to factory-reset the phone to turn encryption off.

Interesting. I wonder why the iPhone doesn't have the same issue?

Apple controls the entire hardware stack on an iPhone

At the very least, iPhone 6 is ARMv8-A, so has AES instructions.

Because iPhones have had encryption hardware since the 3GS (2009).

"Data protection is available for devices that offer hardware encryption, including iPhone 3GS and later, all iPad models, and iPod touch (3rd generation and later)."

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202064

This should be a hardware requirement imposed by google then.

this is the most likely scenario. The reality is most people notice and care about performance. The majority of people don't care about privacy and encryption. Its still available to those that want it.

And everyone will think they're secure anyway, since Google got lots of press for announcing they'll encrypt everything. Win-win for Google!

Yes, but only because it wasn't backed by hardware-accelerated encryption (like the iPhone is).

I feel like this is mostly Qualcomm's fault, but also Google's for announcing a product (FDE) that wasn't actually fully ready to come to market (typical half-assism from Google, I would say).

This pisses me off because many people now might not want to use encryption anymore even when it does get hardware accelerated and the issue is solved, because of all the articles that "encryption slows down your Android devices" Google has caused to appear now.

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