Have you ever noticed that throughout the life cycle of your iPhone, the iPhone battery starts to die earlier and the iPhone itself starts to run slower? Have you also noticed that up until recently, nobody was really talking about this? Well, you aren’t alone.
Recently, one user took to Reddit to express their frustrations about how badly the performance of their iPhone was becoming with age. This blew up. Fast forward a few weeks later, Apple comes out and says that they have been intentionally slowing down older models of iPhones but offers a solution to combat this. You may think that Apple slows down its older models just to cause its users to be frustrated with the slowness and while that may be very slightly true, there’s actually a better, more logical reason for them doing this.
Apple’s excuse is that there is an automatic system in place in all iPhones that intentionally slows down performance in an attempt to stop early breakage of the phone. I had mentioned that Apple has come out with an official statement about it, and this is what they said:
“Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices […]
Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions. We’ve now extended that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add support for other products in the future.”
For those of you who have no idea what any of that means, allow me to translate. When the iPhone 6 came out, they implemented a feature that lowers the overall performance of the phone the longer it’s in use so that down the line, it doesn’t just stop working out of nowhere.
So what’s the fix? Well, if you didn’t know, iPhones have begun being fitted with lithium-ion batteries. The only problem with these batteries is that over time, they deteriorate. A battery that degrades over time is a battery that causes slower performance of the phone. The simple fix would be to just get the battery replaced and just like that, your phone is as good as new. Here’s the catch, if you attempt to change the battery yourself, your warranty with apple becomes void. So instead of just paying for a new battery and fixing it to save yourself some money, you have to go to Apple and pay for both the battery and the labor.
Welcome to capitalism folks.
If you liked this article, why not learn more about Apple and iPhones are up to these days here.
