A
week after it was first revealed Apple was slowing down older iPhones,
ostensibly to stabilize performance, the company has succumbed to mounting
pressure and, as an apparent gesture of goodwill, is offering owners of an
iPhone 6 and later models a battery replacement for $29 — a limited-time $50
discount.
You
are likely familiar with the rumor that Apple throttles older iPhones in an
effort to make users resort to buying new devices. Of course, Apple maintains
that’s not the case and it offered a statement regarding why iPhones may
struggle as they get older.
Apple
confirmed it slowed down older iPhones in an effort to better handle the power
output that aging batteries can offer. Some users were upset. So much, in fact,
that several lawsuits have been filed against the company.
“Defendant
breached the implied contracts it made with Plaintiffs and Class Members by
purposefully slowing down older iPhone models when new models come out and by
failing to properly disclose that at the time the parties entered into an
agreement,” reads a lawsuit filed by Wilshire Law Firm on behalf of Stefan
Bogdanovich and Dakota Speas. The pair are seeking both California and
nationwide class action status for their suit, according to a report from TMZ.
Apple
Insider has reported that attorneys on behalf of Keaton Harvey have filed
another suit against Apple. The class-action suit alleges that the company’s
decision to slow down old iPhones “allowed Apple to conceal the true nature and
scope of the battery defect and to avoid expending time, money, and effort on
correcting it.”
The
suit requests that Apple notify owners about changes to the OS, repair the
flaws in the software that led to the throttling, and reimburse those who
bought affected iPhones.
In
light of the suits, on Thursday, December 28, Apple released an apology for the
confusion surrounding battery and performance issues. In its apology, the
company stated “we have never — and would never — do anything to intentionally
shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive
customer upgrades. Our goal has always been to create products that our
customers love, and making iPhones last as long as possible is an important
part of that.”
Apple
also promised to release a software update in 2018 that will allow users to
better monitor battery performance and health on their devices. Additionally,
it stated it will reduce the price of battery replacement on all iPhone 6
phones and later to $29 for the next year.
Recent
throttling accusations first appeared a couple of weeks ago, when a Redditor
shared Geekbench results take right before and right after the battery in an
iPhone 6S was replaced. According to the Redditor, who goes by the name TeckFire,
the iPhone performed as much as 20 percent better after the battery
replacement.
After
the Reddit post, John Poole, who founded Primate Labs, offered a more
visualized look at the link between battery health and iPhone performance.
Benchmarking tests were performed on iOS 10.2.0 and 10.2.1, and show some
pretty serious differences in performance. Apple introduced an update in iOS
10.2.1 aimed at fixing an issue where some iPhone 6S models shut down, thanks
to uneven power delivery from older batteries in the phones. That power
management feature is what was causing the performance dips on some iPhone
models.
According
to Apple, there is a good reason for the performance dip.
“Lithium-ion
batteries become less capable of supplying peak current demands when in cold
conditions, have a low battery charge, or as they age over time, which can
result in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic
components,” Apple said in a statement to TechCrunch.
In
other words, when an iPhone’s battery gets older, it becomes less capable of
delivering enough power to the processor during a peak of performance, and when
that happens it has to spread out the power requests over a few processor
cycles. The result of that is a dip in performance.
That’s
what is triggered when benchmarks are run — they look like performance peaks
and valleys to an operating system, and as such on older batteries the power
requests will be spread out. Upgrade to a new battery, and power will be delivered
much more effectively.
It’s
not all that surprising. As a battery ages, it stops working as well. That has
always been the case and likely always will be. That doesn’t mean that the
average performance of a device is being affected, nor does it mean that Apple
is throttling your phone to make you upgrade. OF course, Apple could have been
a little more transparent — a simple notification telling users that their
battery is getting old and that they may see a performance dip because of it
would go a long way. That lack of notification may be a serious point of
contention when and if the new lawsuit ever gains ground.
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