In recent times, the iPhone Battery Life has become an issue of contention. Over the years, some iPhone users have complained that their older iPhones slow down when new iPhones are released. They say the iPhone battery life slowly becomes unmanageable thus affecting usage. It is believed that this mostly happens after Apple software updates. The iPhone battery life saga started with a Reddit post then John Poole the founder of Geekbench developer seized the opportunity and released some damning statistics from the data of a performance test on iPhone 6 and 7 devices. According to the data, Apple uses a throttling mechanism for its devices from the introduction of iOS 10.2.1 to 11.2.0 updates.
Observers mostly thought this to be some kind of conspiracy theory. However, over the Christmas holidays some interesting facts emerged, Apple admitted to purposely slowing down older iPhones!
Now, this brought up lots of questions, are the conspiracy theories true? Not quite.
Here’s Apple’s statement/explanation on the iPhone Battery Life:
“Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices. 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.
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”.
However, from Apple’s explanations, they are not really slowing the older iPhones so that users would upgrade to newer iPhones. Instead, the tech giants were addressing issues concerning older lithium-ion batteries which had resulted in the phone’s unexpected shutdowns. It was discovered that the older iPhone battery life was affected. This was as a result of the batteries being incapable of handling peak current draws. So the phones were inadvertently shutting down to avoid internal component damages.
Apple’s explanation makes sense because it’s obvious that as the iPhone battery life degrades, the phone’s ability to achieve peak performance becomes hampered. While some may argue that the older iPhones should not be upgraded to maintain the performance. However, if that becomes the case, the phones will miss out on; new features, security updates, and won’t run new apps.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Apple could do better to make its consumers understand the benefits of routine battery replacement. This will help since they make it hard to open or repair the iPhones. Also, it’s noteworthy to state that Apple has slashed the price of iPhone 6 and later batteries from $79 to $29 a $50 discount. This is to help users easily access new batteries. So if you notice your iPhone 6 (or probably 7 soon) slowing down, get yourself a new battery for $29 now.