Apple just published a letter to customers apologizing for the “misunderstanding” around older iPhones being slowed down, following its recent admission that it was, in fact, slowing down older phones in order to compensate for degrading batteries. “We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down,” says the company. “We apologize.”
Apple says in its letter that batteries are “consumable
components,” and is offering anyone with an iPhone 6 or later a battery
replacement for $29 starting in late January through December 2018 — a
discount of $50 from the usual replacement cost. Apple’s also promising
to add features to iOS that provide more information about the battery
health in early 2018, so that users are aware of when their batteries
are no longer capable of supporting maximum phone performance. This is a
significant change in attitude around iPhone batteries — a decade ago,
when the first iPhone came out, Apple said most iPhone users would never need to replace their batteries.
iPhone owners have long believed Apple artificially slows
down older phones to drive new sales. But the new information from
Apple about performance management poured gasoline on that
long-simmering frustration, leading to a lot of bad press and multiple lawsuits. What made it all seem worse is that the scope of the performance penalty only came to light after being discovered by a developer instead of being clearly disclosed by Apple.
The iPhone 6, 6S, SE, and 7 have much slower peak
performance as they get older and their batteries aren’t able to provide
as much power to the processor. Apple had actually announced this change to performance
along with iOS 10.2.1 a year ago, as the fix to a problem with the
iPhone 6 that caused unexpected shutdowns if older batteries couldn’t
provide enough power to the processor. But it wasn’t transparent about
the performance penalty, and the new benchmarks suggest the penalty is
much more significant than previously believed.
For its part, Apple continues to insist that it’s never
artificially slowed down phones — just that it’s aggressively managing
phone performance to maximize the lifespan of iPhone batteries. “This
feature’s only intent is to prevent unexpected shutdowns so that the
iPhone can still be used,” according to a new knowledge base article Apple published
alongside today’s letter. “This power management works by looking at a
combination of the device temperature, battery state of charge, and the
battery’s impedance. Only if these variables require it, iOS will
dynamically manage the maximum performance of some system components,
such as the CPU and GPU in order to prevent unexpected shutdowns.”
Processor speed is just one piece of the battery- and
performance-management puzzle, according to Apple: iPhones with older
batteries may also more aggressively dim their screens, have lower
maximum speaker volumes, and even have their camera flashes disabled
when the system needs more peak power than the battery can provide. But
other core features, like the cell radio, GPS, and camera quality,
aren’t affected, Apple says. The whole approach actually quite clever,
but cleverness isn’t a great substitute for speed.
In any event, Apple has a long way to go rebuilding trust
with its customers — this story broke well past the tech press and hit
TV morning shows and local news with zero nuance about “smoothing
instantaneous peaks” and battery chemistry degradation. A lot of people
already believed that Apple slowed down their iPhones, and this wave of
news was a big data point confirming that for them. It’s going to be a
difficult road back.
In its letter, Apple says “we’ve always wanted our
customers to be able to use their iPhones as long as possible.” If Apple
is serious about that, and equally serious about the battery being a
consumable, these first two steps are just the beginning of a major
reset in the way we think about maintaining the most important devices
in our lives.