Apple apologized for slowing down iPhones with older batteries without disclosing the practice to customers until last week.
In a public letter, the company said, "We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down. We apologize."
Apple said it will cut the price for iPhone battery replacements, from $79 to $29 for customers with an iPhone 6 or newer model starting in January 2018. The company also said it will update iOS in early 2017 with a new feature that lets users get a reading of their battery's health and decide if they need to replace it. Replacing an iPhone's battery with a fresh one should keep it running at normal speed.
The apology letter goes on to describe how lithium-ion battery technology works. In general, lithium-ion batteries used in smartphones like the iPhone degrade over time. This is caused by a variety of factors like extreme temperatures and numerous charging cycles. Eventually, the batteries can't hold as much charge as they did when they were brand new.
Apple's letter says the company decided last year to manage how much power the iPhone draws from older batteries in order to prevent unexpected shutdowns. But the public didn't find out about it until some iPhone owners used an app called Geekbench to test the speed of their iPhones. Geekbench wrote a blog post about the issue, and Apple admitted it was intentionally slowing down some iPhones with older batteries a few days later.
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