Apple has recently issued an apology and a technical explanation over their battery’s function. The issue with the iPhone battery was covered in many stories and also lawsuits that concern old iPhones batteries and their degradation. The letter says, “First and foremost, 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.”
The letter was issued after a series of Reddit posts discussed how iPhone batteries get worse over time. As a result of these posts, a blogger on Geekbench John Poole mapped out the battery performance of iPhone 6 and 7 over time. According to that, the phone not only slows down but also faces unexpected shut down while increasing frequency. As the phone degrades, people tend to think that the slowing down is caused by the CPU performance instead of the battery performance.
Poole says, “This fix will also cause users to think, ‘my phone is slow so I should replace it’ not, ‘my phone is slow so I should replace its battery’. This will likely feed into the ‘planned obsolescence’ narrative.” Apple’s letter also includes a brief technical explanation of how and why rechargeable batteries degrade. The chemicals used to charge batteries, age and degrade over time. Apple believes that the continued chemical aging of the batteries in older iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s devices that are still running on original battery is the reason they are aging and degrading.
Apple also issued few tips on how to keep batteries more effective. The company is taking two steps to make amendments to the users who feel cheated by the company. One is offering a price reduction for out of warranty iPhone battery replacements from $29 to $79, for anyone who has an iPhone 6 or later and needs to replace the battery. They will also update the iOS that will give the users more visibility into the health of their iPhone’s battery.
Back in 2015, iPhone was named as the most profitable product in the history of the free market. The company has been selling a huge number of its flagships since its debut. But if the customers will stay angry at the issue, it would not serve the business well.
