Apple faced a whole lot of backlash from customers, combined with a bunch of lawsuits worldwide after the company was found to be slowing down older iPhones. It is no secret that older iPhones slow down as new iPhone devices or iOS updates are released, but Apple actually went ahead and confirmed everyone’s suspicions recently.

Today, the company is apologizing for poor communication and all the confusion regarding the issue. In a letter to its customers, Cupertino explained the reason behind older iPhones slowing down over time, and why exactly older iPhones tend to slow down over time. “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. 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 said.

The company is blaming the poor performance of older iPhones on batteries as they chemically age over time. Apple even detailed some of the factors that can contribute to the poor performance of your iPhone’s battery.

According to Apple, iPhones may unexpectedly shut down as their batteries age, and the company was able to tackle the issue by using a dynamic power management solution introduced with iOS 10.2.1 for the iPhone 6 and 6s line of devices. The company recently added the same feature to the iPhone 7 line with iOS 11.2 (that was notably released just a few weeks after the release of iPhone 8 and X), which causes reductions in performance to prevent unexpected shutdowns. But that can obviously degrade the experience for customers, who may be tempted to upgrade to newer iPhones due to the degradation of performance.

The solution? Well, Apple is taking a couple of steps to workaround the issue to basically make sure it doesn’t get involved in any more lawsuits:

• First, Apple is lowering the price of its iPhone battery replacement service by $50, from $79 to $29 for customers with iPhone 6 or later. So, yes, if you don’t want your iPhone to be sluggish, you’ll have to pay Apple $29.
• Second, Apple will release a new update to iOS that will give users more insights into their iPhone’s battery. You don’t have to pay for this one.
• And lastly, Apple engineers are working on improving its power management tech to prevent unexpected shutdowns on iPhones. Don’t be too surprised if that ends up being one of the features of the upcoming flagship phones.

Apple is trying its best to rebuild customer trust, but the company has a long way to go. New iOS updates have always proven to slow down older iPhone devices, even though the company continues to insist it never intentionally slowed down its devices to push customers to upgrade. But asking customers to pay $29 for improved performance on an already expensive product may be a bit too much.

Tagged with Apple, iOS, iPhone