Apple's Apology for Intentionally Slowing Down Your iPhone Will Cost You

Mustafa Gatollari - Author
By

PUBLISHED Dec. 29 2017, 10:17 a.m. ET

UPDATED Nov. 18 2019, 2:15 p.m. ET

cover iphone
Source: getty

There's a dirty little secret in the tech industry and it's called planned obsolescence.

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It's a business tactic commonly implemented by tech companies and for huge cell phone manufacturers, it's a big part of their sales model.

Don't you ever notice how after the 18-month to two-year mark, your phone starts to inexplicably slow down? Sure, you follow tips and tricks to bring your phone back to that fresh-out-the-box fastness that you experienced during the honeymoon phase of your new device, but that only does so much.

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It seems with every update on your shiny device, your phone is being intentionally slowed down, but that would be crazy, right? I mean a company wouldn't be so evil as to sell you a $600+ product that's only designed to be totally usable for 2 years. 

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Well, as it turns out, that's precisely what Apple was doing, and the Cupertino-based tech giant even admitted to it.

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Users flocked to the internet to prove that older models CPU speeds were being clocked at lower numbers, and they compared numbers and uploaded the screengrabs online.

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In the above user's case, his iPhone was operating at less than half of its out-of-the-box speed.

People were obviously angry and felt betrayed by the manufacturer. 

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While others felt like their suspicions all this time have been rightfully confirmed.

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Apple gave its reasoning for slowing down the older models: battery preservation.

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Which means that if you want your iPhone to work like it did the day it came out of the box, you'd need to replace the lithium ion battery in order to do so. 

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People wanted to know just why the heck Apple didn't let users know about this in the first place, because it's kind of a huge problem.

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Which didn't sit well with a lot of people.

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Many thought it was a shady way of Apple keeping information away from customers, which influenced them opting for a new phone upgrade rather than just fixing a tiny component on a device they already shelled out a ton of money for.

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Let's be honest, there are tons of us out there who've purchased new phones because they "got slow", even if they weren't always that way.

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So here's Apple's attempt at making things "right" for basically lying to its consumers about a huge concern iPhone users have had for years: the tech manufacturer is offering $29 battery replacements for older models at its Apple stores for the next year.

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That's a $50 drop in its usual price and seems like a bargain, but it doesn't change the fact that people are still feeling a bit back-stabbed by the practice.

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Sure, there are some iPhone users who believe that the way the company managed battery life was kinda cool.

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But it is kind of strange that you'll receive a million alerts about purchasing iCloud storage and setting up your Apple Pay and freeing up space on your phone, but no alerts that your battery is degrading an affecting phone performance.

Will you be replacing your battery for the new reduced cost? Or do you think Apple should be replacing them for free?

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