(Mirror Daily, United States) – Apple Inc has just confirmed a conspiracy theory that claims older iPhone models are being purposely slowed down for a dubious reason.
According to a recent statement from the company, older iPhones have been indeed slowed down via an upgrade in order to prevent damage to their electronics.
Apple explained that as Lithium-Ion batteries age they tend to degrade and are less able to cope with the processor’s increased demand for power. When faced with spikes of power drains, older handsets tend to restart to prevent hardware damage.
However, Apple silently fixed this problem with older iPhones by throttling performance. A slower processor tends to not drain so heavily the battery, which prevents the phone from restarting.
Yet, users were not pleased with the company’s decision as they weren’t given enough options.
Apple Admits to Slowing Down Older iPhones
Apple admitted that the conspiracy theory about the iOS slowing down older handsets and iPads is true. But the move had a noble purpose: to prevent the old devices from being damaged.
The company rolled out the secret “power management” fix in 2016, which is the year many iPhone users reported their iPhone 6 and iPhone 7 models seemed slower than usual. The fix apparently partially solved the issues with abrupt shut-downs when the iPhone’s processor was running at maximum performance.
Many users are displeased, though, because they weren’t asked if they wanted their phones to be throttled. Plus, there’s no way of turning off the fix, and Apple took the decision behind users’ backs.
What’s more, the tech giant had no intention of making the fix public ever. It had to admit that the urban myth of slower iPhones was correct after an app developer noticed the problem. Some users now want the power management feature to have a turn-off switch from the Settings menu.
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