Replace iPhone Batteries For Free- US Senate Leader
The iPhone slowdown controversy surrounding Apple doesn’t appear to be fizzling out anytime soon. Ever since Apple came out and admitted to intentionally slowing down older iPhones, the consumers have been fuming over the decision. Even though Apple changed its battery replacement policies and brought charges down to US $29 (from US $79), the company has not yet won the trust back of the majority of its consumers.
The chairman of the US Senate’s commerce committee wants Apple to clear the air surrounding its once-secret slowdown of older iPhones. Senator John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, issued his request for more information in a letter sent to Apple CEO Tim Cook. Among other things, Thune wants to know if Apple made any effort to notify its customers that its recent software updates would make several types of iPhones released before 2017 slow down when their batteries weakened.
Thune also asked whether Apple considered replacing the batteries for free, instead of the current discounted charge of US $29. In the letter, he has also asked about Apple’s future plans of handling ageing batteries and whether performance throttling will continue in older iPhones.
To tackle battery ageing in a more efficient way, what Apple does for older iPhones is it caps the processor power to prolong the age of the battery. This is a is a lithium-ion chemistry issue, not an Apple or any other OEM issue. Over time, batteries just become bad. This is an attempt to make people’s phone work for longer with fewer issues, not to get them to switch away from it.
These changes will not affect the average performance of a device, and it is not throttling; it is capping the peak demands. In doing so, it is not allowing them to be as high and spreading that work out over more cycles rather than one.
