You’ll soon be able to disable Apple’s iPhone throttling feature

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iPhone-8
iOS 11 will likely land on most people's iPhones in March.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

With Apple facing mounting pressure, Tim Cook has revealed that a future iOS 11 update will let users disable the feature that was causing their iPhone to throttle performance.

In an interview with ABC News, Cook said that, “We’re going to give people the visibility of the health of their battery so it’s very, very transparent. This hasn’t been done before.”

Cook said that the update will be released to developers next month, before a wider public rollout after that. Following Apple’s regular release strategy, this means that the update will ship to most users some time in March.

Apple’s iPhone slowdown controversy

Apple previously admitted to issuing a software upgrade for iOS which caused older iPhones to slow down. However, Apple has said that it did this to prolong the life of their lithium-ion batteries, rather than anything intended to push users to upgrade. In particular, Apple was responding to cases of random iPhone shutdowns among those customers with older batteries (which typically meant older iPhones.) The software update was designed to even out performance so as to avoid the random shutdowns which took place during periods of high battery activity.

Apple’s new solution will keep the slowdown option (which, for most users, it makes perfect sense to have enabled), but give those who want it the chance to disable. “If you don’t want it, you can turn it off,” Cook told ABC News, but suggests that this is not recommended.

It’s not clear whether Apple will introduce any other solutions to avoid random iPhone shutdowns for those who disable the feature — but, even if another workaround exists, Apple would surely be sensible not to do anything that could be be construed as another attempt to throttle iPhone performance.

A major PR headache for Apple

As a make good on Apple’s recent PR nightmare, the company recently notified customers that it will reduce the price on out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacements by $50, putting the cost at just $29. The offer covers anyone with an iPhone 6 or later whose battery needs to be replaced. Customers can take advantage of the new price starting later this month. It will be available worldwide until December 2018.

This hasn’t stopped a slew of lawsuits and other investigations, though. Countries including Brazil, South Korea, China, and France have all questioned Apple about its decision making. Meanwhile, in South Korea, 370,000 individuals — or the equivalent of one out of every 138 people who live in the country — have signed up to join a class action suit against Apple.

Source: ABC News

Via: The Verge

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