Apple just confirmed that it deliberately slows down older devices. Is there some truth to it or are they lying? Let’s find out below.

Planned obsolescence or planned protection?

Apple introduced a new protection mechanism for older devices starting from iOS 10.2.1 firmware.

What this does is, it downgrades the performance of devices with aging batteries. Apple does this deliberately in order to protect the device.

Worn out Lithium-ion batteries present in iPhone can’t handle peak loads constantly. This activates inbuilt protection mechanisms that automatically shut down the device to protect the hardware from damage.

This is precisely where this new feature comes in.

If your battery can’t supply the necessary amount of voltage, your device will throttle but it won’t shut down or kernel panic.

Before Apple dropped iOS 10.2.1, a lot of users iPhone 6s users were experiencing constant shutdowns and kernel panics.

However, things changed after iOS 10.2.1 and random shutdowns were fixed at the cost of performance.

Compatibility

This feature will now be present in all future iPhone models and will ensure that your device stays protected.

As of now, it is reserved only for older models that can still upgrade to newer firmware versions.

iOS 10.2.1 brought this feature to the following models –

• iPhone 6/6 plus
• iPhone 6s/6s plus
• iPhone SE

iPhone 7 and 7 Plus didn’t have this feature since they had ample amount of resources to handle that firmware. However, iOS 11.2 brings this feature to those devices as well.

Undoubtedly, it will again be implemented in iPhone X and iPhone 8 in the year 2018.

How can I speed up my iPhone?

Replace your battery

The only way to fix this performance downgrade is to get a new battery.

Generally, the Apple’s new “protection” feature only throttles your iPhone when the battery is about to die.

Therefore, if you experience throttling at, say, 4-50%, something is definitely not right with your battery.

Manual Overclocking 

Jailbreak tweaks like iOverclock 2 allow you to manually overclock your device.

Although this allows you to bypass the limits Apple imposes, it can also prove dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing.

This tweak is a bit too old now and we require a new tweak for iOS 10 and 11 versions.

My take

According to me, Apple must notify the users that they are throttling their smartphones. Doing something like this without informing the user only gives rise to weird conspiracy theories.

It’s the user’s device, after all, not Apple’s. Only users must decide whether or not they want to enable such a feature, even if it can be potentially harmful.

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