Apple is ACTUALLY SLOWING DOWN older iPhones; but it’s all for a good reason… or is it?

Geekbench benchmarks run by a certain John Poole has shown that older smartphones like iPhone 6s and iPhone 7 do get slower over time. The data is represented by a graph that shows that more devices are scoring less than the average scores obtained when the devices were launched. Futuremark has also sent us some of their data, and we do see that iPhones do actually get slower over time.

After some prodding from TechCrunch, Apple responded with a statement that the slowing down is indeed a feature and not a bug. Typical, eh? But no, they didn’t exactly say that. This “feature” is added to extend the usability of the older iPhones. As the lithium-ion batteries age, they will lose their ability to deliver the power needed by the CPU for peak performance. Therefore by lowering the CPU’s performance, they can lower the power demand, and thus prevent older devices from shutting doHmmwn unexpectedly.

This feature has already been added to the iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE last year, and the iPhone 7 has just received this feature with iOS 11.2. So yeah, Apple isn’t trying to ruin your beloved iPhone’s performance just to make you buy a new phone. Just throw in a new battery, and you will be fine. Like this guy on Reddit.

What do you think of this feature? Would you rather have a device that is consistently slow, or one that might suddenly shut down without warning? Let us know in the comments section!

Pokdepinion: I think Apple could have done better. They should at least have a notification that tells you that your device is now incapable of the performance it once was, so users are at least warned. Would fast charging wear out the batteries faster in the latest iPhones?