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Do you think Apple should've been more upfront about throttling iPhones with weaker batteries?

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By Daniel Petrov

Updated: Dec 22, 2017, 5:20 AM

Do you think Apple should've been more upfront about throttling iPhones with weaker batteries?

By now you might have heard about the brouhaha which resulted from Apple's acknowledgement that iPhones with aged or weaker batteries will take a hit in peak performance, in order to preserve their internals better. Today's lithium batteries are rated for a certain amount of charge cycles before they start degrading in terms of capacity or ability to provide peak current.

On the other hand, chipsets and other hardware are becoming ever more powerful and demanding, resulting in going over the fence when trying to extract stronger current from a weaker battery. This could result in phones employing shutdown procedures to safeguard the electronics in certain extreme scenarios. Last year, Apple remedied the situation with the iOS 10.2.1 update, smoothing out the peak battery demands by dispersing them over several quick cycles. Apparently that meant throttling the processor's power, and resulted in 80% fewer iPhone 6 shutdowns, Apple reported at the time.

The thing is, however, that it kept this power management system in the next iOS updates, too, so once the battery in your iPhone 7 ages enough, it will likely become a bit slower and less responsive unless you crack it open and change the power bank with a brand new one. That about sums up Apple's latest comment on the matter, so we wanted to ask you whether you think that the company should have warned users with iPhones two years and older that their devices might become slower due to processor throttling, unless they visit a service center to swap the battery. Cold weather gamers might have done it, the average user might not have bothered, but Apple could have given the option beforehand, what do you think?