Apple slowed down old iPhones to stop them crashing — and never told anyone

In an iOS update pushed in late 2016 and expanded through 2017, Apple began throttling processor performance on iPhones whose batteries had degraded enough to risk sudden shutdowns under peak load. Apple's stated goal was to keep aging phones usable rather than crashing mid-task. The company did not disclose the feature at launch or explain it in any release note a typical user would see.

Users noticed their iPhones getting slower after updates and, without an official explanation, concluded their phones were simply wearing out — a common and profitable assumption for a company that also sells new phones. When outside benchmarking in December 2017 confirmed the throttling was deliberate and tied to battery age, the story broke as 'Apple slows down your iPhone to sell you a new one,' regardless of the actual, defensible engineering reason.

Apple apologized, cut the price of an out-of-warranty battery replacement from $79 to $29 for a limited period, and added a battery-health screen in iOS 11.3 letting users see degradation and disable throttling manually. But the damage was done: more than 60 consolidated class-action lawsuits followed in the US, and regulators in France and Italy separately fined Apple for failing to disclose the practice.

Apple settled the US class action in 2020 for between $310 million and $500 million, roughly $25 per eligible device, without admitting wrongdoing. France's competition authority fined Apple €25 million in 2020, calling the lack of disclosure a deceptive commercial practice. The episode became shorthand — 'batterygate' — for a defensible technical decision destroyed by the choice not to explain it.