Is Apple slowing down its phones on purpose?

Reddit has been abuzz with rumours that Apple has deliberately slowed down older phones to force users to upgrade to newer versions.

But a recent report by TechCrunch says there is no truth to the rumours.

Apple is focusing attention on smoothing out the very high and quick peaks of power draw that can cause problems with older batteries, the report says.

The company responded with the following statement after it was inquired about the power profile that people were seeing when testing iPhones with older batteries:

“Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices. Lithium-ion batteries become less capable of supplying peak current demands when in cold conditions, have a low battery charge or as they age over time, which can result in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components”.

“Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions. We’ve now extended that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add support for other products in the future.”

Apple added power management to all of its phones to “smooth out” the peaks by either placing a cap on the power available from the battery or by spreading power requests over several cycles.

According to TechCrunch, the company will continue to add the ‘smoothing’ to more devices to avoid shutdown issues, freezing, and other problems.