Apple has issued a long letter of apology to iPhone owners, a few hundred million people around the world, to respond to the controversy of recent weeks around the systems it uses to slow down its smartphones in case their battery is gone. worn out and not stable enough to ensure normal application operation. In addition to explaining the technical reasons behind the choice, Apple announced that for a good part of 2018 owners from iPhone 6 onwards will be able to get a discount of 60 euros for the replacement of their battery, spending only 29 euros for an original replacement instead of classics 89.
Last week, Apple admitted to slowing down older iPhones under special circumstances, after a developer noticed drops in processor power and performance if the battery was dead or a few years old. From his analysis it was found that iOS, the operating system of the iPhone, intervenes to reduce the peaks in the energy demand to prevent the battery from becoming unstable and causing the smartphone to suddenly shut down. Apple later confirmed the practice, receiving much criticism for adopting it without users' knowledge. Inaccurate articles and posts on social networks had also contributed to distort the facts, reinforcing the common belief in many that the new versions of iOS are designed specifically to slow down older iPhones, in order to incentivize the purchase of newer models. , the so-called “planned obsolescence”.
Faced with the growing amount of criticism and some lawsuits initiated in the United States, Apple preferred to respond with the letter published late yesterday afternoon, Thursday December 28 (in Italy it was night). The company starts from an assumption that it obviously cares a lot, given the cliché around its iPhones:
First of all, we have never done anything – and never would – to intentionally shorten the life of an Apple product, nor would we do anything to reduce the user experience in order to incentivize them to move to a new model. Our goal has always been to create products that our customers love, and making sure iPhones last as long as possible is an important part of all of this.
As all smartphone owners know, the battery is the most wearing part of the entire phone. The continuous charge / discharge cycles and the use of the smartphone itself lead the chemical compounds of the battery to be damaged, making it less stable and above all less efficient in maintaining the charge and managing consumption. The problem affects all smartphone manufacturers and is one of the reasons why many companies, such as Apple and Samsung, spend hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development every year to design batteries that are more efficient and wear out less over time. Since the attempts so far have not been very fruitful, manufacturers have begun to introduce changes to their operating systems, to compensate for the hardware deficiencies on the software side.
Without reporting it, about a year ago Apple introduced a new battery control system via the iOS 10.2.1 update, which affected the older models of its smartphones: iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus and iPhone SE. When the processor and other components are in a peak phase, that is, they require a lot of energy in a very short time to perform an operation, iOS intervenes to slow them down and make sure that the energy request is spread over a longer period of time (let's talk in any case of fractions of a second). In this way the peak is attenuated and the battery receives less stress: it remains more stable, for example preventing it from stopping working suddenly, causing the iPhone to suddenly shut down.
In the months following the update, Apple had noticed a significant improvement and a reduction in sudden shutdowns of smartphones. For this reason, in the second half of the year it had introduced a similar system also for the most recent iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, considering that the first models sold were now over a year old and their battery was starting to wear out.
As many experts have explained, Apple's solution has been very helpful in making older iPhones more reliable, but the company is paying for not communicating anything to users for nearly a year. By Apple's own admission in the apology letter, it was its customers who reported having slower iPhones in some circumstances:
Based on our experiences, we initially thought that the problem was due to a combination of two factors: a normal, and temporary, performance impact of updating to the new version of the operating system, while the iPhone is installing new software. and individual app updates, and a minor bug that was later fixed.
We now think that the continued aging of batteries on older iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s, many of which still run on their original batteries, contributed to the problem.
For this reason, and to respond to the numerous criticisms and the damage to image, Apple has decided to discount the battery replacement from the iPhone 6 by 60 euros, “in order to reward the loyalty of our customers and regain the trust of all those. who have questioned the intentions of the company. The replacement plan will be launched in the first weeks of next year worldwide and will be available until the end of December 2018.
Furthermore, in a few weeks, Apple will release a new iOS update with a tool to have more accurate diagnoses on the status of your battery, in order to understand when and if iOS should intervene to keep it stable, preventing the phone from suddenly turning off. .
These changes, and especially the discount to change the battery, should allow Apple to recover the image damage, even if not everyone is convinced. The story of the slowed iPhones derives from a technical problem, complex and inevitable, difficult to explain to the less experienced and which in the simplifications in the media has reinforced the cliché: “Apple slows down old iPhones so you buy a new one”.
The subject of planned obsolescence exists, but it is on a different scale and concerns the inevitable trend in technology (and not only) to produce more and more powerful devices, which can handle more complex software better than previous models did. As a result, you need to purchase a new model to use the latest features. In the case of Apple, there was much talk of planned obsolescence in 2013, when iOS 7 was introduced, an operating system that changed many things from the previous version and that caused a marked slowdown in older iPhone models, making them in some cases almost unusable. That update helped fuel more than anything else that Apple was deliberately slowing down older devices to sell new ones. In reality, even economically, things are more complex than that.
Apple makes significant profits not only from smartphone sales, but also from applications that can be purchased on its App Store. The company therefore has a vested interest in maintaining a very large base of iPhone owners, active and interested in spending money on apps, ebooks, movies, the Apple Music streaming service and storage. iCloud online. If the lifespan of iPhones were purposely limited, many users would be less likely to buy another iPhone, given how short the first one lasted.
The same statistics on the use of the various models around the world dispel, at least in part, the myth about the low longevity of Apple's smartphones. IPhones 6, which went on sale more than three years ago, continue to be the most popular – 21 percent of all active iPhones around the world. This is followed by the iPhone 6s (18 percent) from two years ago and the iPhone 5s (12 percent) from over 4 years ago. It is not known how many of these devices were sold in the years following their presentation, nor if they still work with the original battery or if they have been replaced, not necessarily with an original spare.
Perhaps the most important element in Apple's apology letter is the implicit acknowledgment that the service approach for iPhone batteries is not adequate. The company has admitted that the battery is the component that consumes the most, so there may be new technical and commercial solutions in the future to address the problem and extend the life of their iPhone.
