IPhones battery scandal: Need to know

Details about Apple's throttling strategy began emerging last week after a user on Reddit described problems with a slow iPhone 6s. While many iPhone users have experienced perceived slowdowns due to iOS updates over the years, it appears that there's now proof Apple is throttling processor speeds when a battery capacity deteriorates over time. Bogdanovich has gone on record in the paperwork as saying that the company's method of slowing performance in older phone models in order to converse battery life was never something that users ever had a say in or agreed upon in any way.

Last year, Apple released an iOS update with a better power management capability.

For the iPhone 7, scores were pretty much identical across iOS 10.2.0, iOS 10.2.1, and iOS 11.1.2.

Apple said it wanted to "prolong the life" of customers' devices.

The company said its software updates for the iPhone 6, iPhone 6S, iPhone SE and iPhone 7 are created to "smooth out" peak power demands, prevent these surprise shutdowns and ultimately prolong the lifespan of batteries.

My own iPhone 6 experienced the auto-shutdown problem that Apple was addressing at times before I eventually upgraded, and a fix for that would've been welcome.

"I used my brother's iPhone 6 Plus, and his was faster than mine?" Apple is now reportedly admitting it's intentional as a phone becomes outdates.

Apple claims that Poole's results are attributable to a year-old feature that prevents certain iPhones from "unexpectedly shutting down" when their batteries aren't supplying "peak current" - something that can happen "in cold conditions", on "a low battery charge", or "as they age over time".

If you've got an older phone and want the best performance, consider getting a battery replacement done - $119 at Apple Stores, and you'll find other "mobile doctors" offering the service cheaper I'm sure. "Check your Geekbench scores and see what you get if your phone is still slow". "We've now extended that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add support for other products in the future", the company said in a statement.

Doron Myersdorf, CEO of instant-charging battery startup StoreDot, told CNN Money the "smoothing out" means that phones will reorder incoming commands to make sure they're not all done in parallel. The system works by limiting power drain on older batteries, batteries with low charge and when in cold environments.

He suggests Apple offer rebates or make it easy for consumers to buy new batteries.