Technology giant Apple is trying to rebuild trust with its disgruntled iPhone users who are frustrated by the slow performance of their old devices.
The company has issued an apology after complaints and is now offering a large discount on replacement batteries on older iPhones.
Anyone with an iPhone 6 can now get the battery replaced for just £25, whereas, normally it would cost £79.
All you have to do is book an appointment with the Genius Bar in the Apple store – our nearest being in Bath. A specialist will then run some tests on your iPhone to see how your battery is currently running and if you decide to go ahead and have your battery replaced they will do so that day for you.
Some iPhone users had been so frustrated by their devices’ performance, they accused the company of deliberately slowing down older models with a software update so they would be forced to buy newer ones – something Apple has flatly denied.
However, it did issue an apology to customers for the way it communicated the issues surrounding older iPhones and it has come up with the battery discount in a bid to regain the trust customers who may have doubted Apple’s intentions.
It also issued the iOS 11.3 software in March to give users more visibility about the health of their batteries.
Apple blames the slowing down of older models on components of the rechargeable batteries chemically ageing and their ability to hold a charge diminishing over time. They have even published a detailed support page that contains more information about batteries and how they age.
Apple insists in its statement that it took precautions using software updates over a year ago “to avoid unexpected shutdowns on iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s , iPhone 6s Plus, and iPhone SE”.
This has since been extended to users of iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus in software updates, Apple says.
Therefore, they were apparently surprised that it had received reports of iPhones slowing down and other battery issues from users.
The statement says, “We began to receive feedback from some users who were seeing slower performance in certain situations.
“Based on our experience, we initially thought this was due to a combination of two factors: a normal, temporary performance impact when upgrading the operating system as iPhone installs new software and updates apps, and minor bugs in the initial release which have since been fixed.
“We now believe that another contributor to these user experiences is the continued chemical ageing of the batteries in older iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s devices, many of which are still running on their original batteries.”
Earlier models, such as the iPhone 5, 5S and 5C are not covered by the reduced price for a battery replacement and reduction is only available to customers until December 2018.
