Apple will let you check your iPhone battery health, control performance slowdowns with future iOS 11 update

Apple recently found itself in dire straits after admitting that it intentionally slows the performance of iPhones to make an appropriate ecosystem with the ageing batteries. The company, however, clarified later that the iPhone slowdowns weren’t meant to motivate users to buy the newer iPhone models. Apple received a huge backlash even after, and it had to apologise and slash the price of replacement batteries for iPhones. Apple CEO Tim Cook has now revealed that the company may come up with a new feature that will allow users to check their battery health and reduce CPU performance in future iOS 11 updates.

In an interview with ABC, Cook said that Apple is planning to release a software that will allow iPhone users to look at the health of the batteries and that they will be “able to even turn off and turn on the CPU throttling”. He said that this feature will be released in the iOS 11 developer release next month. “We’re going to give people the visibility of the health of their batteries,” Cook added. Emphasising on increasing the user experience, Cook said that “this has been never done by Apple or any other smartphone brand.”

In an interview with ABC, Cook said that Apple is planning to release a software that will allow iPhone users to look at the health of the batteries and that they will be “able to even turn off and turn on the CPU throttling”. He said that this feature will be released in the iOS 11 developer release next month. “We’re going to give people the visibility of the health of their batteries,” Cook added. Emphasising on increasing the user experience, Cook said that “this has been never done by Apple or any other smartphone brand.”

Besides, Apple will inform iPhone users if the performance of their iPhones is going to be slowed down by the company and if a user doesn’t want that he “can turn it off”. “We don’t recommend it because we think that people’s iPhones are really important to them and you never can tell something is so urgent”.

Apple CEO further explained that the company’s focus was on the ‘user experience’, which is why the code responsible for causing the slowdowns was released to prevent unexpected and random iPhone restarts. However, the people may not have ‘paid attention’ to the reason that the company gave behind the iPhone slowdowns, he pointed out. “Maybe we should have been clear as well. We deeply apologise to anyone who thinks we have some other kind of motivation,” Cook told ABC.

In December last year, after a Geekbench report revealed that Apple brings down the performance of iPhones with older batteries, Apple came to the forefront to justify this move. It said that this is done intentionally so that the iPhone with older batteries can be maximised to offer good performance and prevent abrupt shutdowns. Apple had to further apologise for this and consequently reduce the price for replacement batteries from $79 to $29 (India prices were also dropped via authorised Apple resellers). According to a Bloomberg report, Apple’s offer to cut the replacement battery prices can hamper the sales of new iPhone devices by ‘millions of units this year’.