Teen exposes iPhone slowdown
APPLE was forced to apologise yesterday after a teenager found that the tech giant was slowing down older iPhones.
Pupil Tyler Barney, 17, discovered that poorer performance was linked with the phones’ lithium-ion batteries when it took seconds longer to type on his iPhone 6s.
With the new iPhone X costing £999, customers fear they are being forced to upgrade to a later model.
But Apple bosses, while admitting they were curbing the performance levels of older devices, said they had now introduced software changes to protect the battery.
The Californian company issued a rare apology, insisting it was not trying to force owners to upgrade.
Tyler, 17, from Tennessee, is being credited with discovering the suspected ploy after noticing problems with his iPhone 6s and testing it against his brother’s iPhone 6 – which is an older model but a year younger than his.
He said his brother’s phone was noticeably faster.
After doing some online research, Tyler came across a suggestion to replace the battery in his phone which improved the performance.
He said: “It worked and after that I made a post about it so I could let people know how they can speed up their phone.
“Your phone takes too much power for the battery to handle when your battery gets old.”
Tyler’s post on message board website Reddit went viral and led to Apple’s admission of “throttling” some of its phones.
Tyler said: “A lot of people are kind of blaming Apple saying ‘I feel so betrayed’ but the more I looked into it, the more I found this was basically inevitable, whether it be Android or iPhones.
“Hopefully this little bit of fame I have can get me a scholarship or a job or something.”
Tyler’s mum Laura Blevins said: “It’s the most rewarding feeling in the world as a parent to see your child blossoming and seeing their talents recognised by the world.
“It’s great to get a major corporation like Apple to acknowledge that he was correct in his theory. I am just really proud of him.”
A new iPhone battery costs £79 but Apple says it is slashing the cost for replacements by £37 in the US. However, it is yet to announce a similar move in Britain.
Apple could face billions in legal fees as customers launch lawsuits.
The company said in a statement: “We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down. We apologise. There’s been a lot of misunderstanding about this issue, so we like to clarify and let you know about some changes we are making.
“First and foremost, we would never do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades.
“Our goal has always been to create products our customers love and making iPhones last as long as possible is an important part of that.”
Earlier this month Apple admitted it had made software changes to manage ageing batteries, performance over time.
James Vlahakis of the Sulaiman Law Group, representing customers in Chicago, said: “Apple’s failure to inform customers that these updates would wreak havoc on the phone’s performance is being deemed purposeful and, if proven, constitutes the unlawful and decisive withholding of material information.” lithiumion claiming decreases