It’s for your own good, apparently

Noticed that your old iPhone suddenly got a burst of speed in benchmarks after replacing its old battery? It’s not just you – Apple has apparently been deliberately throttling and slowing down older iPhones. But it’s not in a bid to make you buy a new phone: according to the firm from Cupertino, the move is to prevent older devices from suddenly shutting down. Here’s their official explanation:

“Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6S and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions. 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 gist of it is that if an iPhone tries to draw more power than the battery is capable of doling out, the phone will suddenly shut down. To prevent this, Apple deliberately slows down older phones and the rate that they consume power, since their older batteries can’t keep up with the demand.

So if you notice your old iPhones slowing down, before doing that upgrade try swapping out its battery first to see if that helps.