Apple iPhone Slowdown / Batterygate

Overview

Apple confirmed in 2017 that it deliberately throttled older iPhones through software updates — ostensibly to protect battery life — but settled multiple lawsuits over failing to disclose this.

Origins & History

For years, it was the kind of suspicion people voiced but could never prove. Every September, Apple would announce a new iPhone. Every October, the software update would arrive. And every November, millions of users swore their older phones had gotten slower. The conspiracy theory was simple: Apple deliberately degraded older devices through software updates to drive upgrades. It was whispered in forums, repeated in comment sections, and dismissed by Apple defenders as confirmation bias and the natural demands of newer software on older hardware.

Then, in December 2017, everything changed.

The chain of events began earlier that year. In February 2017, Apple released iOS 10.2.1, which the company said resolved a bug causing iPhone 6 and 6s devices to shut down unexpectedly. The shutdowns had been a genuine, widespread problem — batteries that had degraded through normal use could not deliver the peak power demanded by the processor, causing the phone to die abruptly even when the battery indicator showed remaining charge. Apple’s fix was to implement a power management system that dynamically throttled CPU performance when the battery was unable to meet demand.

Apple did not tell anyone it was doing this.

Throughout 2017, iPhone users continued to report that their phones felt sluggish after updates, and the usual debate played out online. But in December, John Poole, founder of the benchmarking software company Primate Labs (maker of Geekbench), published an analysis that transformed anecdote into data. Poole aggregated thousands of Geekbench performance scores from iPhone 6s and iPhone 7 devices and plotted them over time. The results were damning: devices running iOS 10.2.1 and later showed distinct clusters of reduced performance scores that had not existed before the update. The throttling was real, measurable, and widespread.

The story detonated across technology media on December 20, 2017. Within hours, Apple issued a statement confirming the power management feature and claiming it was designed to “deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices.” The company insisted it had never — and would never — intentionally degrade the user experience to drive upgrades.

The public was not persuaded. The timing was too convenient, the lack of disclosure too suspicious. Within weeks, over sixty lawsuits had been filed against Apple in jurisdictions around the world. Regulatory investigations opened in France, Italy, South Korea, and other countries. Apple’s stock price took a hit, and the term “Batterygate” entered the lexicon.

On December 28, 2017, Apple took the extraordinary step of slashing its battery replacement price from $79 to $29 for affected models — an implicit acknowledgment that whatever its intent, the rollout had been a public relations catastrophe. CEO Tim Cook later admitted in an interview with ABC News that Apple should have been “more transparent.”

Key Claims

• Apple deliberately throttled the performance of older iPhones through software updates to encourage customers to purchase newer, faster models — a textbook case of planned obsolescence
• The power management feature introduced in iOS 10.2.1 was designed to go undetected, with no user notification, no toggle to disable it, and no mention in update release notes
• The timing of performance degradation coincided with new iPhone release cycles, creating the perception (and reality) that older phones became slower just as new ones hit the market
• Apple’s battery replacement program and pricing structure were designed to make replacement inconvenient and expensive, steering users toward new purchases rather than repairs
• The practice extended beyond iPhones to iPads and other Apple devices, representing a systematic corporate strategy rather than an isolated engineering decision
• Apple’s initial defense — that the throttling protected user experience — was contradicted by the fact that the company concealed the feature rather than giving users the choice to accept reduced performance or replace their batteries

Evidence

This conspiracy theory is confirmed. Apple itself acknowledged the core factual claim — that it deliberately reduced the processing speed of older iPhones through a software update — making Batterygate one of the rare cases where the conspiracy was proven by the conspirator’s own admission.

John Poole’s Geekbench analysis, published December 18, 2017, provided the quantitative proof. The data showed that iPhone 6s devices running iOS 10.2.1 exhibited bimodal performance distributions — some scoring near the expected benchmark, others clustering at significantly lower scores. This pattern was absent in earlier iOS versions and consistent across thousands of devices, eliminating user error or individual hardware variation as explanations.

Apple’s December 20 public statement confirmed the power management feature and its mechanism: “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.” The company later extended the feature to iPhone 7 in iOS 11.2. At no point prior to the Geekbench revelation had Apple disclosed the throttling to users.

Regulatory investigations produced additional evidence. France’s Direction Generale de la Concurrence, de la Consommation et de la Repression des Fraudes (DGCCRF) investigated Apple for “planned obsolescence,” a specific criminal offense under French law since 2015. In February 2020, Apple agreed to pay 25 million euros to settle the French investigation — the first time a major technology company had been penalized under the planned obsolescence statute. Italy’s Autorita Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato fined Apple 10 million euros in October 2018 for failing to adequately inform consumers about the impact of software updates on device performance.

In the United States, a class action lawsuit consolidated as In re Apple Inc. Device Performance Litigation resulted in a $500 million settlement in March 2020, with Apple agreeing to pay $25 per affected device to class members. Apple did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement.

In response to the scandal, Apple released iOS 11.3 in March 2018, which included a Battery Health feature allowing users to see their battery’s condition and disable the performance management throttling if they chose. This feature — giving users the transparency and control that had been absent — effectively conceded the critics’ central argument.

Cultural Impact

Batterygate became the most prominent real-world confirmation of the planned obsolescence conspiracy theory, a suspicion that had followed consumer electronics manufacturers for decades. The revelation that one of the world’s most valuable companies had quietly slowed its products without user consent validated years of consumer frustration and reshaped public discourse about the relationship between technology companies and their customers.

The scandal had direct legislative consequences. France’s use of its 2015 planned obsolescence law against Apple drew international attention and inspired similar legislative efforts elsewhere. The European Union accelerated work on right-to-repair legislation, and in 2023, the EU adopted rules requiring manufacturers to provide spare parts and repair information for electronic devices. While the EU legislation was driven by multiple factors, Batterygate was consistently cited in parliamentary debates as evidence of the problem the law was intended to address.

In the technology industry, Batterygate forced a broader reckoning with transparency around software updates and device longevity. Google and Samsung implemented their own battery management features in Android devices but, notably, disclosed them publicly — a direct lesson from Apple’s experience. The incident contributed to the growing right-to-repair movement, which advocates for consumers’ ability to fix their own devices rather than being forced into manufacturer-controlled replacement cycles.

The cultural impact extended beyond policy. “Batterygate” became shorthand in consumer advocacy for corporate manipulation disguised as user benefit. It reinforced a broader narrative — that the devices people depend on daily are controlled by companies whose interests may not align with their customers’ — and gave concrete evidence to a suspicion that had previously been easy to dismiss as paranoia.

Sources & Further Reading

• Poole, John. “iPhone Performance and Battery Age.” Primate Labs (Geekbench), December 18, 2017. geekbench.com.
• Apple Inc. “A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance.” apple.com, December 28, 2017.
• DGCCRF (Direction Generale de la Concurrence, de la Consommation et de la Repression des Fraudes). Press release on Apple settlement, February 7, 2020.
• In re Apple Inc. Device Performance Litigation, Case No. 5:18-md-02827 (N.D. Cal.). Settlement approved March 2020.
• Autorita Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (Italy). Decision No. 27432, October 25, 2018.
• Cook, Tim. Interview with ABC News, January 2018.
• European Parliament. “Right to Repair: Making Products Last Longer.” Legislative briefing, 2023.