'Following reports that seemed to confirm a long-standing conspiracy theoryabout Apple’s various smartphones, the company surprised many by publicly admitting they are indeed purposefully slowing older iPhones. Their reason is to prevent battery issues and to avoid other issues with phone performance. While this doesn’t fully confirm the idea that Apple is slowing down iPhones to push you into buying the newest version, it does work out that way due to the company not offering an inexpensive way to replace an older battery.
As noted in the earlier reports and Geekbench 4 tests, replacing an aging battery in the iPhone made the phone run smoother and with more speed than without the replacement. This raised a few alarms on Reddit and eventually prompted Apple to release an official statement later on Wednesday confirming that they added software to the phones to manage the battery output and performance as the devices age according to CNET: