If you have an iPhone 6 or greater, you are eligible for a $29 battery replacement. Normally Apple’s battery replacement service is $79. Apple has received some bad press about older iPhones slowing down. Here is Apple’s response.
Now let’s try to make sense of all that.
Rechargeable batteries degrade over time. Apple is saying that after 500 full charge cycles you should still have 80% of the original battery capacity available. If you use 50% of your battery today and then charge it back to 100% tonight. Then tomorrow you also use 50% and charge it back to 100%. That would be one full charge cycle. Most people will reach 500 cycles in a year or two, depending on how they use their phone.
Apple is also saying that as the battery ages, it can’t deliver the same peak energy load. Some applications or situations need more resources and will need more power. This could be using your phone while it is applying an update. Maybe you are looking at Facebook while streaming music. Whatever the case, an old battery cannot always keep up with the demand. It gets worse if the battery is low.
What happens to a phone when a battery gets old?
The phone might freeze or crash when it needs more juice from the battery and the battery can’t keep up. Obviously, that’s a bad thing. Apple’s answer is to slow things down so the phone needs less power. Basically, they are choosing stability over performance. Apple will let you disable this in a future release. If you’re an Android user, you don’t have to worry about this since Android doesn’t throttle the performance if you have an old battery.
What you can do about it
You have all of 2018 to get discounted battery replacement. If your battery does not hold a charge or it’s unbearably slow, then head to your local Apple Store for a replacement. If your phone is fine now, wait until later in the year to take advantage of this, but definitely, plan on replacing your battery this year while they’re discounting it. For other options, check out their Support Page.