Though it seemed like an planet-shattering scandal at the time, the great “Apple is purposefully slowing down older iPhones” saga only lasted about 10 days in December of last year. In those 10 days, Apple admitted that it was slowing down some phones (supposedly to reduce strain from newer, more taxing apps), angry customers filed lawsuits against Apple because they believed the company was trying to scam them into buying new phones, and then Apple announced that it was drastically slashing the prices of replacement iPhone batteries so angry customers could just get new batteries if their phone had become too slow.
Now, Apple has announced that it’s taking another step to win back the goodwill of customers who were definitely just going to buy new iPhones eventually anyway, with ABC News reporting that Apple CEO Tim Cook has announced that the next iOS update will let users disable battery slowdown. Of course, as Apple has continued to note, the slowdown is designed to protect aging phone batteries and it doesn’t recommend shutting the feature off. That means it’ll partly be on you if your old phone suddenly catches on fire when you try to go on Twitter—though that would probably be for the best anyway.
The Verge expects the iOS update to be available to the public in March.
