iPhone Battery Throttling Can Be Disabled Soon, Says Tim Cook

Apple has received a lot of flak over how it silently started to throttle the performance of iPhones with older batteries. While its reasons were technically sound, its communication could have been better. The company has bent over backwards to appease the masses, though not governments, and it apparently isn't done yet. In an interview with ABC News, CEO Tim Cook reveals that in a future update, users will be able to turn off the performance throttling if they want to, something uncharacteristic of Apple's user experience philosophy.

Apple recently introduced an update that somewhat covertly made older iPhone models run slower. When it was caught red-handed, Cupertino explained that it was for the sake of preventing random reboots due to the degraded health of the battery, which would no longer be able to hold the right amount of charge for more intensive tasks. Since then, Apple has been hit with criticism, lawsuits, and even a Senate inquiry into the matter.

Apple did apologize for the confusion and drastically reduced the battery replacement fee to make up for the blunder. It obviously isn't enough, so Tim Cook revealed a new feature that has never done before, on any phone or, more importantly, on any iPhone.

An iOS update coming in the next few weeks, in developer preview first, of course, Apple will give users insight into the health of their batteries as well as the performance throttling that it's doing. But perhaps even more surprising is that, according to Tim Cook, users will be able to turn that throttling off.

Apple is not exactly known for exposing the nitty-gritty details of iPhone performance. And it is even less known for giving users a choice for certain features. Cook, however, clarifies that they don't recommend turning it off anyway because what they're doing is ultimately for the benefit of the user. After all, Apple knows best.

SOURCE: ABC News (Skip to 4:27)