Next iPhone software update will allow users to disable intentional slowdown

Apple CEO Tim Cook.[Photo: VCG]

Apple has announced plans to allow iPhone users to decide for themselves whether to slow down their phones' performance to extend battery life.

Apple's next iOS update will be more transparent about the health of the phone battery, Apple CEO Tim Cook said during a recent media interview.

"We're going to give people the visibility of the health of their battery, so it's very, very transparent. This hasn't been done before," Cook was on-record as saying. "We will tell somebody 'We're slightly reducing your performance by some amount in order to not have an unexpected restart.' And if you don't want it, you can turn it off."

However, Cook doesn't recommend consumers to opt out.

The next iOS update will be rolled out to developers next month, and an update for users will follow.

Last month, Apple apologized to consumers for deliberately slowing down the performance of older iPhones, following longterm suspicion among users that the tech giant was doing so in order to get consumers to upgrade to new phones.

However, Apple claimed at the time that the slowdown was a power management feature to prevent older phones from shutting down suddenly due to their aging batteries.

"We deeply apologize for anybody that thinks we had some other kind of motivation," Tim Cook said in a recent media interview. "Our motivation is always the user."

The California-based firm said the slowdown could be resolved by upgrading to a new battery, promising it would temporarily cut the price of battery replacements for the iPhone 6 and later to 29 U.S. dollars starting in late January. The price will go back up to the usual 79 dollars in 2019.

The photo shows a new iPhone 7 smartphone on the day of its release in London, September 16, 2016. [Photo: VCG]

Apple is facing regulatory probes in several countries due to the slowdown feature.

A number of people in the U.S. have filed lawsuits against the tech firm and are seeking class-action status in which one person will sue the company representing a group of disgruntled consumers.

Earlier this month, a French prosecutor launched an investigation into Apple over alleged deception and planned obsolescence of its products following a complaint by HOP, a French consumer organization.

Under French law, companies risk fines of up to 5 percent of their annual sales for deliberately shortening the life of their products to spur demand to replace them.

In Israel, a 125 million U.S. dollar class action lawsuit was filed against Apple in December, accusing the company of breaching its duty toward users.

In China, which is home to around one-third of global iPhone users, a government-backed consumer organization sent a letter to Apple earlier this week, asking the company to offer an explanation and remedy to the slowdown problem.

Apple has officially responded to the Shanghai-based organization at this point.