Apple is making good its promise of fixing aging iPhone batteries performance, following a disastrous lawsuit late December that sought to compel the company to stop slowing down old devices.
Apple came out and not only confirmed that indeed they do slow down older iPhone but also gave a public apology. However, the company said the purpose of slowing down your old iPhone was not meant to make you buy their latest iPhone. But was meant to provide you a smooth performing iPhone, since as the battery ages, they cannot supply consistent power to the phone’s hardware. To prevent arbitrary shut down when the phone demands too much power and the battery fails to supply that instantaneous power.
Well, Apple will let your iPhone perform at its optimum level regardless of the fact that the battery inside is aging. To that effect, Apple has issued a new battery health information and control to the iOS 11.3.
Now you have two options, you can take your old iPhone to an Apple Store near you and get your aging battery replaced at a subsidized cost, or you can use the battery performance patch the company issued to fix the problem. You can actually take both options together.
However, the battery performance patch is only available to users with devices running iOS 11.3 beta 2. If you don’t have it on your iPhone, you can still download it and install the developer or public tester of the OS at this link; though it’s recommended for developers and early beta testers.
How to disable iPhone battery throttling
Once you got the latest version of iOS 11.3 running on your iPhone, go to Settings, tap on Battery > Battery Health (Beta). You should see two measurements:
Maximum Capacity – shows your phone’s battery capacity relative to when it was new
Peak Performance Capability – shows battery healthy during peak performance
We are interested in the Peak Performance Capability feature. Check to see if the text underneath it is reading as ‘normal,’ if so, you have nothing to worry about; as your iPhone performance is not being throttled.
On the other hand, if your iPhone cannot read the status of your battery, you will find no battery percentage under the Maximum Capacity section, and you will get the suggestion that you should take your iPhone to the next Apple Store for repair.
If your iPhone has ever experienced at least one forceful shutdown because of battery performance. The settings will automatically activate Performance Management. It will have a bluish ‘Disable’ link in the text beneath Peak Performance Capability.
iPhone models which performance could be throttled include iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone SE, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 7, and iPhone 7 Plus. Latest models like iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X will not have the ‘Disable’ option, as the fix has already been implemented in their hardware.
To stop the performance throttling, just tap the ‘Disable’ link. When you do so, you will be alerted that “you have manually disabled performance management protections.”
Caution: Once you tap on Disable, there is no going back! When you disable performance throttling, by tapping on the ‘Disable’ link, there will be no way to reverse it manually. It will take another iPhone battery shutdown for the ‘Disable’ to activate itself again.