You know how I can tell that Apple made that change not with the user in mind?
By the fact that until a 3rd party proved Apple was throttling older phones, Apple never publicly stated they were doing this. I’m fact, they vehemently denied it.
I saw this on a personal level, where my mother who took 2 trips abroad about a year apart, with the same phone (and she had a lot of disk space in both trips and she hardly installs any apps) found the phone an absolute pleasure to take pictures during the first trip, kept missing shots while waiting for the camera app to load in the second one.
And on taking the phone to the Genius Bar multiple times, she was gaslighted each time as the Genius showed her their diagnostic results which showed that no, her phone was in perfect health (minus a slight degradation in battery life).
Of course, a few months later the entire world learnt that, in fact, her phone had slowed down, and Apple was lying. What’s interesting is that Apple diagnostics tools (which should probably have a speed test?) also reported everything as being just fine.
Modern hardware can and should last ten years. Accept no excuses.
It was a measure to increase product longevity (e.g a slow phone was seen as better than a phone that shut off randomly when voltage dropped)
If this was such an altruistic measure why would the geniuses at the Genius Bar deny that my mothers phone had slowed down and throw diagnostic tests at our faces? Why was the exasperated Genius, who could clearly tell that the phone was slow indeed but his successful diagnostics meant there was nothing he can do, reduced to swiping up all the apps on the phone to kill them, when we both knew that if iOS was working properly that should do nothing?
My iPhone 5 got so slow and Apple was so unhelpful that I ended up replacing it. That was my first and last iPhone.
But even without Apple, that particular battery was pretty easy to replace
Also: users were not warned about this "feature", many (most?) didn't know why their phones slowed down, and there was no way to disable the behaviour.
And I already mentioned in my initial comment that they didn't notify users. That's what the lawsuit in France was over, the lack of notice. I believe an OS update did eventually let users switch off the behaviour, and view their battery health.
Looks like the 16gb model is now artificially made obsolete as well - you are supposed to buy the 64gb one.