I literally never understood this problem. Yes the battery isn't easily replacable by the user, but literally just pop into any nearby apple store, it's £69 and you get a new battery fitted in about 30 minutes. Are people who say that the only option is to buy a brand new phone just......uninformed? Unable to do this for some reason? I just don't get it. I wouldn't be able to swap the battery in my car either, but I don't go around saying that the only option is to buy a brand new car when the battery dies - I go to a workshop and they replace it. How is a phone any different?

Before they got caught Geniuses weren't recommending $100 battery replacements. They were recommending new phones because the old one was "too slow". And that "nearby" Apple store can literally be hours away.

And the problem is that Apple was considerably undersizing the battery compared to rivals and then compensating by throttling the CPU once it aged.

I've never not had an extremely disappointing experience with Apple Geniuses. Absolutely horrendous support. Completely incompetent people running down a script.

That said, I've had two trusted Apple Premium Partners that I would go to when I was still an Apple user and they were an absolute delight. Unfortunately back then I was living in a major city in Germany with tons of Premium partners, so nowadays that I don't really have a homebase and only have an iPhone I don't really know where to go for competent support.

Not everyone has the privilege of having an apple store at walking distance.

Sure, in which case at least here in UK Apple will send you a prepaid shipment label and you get the phone back within few days. It still doesn't sound to me like "buy a new iphone" is the better and/or only choice.