They were throttling CPUs to literally extend the life of the phone. They did it so your phone could still run reliably with an old battery which would otherwise need to be replaced.

So they were “fixing” a problem they caused. CPUs wouldn’t need to be throttled if batteries could be more easily replaced.

And theoretically, if this was the case, why isn’t there an option to throttle? It is the user’s device. And why wasn’t it used to help lengthen the battery life of the new phones? I certainly would prefer throttling my CPU to lengthen battery life.

There literally is an option to toggle the throttle once the battery is degraded, and the feature did/does exist on new phones, even today. Go and read the wiki on batterygate.

> Note a year ago they settled a lawsuit about throttling CPUs with updates on older iphones for the same purpose.

Why do people spread this sort of stuff? Apple have never settled anything related to a “play” to intentionally shorten the lifetime of a phone.

Batterygate extended the life of individual handsets with degraded batteries that were out of warranty. These handsets were rebooting due to the battery until Apple brought out an update that throttled them after the next brownout, and replacing the battery brought the handset back to full speed. Why go to all that trouble if you wanted to sell another phone?