Apple: newest iPhones sport hardware features that allow for better battery management

iPhone X, iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus reportedly include unspecified hardware features designed to address battery health issues and allow for better performance management.

The Verge perused Apple’s public response to questions from Senator John Thune, released today, finding a line that appears to suggest that the newest iPhone models feature unspecified “hardware updates” that allow for better performance management.

This sounds like iPhone X, iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus might not need to throttle their CPUs as their batteries age in order to avoid random shutdowns, like we saw with iPhone SE and the iPhone 6/6s/7 series. Apple today seeded a second beta of iOS 11.3 to developers which provides the promised new battery health and CPU throttling features.

Asked whether it would release a similar software update for newer models, Apple said:

iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X models include hardware updates that allow a more advanced performance management system that more precisely allows iOS to anticipate and avoid an unexpected shutdown.

As The Verge observes, Apple’s response doesn’t say that it won’t release a CPU-throttling iOS update for the newest iPhones, but it certainly implies that it won’t.

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In its letter to Congress, the Cupertino company also raised the possibility of offering rebates to customers who previously purchased full-price iPhone batteries.