In light of changes that Apple made to iOS in an effort to better handle battery health, the company has been saddled with accusations of throttling older models in an effort to get customers to upgrade to new hardware.
Apple’s issue came from the fact that it effectively rolled out the battery health management feature “in secret”, without any fanfare whatsoever. Since then, of course, Apple has been more transparent about the situation and its battery health management is now even present in macOS. But that’s not stopping some folks from going after the company for what they believe is nefarious intentions.
Tutorial: Mac battery health management: how to control this macOS feature
According to Reuters, Apple is currently the center of attention of a multi-state probe regarding iPhone throttling, which is currently being led by the attorney general in Arizona.
The report indicates that this probe has actually been an ongoing thing since October of 2018, with the end goal being to determine whether or not Apple “violated deceptive trade practice laws” when it started slowing down older iPhones. if this sounds somewhat familiar, it’s likely because it was just last week that we reported that Apple was the target of a multi-state probe regarding consumer protections. That report suggested the AG from Texas was leading that particular charge, but there weren’t a lot of details shared at the time.
In the ongoing probe since at least October 2018, investigators have asked Apple for data about “unexpected shutdowns” of iPhones and the company’s throttling, or slowing down, of the devices through power management software, documents Reuters obtained through a public records request showed.
It’s possible these two probes are the same. Neither the AG offices in Arizona or Texas would respond to a request for comment at the time of publication with the original report.
iPhone customers can better interact with the performance management system on their devices these days. The feature is disabled by default, but it will activate if the iPhone suffers an unexpected shutdown. And customers can disable it entirely if they wish.
Tutorial: How to assess your iPhone battery health and manage CPU throttling
The fact that this multi-state probe has been going on since at least 2018 suggests that it’s not going anywhere very quickly, but it’s possible a conclusion, or a move against Apple beyond just the initial probe, is forthcoming. We’ll keep you updated if anything new comes to light.