Apple CEO Tim Cook Says Future iOS 11 Update Will Give Option to Disable iPhone Performance Throttling

In the midst of facing a shortage of replacement batteries for older iPhone models, Apple CEO Tim Cook has said that in an upcoming iOS 11 update will allow users to disable battery performance throttling on their devices. The move is likely to overcome the slowdown issue that was acknowledged by the Cupertino giant last month. To recall, the company also started compensating affected users by reducing the prices of replacement batteries, but that development eventually pushed a major supply problem that is yet to be addressed.

In an interview with ABC News, Cook stated that Apple is preparing an iOS 11 update that directly addresses the battery-related slowdown and battery health issues. It will arrive first through a developer release next month, presumably iOS 11.3.

Cook said the iOS update will give people complete visibility about the health of their iPhone's battery, something that has been said earlier - in Apple's public apology for not communicating its decision to throttle iPhone performance. He added, that if users so desire, they will also be able to turn off throttling, but of course, it's not recommended.

"We're going to give people the visibility of the health of their battery, so it's very, very transparent," Cook said in the interview, adding, "This hasn't been done before." The Apple CEO went on to say, "In the situation, in which we will tell somebody, saying we're reducing your performance by some amount in order to not have an unexpected restart. And if you don't want it, you can turn it off. Now, we don't recommend it, because we think people's iPhones are really important to them, and you never can tell when something so urgent. Our actions were all in service of the user, I can't stress that enough. Maybe we should have been clearer at a point in time, but our actions were always the purest."

You can check out the complete statement starting from 4:30 in the below video interview.

Cook's statement certainly highlights Apple's concerns towards the iPhone slowdown issue that was first spotted in some findings released by performance testing app Geekbench. Just days after the issue got an official confirmation, the iPhone maker faced some lawsuits and mass-level consumer outrage from countries around the globe. The company responded the criticism with an apology letter and dropped the price of out-of-warranty battery replacements. However, the reduced battery prices have brought supply issues. The iPhone 6 Plus replacement batteries are particularly said to be in short supply until March.

The update is expected to first come through the next iOS developer beta that will be available in February. A public release based on the new beta version will debut in March. It may answer all the ongoing questions about the features improving the performance of older iPhone models.