Have you noticed that your older iPhone 5s, iPhone 6 or iPhone 7, or any version of iPhone you own, has become noticeably slower?
Many reports on various forums suggest that iPhone owners are complaining that their iPhones are getting slower and they hold Apple responsible because this has started happening since the launch of the new iPhone 8 and iPhone X.
It seems that Apple is slowing down older iPhones to force its users to switch to the iPhone 8 or iPhone X, which are reportedly very expensive!
This isn't the first time Apple has done this. Apple has been accused of "planned obsolescence," making older iPhones less useful in order to force owners to upgrade. Similar complaints have been made since the launch of the latest release of the iPhone operating system, iOS 11. The latest version of iOS 11 does not support older iPhones, rendering them obsolete. Many believe that Apple is doing this to market its special edition iPhone X, which is the most expensive iPhone ever released.
Google had also reported a sudden spike in searches like "slow iPhone" or "iPhone is getting slow" ahead of the new model's launch, suggesting that a large number of iPhone users have started experiencing problems with their phones even before the launch of the iPhone 8 and iPhone X.
As mentioned above, the company has been accused of doing this before. This is called “planned obsolescence” in technical terms, where a company slows down its product so that the consumer is forced to buy a new, more expensive one. Apple consumers had already formed an online consumer group to combat this threat. Last year, the group accused the company of issuing software updates to slow down the performance of older models, thereby forcing users to consider buying a new model.
Harvard University researchers conducted a study on Apple's planned obsolescence after numerous reports. Surprisingly, the study showed that it could be a psychological phenomenon that iPhone experience every time Apple releases a new iPhone. iPhone owners are subjected to a lot of advertising messages about the new models, which makes them believe that their old iPhone has slowed down.
Since there's nothing wrong with the older iPhones they use, the desire to buy the latest models manifests itself as anxiety about the performance of the older model. They tend to pay a little more attention to performance when a new model is about to be released.
While there may be some truth to the Harvard study, who can explain why Apple released iOS 11 just before the release of the iPhone 8 and iPhone X. iOS 11 doesn't support many older iPhone models, so this can't just be a psychological issue.
