Apple begins discounted battery replacement program in S. Korea

Four days after tech giant Apple announced a discounted battery replacement program in the U.S. amid criticism that it intentionally slowed down older smartphones, its Korean unit on January 2 pledged a similar scheme for local customers.

The iPhone slowdown controversy actually began gaining momentum with a Reddit post which proved that an older iPhone would get faster if the battery was replaced. "The service for domestic consumers will be the same as the United States and all models released after the iPhone 6 will be covered under the scheme", said Apple Korea.

To its credit though, after hearing feedback, Apple has moved to address people's concerns in an open letter that not only explains its actions and what it plans to do to improve battery-related issues in 2018, but also directly reduce the replacement cost of iPhone 6 and new phones from £79 down to £25.

But the battery issue sparked criticism that Apple had abused the trust of its users.

Apple recently confirmed that it was slowing down some iPhones that have degraded batteries.

The iOS 10.2.1 update had tweaks to downgrade the processor's performance on iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE devices.

That said, we must acknowledge that "battery-gate" may not affect the die-hard Apple fans who swear loyalty to the brand. By not recognizing the battery-related performance problems earlier, Apple also basically acknowledged that it doesn't test new releases of iOS on iPhones with older batteries. They have until December 2018 to take advantage of the drop. "Maybe this will serve as a positive lesson to Apple about the value of openness and transparency - things it has long lacked". The damage has already been done! Very unprofessional behavior. It is like a virus attack on the device.