It’s been all over the news. It would be harder to miss it than to see it: Apple is slowing down their older products. Immediately, and rightly so, iPhone users around the world started to question the morality of such a decision. Why would a company do something that is such a blatant attempt to get customers to dump their old phone in favor of a faster, newer, and more expensive phone? The answer is actually a little deeper than many phone-buyers might have seen, and that is Apple’s fault.

In reality, Apple is slowing down their phones simply to preserve battery life. Each iteration of the operating system takes more of a toll on the battery of the device that it is running on, and thus the speed of operations must slow down in order to accomodate for the old, withering battery. That doesn’t seem so bad, right? It turns out the evil company is actually trying to help you! But is it really so helpful to decide that the customers would rather have a slower phone instead of simply replacing the decaying battery?

This brings us right back around to the beginning of the argument: Apple is being sneaky and still trying to get you to buy a new phone instead of telling customers that the reason for their slow phones is actually the aging battery. Apple is forcing their customers to pay $1000 for the latest and greatest iPhone rather than paying $79 to replace the battery and give their phone a longer life at much faster speeds. So, the real reason every iPhone owner should be mad is because of Apple’s lack of transparency. If the company would have been honest, even from the first allegation, all of this trouble would have been solved.

So this begs the question, why aren’t companies like Apple more transparent? Apple wouldn’t have to do anything more than say that if their customers were having issues with the speed of their phone, or the battery life, they recommend purchasing a new battery. Sure, this means they won’t sell as many new phones, but goodwill with customers goes a long way and at the end of the day, high end phones are becoming more of a requirement to interact in the modern world.

With that being said, to suggest that the only option for a practically unusable phone is to buy a new one is absurd, especially when a battery replacement will solve most woes. Apple’s selfishness is forcing its customers to cut back on spending on other necessities of life to make an unnecessary extra purchase in an era where smartphones are of utmost importance.

People would be appalled if they had to buy a new laptop every year because it became slow and needed to be constantly tethered to an outlet. We should hold smartphone manufacturers to the same standard if prices continue to rise as they have.