Is your old iPhone feeling a little bit slower than it used to? It might not just be down to the number of apps, music tracks and videos you've loaded onto it.

Apple customers have long suspected that the company deliberately slows down older versions of the iPhone, to encourage them to upgrade to the latest model.

Now Apple has admitted that it does throttle performance on some iPhone models - but not for the reason many people assume.

Rather than a ploy to get people to upgrade, the tactic is used to smooth out the very high and quick peaks of power draw that can cause problems with older batteries.

"Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices," an Apple spokesperson said in a statement.

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Apple said the feature is only applied in cases of extreme high or low temperatures, low charge or an aged battery, and was designed to protect the internal components of the phone.

The news comes after tests by Geekbench, a tech watchdog that measures smartphone performance, revealed that Apple was deliberately limiting the performance of its gadgets.

"I believe (as do others) that Apple introduced a change to limit performance when battery condition decreases past a certain point," wrote John Poole from Geekbench in a blog post earlier this week.

Apple iphone 6
Apple iphone 6

The company tested iPhone 6 and 6s models from 2014 and 2015 that many users had been complaining about. It found that the phones experienced notable slowdown after Apple issued a software update earlier this year.

The Geekbench team concluded that performance can be regained by replacing the phone's battery with a new one. However, this requires significant technical know-how, as Apple uses non-removable batteries inside its iPhones to keep them as thin as possible.

Poole surmised at the time that Apple's decision to limit the iPhones' performance was not a cruel trick to get customers to upgrade, but an attempt to stop them shutting down unexpectedly.


"This fix will also cause users to think, 'my phone is slow so I should replace it' not, 'my phone is slow so I should replace its battery'. This will likely feed into the 'planned obsolecense' narritive."