After Apple admitted to slowing down older iPhones, the company tried to calm frustrated customers by dropping the price of out-of-warranty battery replacements from $119 to $39. Unfortunately, even that discount came with a catch, because unless your phone’s battery failed a diagnostic test at the Genius Bar, you wouldn’t actually be eligible for a cheaper replacement battery.
Naturally, this led to a lot of confusion among people simply trying to improve their phone’s performance by swapping in a new power pack. According to an internal Apple Store memo found by French tech blog iGeneration, however, it seems Apple is doing away with the diagnostics requirement and making its battery replacement fee the same price across the board. MacRumors reports that it has confirmed the change with Apple.
Now, anyone with an iPhone 6 or newer should be able to walk into an Apple store and have the battery in their iPhone replaced for $39, regardless of whether their phone’s battery health has degraded past 80 per cent or not.
For people who paid the full $119 to replace their battery before Apple’s new replacement policy went into effect last Saturday, iGeneration reports that you may be able to get a refund from Apple for the difference.
To check the health of your battery, you can either head over to a nearby Apple Store, or contact Apple support on the phone or online and have a representative test it remotely.
At this point, if you’re worried about your iPhone being throttled and if your device is more than a year old, it’s probably worth shelling out $39 for a new battery. But if you’re just looking for more info, check out our little guide to get a better idea of how screwed your iPhone might be, and to find out what you can do about it.
We’ve reached out to Apple for comment and will update this post when we hear back.