Apple to Reduce Cost of Replacement Batteries and Improve User Communication of Battery Issues ⇥ apple.com

Apple:

To address our customers’ concerns, to recognize their loyalty and to regain the trust of anyone who may have doubted Apple’s intentions, we’ve decided to take the following steps:

• Apple is reducing the price of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement by $50 — from $79 to $29 — for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later whose battery needs to be replaced, starting in late January and available worldwide through December 2018. Details will be provided soon on apple.com.

• Early in 2018, we will issue an iOS software update with new features that give users more visibility into the health of their iPhone’s battery, so they can see for themselves if its condition is affecting performance.

• As always, our team is working on ways to make the user experience even better, including improving how we manage performance and avoid unexpected shutdowns as batteries age.

Apple’s PR strategy tends to err on the side of silence. This time, that bit them in the ass, at least initially; but, this is a fantastic response. To my eyes, it ticks the boxes of every complaint I had, with the exception of its timeliness: I don’t see anything here — with the possible exception of the reduction in battery replacement costs — that Apple could not have said back when they first released the 10.2.1 software update.