Apple's new battery replacement program basically doubles the performance of at least some older iPhones, early adopters of the companies new program are finding.
"I did the Apple battery warranty for my iPhone 6 for $35," says Sandy Pell, a corporate communications manager at Vidyard, a Canadian tech company. "Just saying ... it's way faster."
Apple recently instituted the new battery replacement policy for just $29 in the U.S., and $35 in Canada, in response to widespread complaints about slowdowns in older phones. The company says the slowdown was a power management strategy to avoid sudden shutdowns in situations with older, degraded batteries.
While some are seeing 20-30% speed boosts, Pell's phone basically doubled test scores on Geekbench, a speed benchmarking app.
Before the upgrade, Geekbench scored her phone at 784 for single-core and 1,379 for multi-core performance.
After the upgrade?
1,551 for single and 2,669 for multi-core -- a massive change.
(Modern phones have multi-core processors for improved performance, but not all applications use multiple cores. Higher scores mean better, faster speeds, although they may not translate exactly to perceived real-world performance.)
Even more impressive: Pell tested her phone at low battery, just 18%. That's precisely the condition at which Apple says her previous older battery would have forced the system to slow down and conserve energy.
Her husband Steve also participated in the cheap battery renewal program, and experienced similar results: close to double the speed.
That may not be everyone's experience -- some people are reporting more modest 20-30% speed improvements with the new batteries.
But with the new Apple program that offers a new battery at a fraction of the cost of standard replacement, it's likely worth a try. However, you'd better hurry: the program appears to be so popular that Apple is running out of some battery models.
