Ever thought your iPhone 6 was slower than it used to be? Well, it may not be in your head. Recently, Apple admitted that they purposely slow down old iPhones.  It has been a relatively well known fact that as the years, even months pile on your iPhone, the battery life, performance, and the overall speed can decrease. People have also found that even the new updates that our phones get incessant notifications that slow the performance.

It makes sense: you think “The phone is getting older, I guess it can’t work as well as it did when I first bought it.” Therefore, the delays in typing messages and waiting for apps to load, though annoying, get swept under the rug.  

This was initially met with outrage by Apple’s consumers, until they explained that they do it to protect your phone. As the lithium-ion batteries in the phones age, they can’t handle processing demands at the same capacity, which causes the phone to shut down unexpectedly. The company released an update to stop those unexpected shutdowns which also means the phones work a little more slowly.  

“Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices. Lithium-ion batteries become less capable of supplying peak current demands when in cold conditions, have a low battery charge or as they age over time, which can result in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components.

“Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions. We’ve now extended that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add support for other products in the future,” the company stated.

What started as a post on Reddit by one of its users turned into a public confession by Apple, along with a discount to replace the batteries in iPhone 6’s and later generations. When your phone needs the battery changed, you can go to your nearest Apple store and get a replacement.

Though their explanation makes sense, that hasn’t stopped the public from coming up with conspiracy theories of their own. The most popular being that Apple purposely slows down older phones to force consumers into buying the newer models, otherwise known as “planned obsolescence.” This isn’t that far fetched, considering Nintendo had a similar scandal with taking away wifi connectivity on older consoles in order to sell their newer ones.

However, none of this is officially confirmed. The data on Apple slowing down older iPhones doesn’t necessarily mean the conspiracy theory is true. A relatively recent change to its operating system prompted the slowdowns, but the system update demonstrates why the conspiracy theory keeps circulating. After all, it took an independent investigation by an expert and a viral Reddit post to get Apple to admit what had happened.

“With this large of a sample size, I’m confident the numbers we have produced are accurate, and also the fact that Apple has verified…it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling that we didn’t screw up our analysis,” said the Reddit user who made the initial post.

Whether you believe the conspiracies or not, we now know, for a fact, that our phones have been slowed intentionally.