Apple announces $29 battery replacements starting today
It's been a rough month for Apple.
The company has been embroiled in a controversy stemming from its decision to purposely slow down older iPhones to increase battery performance. Apple issued an apology to its customers for the miscommunication, and it also promised to replace affected batteries starting in late January.
Now, Apple is going a step further by making discounted battery replacements available immediately.
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Starting today, Apple is lowering the price of iPhone battery replacements from $79 to $29. The company had promised this deal when it first issued its apology on Friday, but the company just updated its website to remove mention of the "late-January" start date for the program.
If you visit the official apology page now, you'll see this message:
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, available worldwide through December 2018. Details will be provided soon on apple.com.
In a statement sent to Mashable, an Apple spokesperson confirmed that the deal would be available starting today and added:
"We expected to need more time to be ready, but we are happy to offer our customers the lower pricing right away. Initial supplies of some replacement batteries may be limited.”
This is exciting news for anyone who owns and iPhone 6 or later model that might be experiencing battery issues. If you decide to take advantage of the program, we'd recommend making an appointment with the Genius Bar through the Apple website before going straight to the store. You should also call ahead to make sure they have batteries in stock for your replacement.
This deal is pretty spectacular considering its only a fraction of the normal price. Frankly, we don't see why you'd pass it up if you have an older phone with poor battery life. But that still doesn't mean that Apple is in the clear.
Apple is currently battling more than a dozen lawsuits relating to the battery issue. It also doesn't exactly make up for the fact that Apple failed to disclose the practice to begin with. As for whether customers continue to trust Apple remains to be seen, but if sales numbers are any indicator, we imagine the company will be just fine.
