Tech giant Apple is reportedly planning to add iPhone 6 Plus to its list of vintage and obsolete products on December 31, limiting the support options that owners have.

       Apple's stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers will still offer repairs, subject to the availability of parts, reports MacRumors.

       The iPhone 6 Plus was discontinued in 2016, the smaller iPhone 6 remained available through select retailers in select regions until at least 2018 and will not become a vintage product until later.

       Both models were powered by the A8 chip which was built by TSMC (replacing Samsung Foundry) using the 20nm process node. The A8 contained two billion transistors.

       Compare that to the current A15 Bionic which is built by TSMC using the 5nm process node and contains 15 billion transistors.

       To recall, both the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus lost software support in 2019 with the release of iOS 13.

       Earlier, Apple added the very first 12-inch MacBook to its list of vintage and obsolete products.

       The 12-inch MacBook from 2015 was added to Apple's list of vintage and obsolete products on June 30. The device's addition to the vintage product list comes about six years after the laptop was first launched.

       Obsolete products are those that have been discontinued for more than seven years.

       Obsolete products are not able to receive hardware service from Apple technicians or Authorized Service Providers, with "no exceptions".

       --IANS

       wh/pgh

       (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)