On Thursday, June 16, a consumer rights advocate in the United Kingdom filed a claim accusing Apple of deliberately slowing down older iPhone models to force users to purchase a new ones.
The iPhone maker is now facing a £750 million or $918 million lawsuit.
Apple Faces Lawsuit in the UK
According to Mashable, consumer rights campaigner Justin Gutmann said that Apple "throttled" the performance of older iPhone devices after the tech giant advised the users to download upgrades.
Apple assured the consumers that downloading the upgrades would boost their iPhones' performance, but the exact opposite happened.
Gutmann added that the upgrade slowed down the iPhones because it was created specifically for newer models.
However, Apple did not inform its consumers that the battery of older iPhone models can't meet the demands of newer operating systems.
Now, 25 million iPhone users are complaining about their devices and how the tech giant misled them. Gutmann is suing the Competition Appeal Tribunal for $918 million on behalf of the consumers.
The controversial upgrade was launched in 2017, the same year the French regulators fined Apple $26 million for not telling its consumers that the updates may cause older models to slow down.
The owners of the following models are now seeking compensation: iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus, iPhone SE, iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X.
According to Newsable, Gutmann believes that the tech giant did not warn its consumers on purpose about the effects of the upgrade.
The tech giant also never offered a free replacement, repair service, or compensation to consumers who were affected by the upgraded software.
Gutmann said that by not disclosing the effects of the software upgrades, the iPhones of affected consumers got delayed 58%, thus reducing their performance.
Apple Responds
Immediately after the lawsuit was filed, Apple released a statement denying the allegations. An Apple spokesperson said the company "would never do anything to purposefully reduce the life of any Apple device."
But in 2017, Apple was forced to apologize to the French authorities for the same issue. At the time, the tech giant offered to replace batteries at a lower cost and allow its consumers to disable the power management feature manually so that the upgrade won't go through.
The software upgrade issue that allegedly slowed down iPhones, also known as the "Batterygate," has followed Apple since 2017.
According to NPR, the company was sued in other countries for the same issue for years.
In 2020, Apple was ordered to pay $500 million to owners of older iPhones in the United States.
The tech giant was hit with several fraud lawsuits in more than 30 states in the country, including California, Tennessee, Arizona, and Pennsylvania.
The settlement called for the iPhone maker to pay its consumers $25 per iPhone, though some had already spent hundreds of dollars on new devices.
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This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Sophie Webster
