Millions of iPhone users could be entitled to payout over slow battery claims
Millions of iPhone users could be entitled to payout over slow battery claims. After acknowledging that iPhone owners who have had an issue with power management tools (including the software update in 2017) could be entitled to compensation, consumer champion Justin Gutmann has launched a legal bid to raise £750m.
Mr Gutmann accused Apple of slowing down some iPhone phones – known as ‘throttling’ – to preserve power for older models with weaker batteries. However, Apple claimed the change was meant to enhance the user experience by preventing sudden shutdowns caused by older hardware struggling to run the latest software update.
But Mr Gutmann claims that the firm misled customers by telling them it would improve performance but instead slowed them down. Mr Gutmann filed a claim with the Competition Appeal Tribunal seeking damages of approximately £768 million for up to 25 million users of an old iPhone model who used this software update.
Millions of iPhone users could be entitled to payout over slow battery claims
The claim relates to when Apple first introduced a power management tool in January 2017 to slow down some old models’ iPhones’ processors so they wouldn’t shut off abruptly as their batteries aged and became unreliable with the usage of the new software updates later on in the year.
Mr Gutmann says that Apple failed to disclose this information when introducing its update or mention it would slow down users’ devices. At the same time, they had paid full price for a new phone with a better-performing processor installed at no extra charge.
“Apple introduced this tool to disguise the fact that iPhone batteries were unable to cope with new iOS processing demands and that rather than recall products or replace batteries, the company instead pushed users to download the software updates.”
