Despite recently releasing an apology over how it slows down older iPhones with battery ageing, Apple is still under fire and now faces over 26 lawsuits. In response to the outrage, the tech giant dropped the price of a battery replacement from $79 to $29 until the end of 2018 for iPhone 6 and newer, but many did not believe this was enough.
Lawsuits demand compensation for affected users
Apple claims it slowed down the iPhone 6, 6S, 7 and SE when their batteries are old or had low charge to prevent abrupt shutdowns, but the secrecy behind this caused outrage. It seems their apology and drop in price was not enough as they now face over 26 lawsuits. Many of these are demanding that Apple compensate all iPhone users who have experienced their devices slowing down. They want Apple to offer free battery replacements and refund customers who purchased new iPhones in order to benefit from maximum performance.
The latest two of these were filed on Thursday by Marc Honigman, in New York, and Lauri Sullivan-Stefanou, in Ohio. Sullivan-Stefanou’s complaint contained the following:
“Unbeknownst to iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and iPhone 6s owners, Apple inserted code into iOS 10.2.1 that deliberately slowed down the processing performance of these phones by linking each phone’s processing performance with its battery health. Absent the code inserted by Apple, the reduced battery capacity of these phones would not have negatively affected processing performance.”
Apple faces Hagens Berman once again
Among the 26 lawsuits is law firm Hagens Berman which claims Apple “secretly” installed a code to intentionally slow down iPhones. This is the same law firm which forced Apple to pay $450 million in damages for price fixing content in the iBooks store. Apple claims it does not permanently slow down older iPhones and says performance limitations only occur intermittently when it is performing particularly strenuous tasks.
Do you agree that Apple should pay compensation to all affected users?