Apple has been sued over the revelations that it deliberately slows down older iPhones without user consent. The complainants alleged that Apple committed unlawful act and interfered with the use of phones.
Last week, Apple had confirmed that it reduces the clock speed of the processor models iPhone 6,6s, SE and 7 (this function is introduced using a software update), when, in particular, the device’s battery wears out. According to the company, this is done in order to increase the battery life.
The first collective lawsuit was filed in California – plaintiffs claimed that the company should stop slowing down old models and pay compensation to affected users.
Another lawsuit was filed by residents of the states of Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina. The complainants accused the company of “misleading, immoral and unethical” behavior, saying that this practice violates the law on consumer protection, and requires compensation for damages.
“Apple purposefully and knowingly released operating system software updates to iPhone 5, iPhone 6 and certain iPhone 7 phones that slowed the performance speeds of the central processing units (‘CPUs’) of these devices,” said the plaintiffs in a filing in the Northern District of the State of Illinois.
“Apple’s software updates purposefully slowed or ‘throttled down’ the performance speeds of iPhone 5, iPhone 6, certain iPhone 7 phones and as yet unknown versions of iPhones because operating system software updates wreaked havoc on batteries within these model devices.”
A couple of weeks ago, a Reddit user tested iPhone 6 Plus in a number of benchmarks before and after the battery replacement. He found that after replacing the battery, the performance of the device greatly increased. A week later, the developer of Geekbench John Poole (John Poole) published a post in which he confirmed that the old iPhone with worn-out batteries can be artificially slowed down by Apple with updates. After that, the company officially announced that it really reduces the clock speed of the processor of some old devices – for the sake of increasing the battery life. The company stressed that this function is needed to extend the life of the devices. Apple also said that this function will appear in the iPhone 7, and it also plans to add it to several other future products.
“Corporations have to realize that people are sophisticated and that when people spend their hard-earned dollars on a product they expect it to perform as expected,” James Vlahakis attorney for the plaintiffs told the Chicago Sun Times.
“Instead, Apple appears to have obscured and concealed why older phones were slowing down.”
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