Following the launch of a major legal claim against Apple for misleading its customers, millions of iPhone users in the UK could now be eligible for a payout.
The legal case, which was started by Justin Gutmann, accuses Apple of secretly shortening the life of older phones. It’s alleged that Apple offered users an upgrade that it said would improve the performance of their phones, but the upgrade would actually slow the performance.
In 2017, a software update was introduced to combat performance issues in older phones and stop them from shutting down suddenly while being used.
But, according to Mr. Gutmann, Apple failed to warn its customers that it would slow down their devices and that this information wasn’t in the update download description.
Apple has been accused of trying to hide this information from its customers and that, instead of recalling or repairing products, has advised users to download its software updates.
The models covered by the claim are the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S, 6S Plus, SE, 7, 7 Plus, 8, 8 Plus, and iPhone X models, and the damages are expected to be approximately £768m for up to 25 million UK iPhone users.
Although Apple says it didn’t intentionally slow the performance of any of its products. However, the lawsuit claims that it deliberately misled customers to sell more products and avoid expensive recalls and repairs by using a process known as “throttling”.
The lawsuit says: “Instead of doing the honorable and legal thing by their customers and offering a free replacement, repair service or compensation, Apple instead misled people by concealing a tool in software updates that slowed their devices by up to 58%.”
In a statement, Apple said: “We have never, and would never, do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades.
Our goal has always been to create products that our customers love, and making iPhones last as long as possible is an important part of that.”
