Ever since Apple pretty much admitted that they purposely slowed down older iPhones with aging batteries, we expected that the company would be hit with lawsuits, and sure enough Apple’s customers did not disappoint as within a couple of days, one, two, and three class-action lawsuits have since been filed against the company.
However it turns out that was just the tip of the iceberg because according to Reuters, eight lawsuits have since been filed against Apple over the issue. Most of the lawsuits are taking place in the US, but there are also lawsuits that have been filed in other countries such as Israel. Apple has yet to respond to emails seeking comment on the lawsuits, but we imagine that the company has its hands full.
For those who are learning about this for the first time, basically Apple admitted that they do slow down older iPhones with aging batteries, which more or less confirms a conspiracy theory that has been floating about for a while now. However Apple’s reasoning is that this was done to prevent iPhones from randomly shutting down due to the difference in power drawn by the processor against the battery of the phone, which like all batteries do degrade over time and with use.
However many customers weren’t too thrilled by how Apple went about it. While Apple did run a limited battery replacement program, one lawsuit alleges that Apple kept mum about the slowing down feature in an iOS update because they didn’t want to replace the batteries on all iPhones, which would no doubt be a costly exercise, although we can’t imagine that these lawsuits, if successful, would have been any cheaper.