Apple to pay out $500m to iPhone customers affected by ‘Batterygate’
Apple has settled a class-action lawsuit over iPhone throttling, agreeing to pay up to $500m to consumers. David Price reports
Momentous news from the US, where Apple has reportedly agreed to pay between $310m and $500m to millions of customers affected by the so-called Batterygate iPhone problem.
Class-action lawsuits in the US accused Apple of deliberately slowing down older models of iPhone with iOS updates, in order to encourage them to upgrade to newer versions; Apple countered by
saying that it was throttling processor performance to preserve battery life, although it did not originally disclose that it was doing so. (In fairness, the company is far more transparent about this now, and allows you to turn off the euphemistically named ‘performance management’ feature.)
How will this affect you?
If you’re from the US and have an affected iPhone, you stand to gain a small amount of money, even if you haven’t previously participated or even expressed any interest in the lawsuits. (The named plaintiffs will receive considerably more, so don’t feel guilty.)
Affected models are the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, and SE devices (assuming they are running iOS 10.2.1 or later) and the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus (running iOS 11.2 or later). In all cases, you need to have run those iOS versions before 21 December 2017 to qualify.
The payout is estimated to be $25 per device. It may be a little more or less, depending on how many people put their hands up - there’s a maximum of $500m, remember. You can’t apply for the payout yet, however, because the settlement hasn’t been approved. But contacting the two legal firms representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuits – Kaplan Fox & Kilsheimer and Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy – is probably the best starting point.
If you’re an iPhone owner in any other part of the world, you’re unfortunately not eligible for the payout, although you may benefit indirectly from the way this influences Apple’s behaviour in the future.