Apple has begun compensating iPhone owners who have claimed that the company purposefully slowed down certain of their handsets.
Even though you might be struggling to make ends meet until pay day at the end of the month in January 2024, at least you won’t have to part with millions of dollars like Apple does to get the year started.
In 2017, after installing the most recent software updates, iOS 10.2.1 and 11.2.0, several iPhone users in the US noticed a slowdown in the device’s performance.
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Later, Apple issued the following statement: “We want to give our customers the best possible experience, which includes extending the life of their devices and delivering overall performance.
“As lithium-ion batteries age, become less able to sustain peak current demands in cold weather, or have low battery levels, the device may unexpectedly shut down to safeguard its electronic components.
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“We developed a feature for the iPhone 6, iPhone 6s, and iPhone SE last year that allows the device to smooth out instantaneous peaks only when necessary, preventing the device from shutting down unexpectedly under certain scenarios.
“We’ve now extended that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add support for other products in the future.”
Additionally, Apple warned that if the battery was unable to provide the necessary electricity, it might die on its own.
However, a large number of iPhone users—three million, to be exact—banded together and filed claims in a class action lawsuit against the tech giant, accusing it of purposefully slowing down older models of the phones with the new iOS update because Apple had not explained the change when it first implemented it.
And now Apple is paying up the money that was stipulated in a 2020 settlement.
Apple agreed to pay $310–500 million to the impacted iPhone users as part of the settlement, despite their insistence that they did nothing unlawful or purposefully improper in order to “avoid burdensome and costly litigation.”
And according to the BBC, that amount has now been verified at $500 million, with each recipient gradually getting far more than the $25 that was initially estimated.
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Among those indicated as eligible for compensation, two MacRumors readers have reported receiving $92.17 apiece, the publication reports.
You would also be eligible to receive some cash if you were a US resident and owned one of the affected iPhones—the iPhone 6, the iPhone 6 Plus, the iPhone 6s, the iPhone 6s Plus, and/or the iPhone SE—that ran iOS 10.2.1 or later, as well as an iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus that ran iOS 11.2 or later, before December 21, 2017, and you filed a claim by October 2020.
Additionally, iPhone customers in the UK are not being ignored; a parallel action is pending there as well, with a potential £1.6 billion in damages.
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