14 DAY TRIAL // After it has confirmed slowing down older iPhones to prevent sudden shutdowns due to degraded batteries, now Apple is being sued by five people in the US asking them to pay for caused damages.
According to Chicago Sun-Times, five Apple customers from different parts of the United States have filed a federal lawsuit in Chicago on Thursday claiming an unspecified amount of money in damages caused by the tech giant because it intentionally slowed down their older iPhone devices.
The plaintiffs, two from Illinois, and three others from Indiana, North Carolina, and Ohio, respectively said Apple's practices are "deceptive, immoral and unethical" and they violate consumer protection laws. They are represented by attorney James Vlahakis, who stated that Apple doesn't offer transparency for potential customers.
"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," said attorney James Vlahakis. "Instead, Apple appears to have obscured and concealed why older phones were slowing down."
iPhone 5, iPhone 6 and iPhone 7 affected
iPhone 5, iPhone 6 and iPhone 7 are at play in the said lawsuit against Apple, which claims "needlessly subjects consumers to purchasing newer and more expensive iPhones when a replacement battery could have allowed consumers to continue to use their older iPhones."
Speculation concerning a potential slowdown of iPhones have been swirling around the web for a long time, but claims in this regard gained traction recently following a series of benchmarks which demonstrated that performance is indeed reduced depending on battery degradation level.
Apple issued a statement earlier this week to acknowledge the slowdown, explaining instead that this is actually a feature and not a bug. The company said it does this on purpose to prevent unexpected shutdowns, a different problem with the iPhone that impacted older models.
Apple's statement, however, seems to backfire quickly, as in addition to the class action lawsuit, customers are also threatening to switch to Android due to what they consider to be a roadblock for a long-term purchase.
Cupertino hasn't issued a statement so far, and there's a good chance no word will be said on this until a ruling or a settlement is reached.