Company goes to court for deliberately slowing down iPhones

Mar 30, 2018 09:35 GMT  ·  By

Apple’s legal trouble continues following the company’s acknowledgment of deliberate iPhone performance throttling, and this time a law firm is suing the tech giant on behalf of nearly 64,000 users.

Korean law firm Hannuri Law has filed a lawsuit at the Seoul Central District Court, seeking compensation for no less than 63,767 users after Apple slowed down their devices running on degraded batteries. This is the biggest-ever class action lawsuit in the country against Apple, The Korea Herald notes, and the firm wants Cupertino to pay $11.9 million in compensation, which means every user should get close to $200.

Apple hasn’t obviously commented on the lawsuit, but the company is facing similar legal disputes in other countries as well after it publicly admitted it slowed down its devices.

The iPhone throttling fiasco

Apple said in late December that iPhone 6, 6s, and iPhone 7 received a performance management tweak supposed to reduce the effects of degraded batteries.

The company explained that a worn-out battery unit can lead to unexpected shutdowns, so what this performance tweak was supposed to do was reduce CPU power in order to avoid the device powering off. While Apple said it did this to help users, many accused the firm of planned obsolescence, as this decision is believed to have contributed to new devices sales among users seeking better performance.

Apple launched a battery replacement program with a discounted price from $79 to $29 and also delivered a software update for these iPhone models to reveal the battery health level and to enable users to disable the performance throttling should it be active.

This doesn’t seem to stop Apple’s legal problems, however, and the company isn’t only sued by customers worldwide, but also investigated by watchdogs who think the tech giant violated consumer rules.