Apple has started sending payments to affected iPhone users as part of a $500 million ‘Batterygate’ settlement in the US.
Back in 2020, Apple agreed to pay up to $500 million to settle a class-action lawsuit in the US that accused the iPhone maker of “secretly throttling” some iPhone models.
Payouts have finally started going out to individuals who submitted a claim and some users have seen cheques deposited to their accounts amounting to $92.17 per user as part of the settlement.
Apple always denied the allegations, saying it agreed to the settlement only to “avoid burdensome and costly litigation.”
The class-action lawsuit included any US resident who owned an affected iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, and/or iPhone SE that ran iOS 10.2.1 or later, and/or an iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus that ran iOS 11.2 or later, before December 21, 2017.
According to the 2018 lawsuit, consumers complained their phones were shutting off even though the batteries showed a charge of more than 30%.
The practice was confirmed after a customer shared performance tests on Reddit, suggesting their iPhone 6S had slowed down considerably as it had aged but had suddenly sped up again after the battery had been replaced.
“I used my brother’s iPhone 6 Plus, and his was faster than mine? This is when I knew something was wrong,”
Technology website Geekbench then analysed several iPhones running different versions of the iOS operating system and found some of them did indeed appear to have been deliberately slowed down.
Apple then confirmed that it made changes to iOS to manage ageing lithium-ion batteries in some devices, since the batteries’ performance diminishes over time.
