Lawsuit took its time, just like your older iOS handset
Another day, another legal claim against Apple for deliberately throttling the performance of its iPhones to save battery power. This latest case was brought by Justin Gutmann, who has asked the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) to approve a collective action that could allow as many as 25 million Brits to claim compensation from the American technology giant. He claims the iGiant secretly degraded their smartphones’ performance to make the battery power last longer. Apple may therefore have to cough up an eye-popping £768 million ($927 million), Gutmann’s lawyers estimated, Bloomberg first reported this week. Gutmann, a market researcher, is unhappy that the iPhone maker emitted an iOS update that would throttle the execution of software on handsets. According to Apple back in 2017 around the time this Batterygate saga unfolded, the throttling was to ensure the batteries, particularly worn-out ones with lower capacity, wouldn’t be drained by apps at a rate that would cause devices to unexpectedly power off.
