After last week’s admission from Apple that the company has been intentionally slowing down older iPhones without informing users, at least eight lawsuits have been filed in various federal courts seeking compensation and a reversal of the policy, CNBC reports. Apple has admitted that iOS updates since “last year” sent out to the iPhone 6, iPhone 6s, iPhone SE and iPhone 7 included a feature “to smooth out” the power supply from batteries that are old, cold or contain a low charge.
Apple claims without that software, an iPhone could just shut off suddenly because of another safety feature to keep internal components from getting fried when there are battery issues. One of the lawsuits — filed by attorney Jeffrey Fazio, who won users a $53 million settlement in 2013 over Apple’s handling of iPhone warranty claims — claims that, “Rather than curing the battery defect by providing a free battery replacement for all affected iPhones, Apple sought to mask the battery defect.”
At issue now is the fact that Apple failed to disclose all the facts to consumers, who may have simply upgraded their phone instead of replacing the old battery since they didn’t know the cause of their iPhone’s sluggishness.
“If it turns out that consumers would have replaced their battery instead of buying new iPhones had they known the true nature of Apple’s upgrades, you might start to have a better case for some sort of misrepresentation or fraud,” said Rory Van Loo, a Boston University professor specializing in consumer technology law. Other tech law professors said it could be proven that Apple didn’t technically break the law since this is a fairly new area that doesn’t have clear legal rules, and Apple hasn’t publicly commented on the lawsuits.
