The encyclopedia · Legal & Compliance · Legal decision · 2017–2020
Apple throttled old iPhones and never told anyone — it paid $500M to settle
To stop old batteries from shutting phones down, Apple quietly slowed the chips — and said nothing until users proved it. Then came the lawsuits.
Apple · 2020-02-28
What happened
In December 2017 benchmark data confirmed what users had suspected: iOS was capping the performance of older iPhones. Apple admitted it had been doing this deliberately — to stop aging batteries from causing unexpected shutdowns — but had never disclosed it. Dozens of class actions followed and were consolidated in California.
On 28 February 2020 Apple agreed to pay between $310 million and $500 million to settle the consolidated US suits. Payouts were set at $25 minimum for owners of iPhone 6 and 7-line devices, up to $3,500 for named plaintiffs, with about $90 million in attorney fees. Apple admitted no wrongdoing beyond the throttling itself.
Regulators moved too: on 7 February 2020 France's DGCCRF consumer-fraud agency fined Apple €25 million ($27.4M) — the largest fraud fine in its history — for misleading consumers by not telling them iOS 10.2.1 and 11.2 would slow their phones. Apple agreed to pay. The inquiry had opened in January 2018 on a complaint by the anti-obsolescence group HOP.
Why it happened
- The engineering fix was defensible; the silence turned a battery problem into a deception problem — users who felt the slowdown had no option but to conclude the phone was dying.
- Once benchmark data proved the throttling, the absence of disclosure became the cause of action, in dozens of suits and on two continents at once.
- Apple cut battery-replacement prices after the outrage — the same fix offered before the lawsuits would have been service; offered after, it read as evidence of harm.
The lesson
Disclose behaviour changes users can feel: an update that deliberately slows a device costs nothing to explain, and silence converts a defensible engineering call into a nine-figure settlement.
Aftermath
Apple apologised, cut out-of-warranty battery replacements from $79 to $29 and performed over 11 million of them in 2018; iOS 11.3 added battery-health monitoring and a throttling switch. In November 2020, 34 US states and Washington, D.C. settled over the same practice for a further $113M.
Sources
- Apple to pay up to $500M to settle batterygate class action — The Verge
- France fines Apple $27 million for slowing iPhone software — DW
- Batterygate — Wikipedia
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