Earlier this week, Apple faced a fine of 10 million Euros (roughly 12 million US Dollars) in Italy after it was found to have misled consumers regarding this water resistance feature on iPhones. Now, the company is facing an additional set of lawsuits regarding its infamous “batterygate” practice.
For those unaware, the term “batterygate” is used to describe manufacturers intentionally slowing down or throttling the performance older phones. This is apparently done to preserve system stability of older devices running newer firmware, but the practice has come into question in recent years. The Cupertino based giant previously payed 113 million US Dollars in settlements to consumers over fraud allegations in the US for this practice for its iPhone 6, iPhone 7, and iPhone SE models.
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And now, a total of five European consumer organizations have filed another set of class actions lawsuits against Apple in Belgium and Spain. These allegations are over the similar planned obsolescence issue, and claims that iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s models are now facing intentional slowdowns as well. Furthermore, the lawsuit is asking the company to compensate customers affected by this issue with “at least €60 (around $70) per device” in both countries while additional lawsuits are being planned in Italy and Portugal.
Apple has always denied the claims of batterygate lawsuits and said that it only reached a settlement to pay up its users to “avoid burdensome and costly litigation.” In other words, the settlements were just to remove the case and not to deal with the issue. Earlier this year, the company even paid out 25 US Dollars to each of its US customers over the identical issue for the iPhone 6. So, we will have to wait and see how the company responds to this matter.
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