The American giant Apple was forced by the courts to pay compensation to its customers following problems encountered after an iPhone update.
The news is a landmark in Apple history. The Cupertino company was forced to compensate hundreds of thousands of iPhone owners around the world, following an American court decision. At the origin of this historic sanction: an update of iOS which caused a drastic reduction in the autonomy of iPhones.
For several years, many iPhone users have complained to the Cupertino company about the poor performance of their device’s battery. But this time, it has in fact been shown that an iOS update had significantly impacted the battery life of several of the brand’s smartphones. This very exciting affair for Apple already dates back several years since the first reports were made in 2018. And it will continue to grow, making a lot of noise at the time in the United States but also in France, until ‘to the conviction of the American giant in 2020.
Concretely, Apple was condemned for having knowingly restricted the batteries of several iPhone models through its updates. The main update concerned, which was to strengthen the security of the devices, notably affected the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S, 6S Plus, 7, 7 Plus and the first version of the iPhone SE. The Apple brand knew that it significantly altered the batteries of these smartphones. And that’s where the problem lies: the court ruled and considered that Apple should have warned users before imposing this update on them and leaving them with a less durable smartphone.
The sanction for “batterygate” is heavy for Apple: after a last resort last December, the company began in January to compensate users who filed a complaint at the time. The bill is steep and amounts to nearly $310 million, or a little more than $92 for each user concerned.
However, the conditions for benefiting from this compensation are numerous. You must have owned one of the affected devices, it must have been updated to iOS 10.2.1 before December 21, 2017 and the user concerned has participated in a complaint dating from October 2020 to receive payment on their bank account.