The writing was on the wall, ever since the secret scandal broke in late 2017, and now Apple's done what many expected it to do.
The iPhone maker has reached an out-of-court-settlement for a class action lawsuit that accused it of slowing down older iPhones, for which Apple will pay $500 million, including $25 payments to a limited number of iPhone 6 and iPhone 7 users.
The silver lining for Apple in all of this? At least the settlement isn't as ridiculous as one which wanted Apple to pay Rs 64 lakh crore, and the iPhone maker finally gets a chance to move on putting all of this bad karma behind it once and for all.
According to reports, Apple has for now agreed to pay a $500 million settlement after admitting to slowing down older iPhones. The deal would include cash payments to a number of iPhone owners in the US, covering people who bought any of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 7 devices — which Apple secretly slowed down with iOS updates to conserve battery life.
While the settlement awaits formal court approval, Apple is expected to offer $25 (or Rs 1800) to any current or former owner of a covered iPhone, as per a report in The Verge. People named in the class action lawsuit are expected to receive $1,500 or $3,500, and around $90 million is going toward lawyers and attorneys.
All of this obviously started way back in 2017, when some iPhone users discovered that their phone's performance was being throttled by iOS as their phones got older. This was obviously just a suspicion until Apple did the unthinkable -- it came out clean and accepted the practice of slowing down processor performance to preserve battery life of aging phones.
At the time, Apple released the following statement: “Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks (a large burst of current supplied from the battery) only when needed, to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions,” Apple said in a statement to Reuters. “We’ve now extended that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add support for other products in the future.”
Following the Dec 2017 revelation, in January 2018 Apple began a program offering to replace iPhone batteries at discounted rates, even to those not covered by warranty anymore, as a gesture of goodwill. The program ended on Dec 31, 2018.
Right now, there is no specific detail on how Apple's settlement will affect iPhone users outside the US -- including here in India. Also what happens to iPhone users who took the free or discounted battery replacement scheme in 2018, do they have any say in this settlement?
We imagine more details will be forthcoming when the terms of the settlement are finalized by the California court, after which Apple will put up a web page on its official website indicating affected iPhone 6 and iPhone users on how to get touch with them.