The consumer champion has launched a lawsuit for more than £ 750 million against Apple in connection with an incident in 2017 involving a power management tool on older iPhones.
Justin Gutman accuses the technology giant of slowing down iPhone performance – a process known as “throttling” – by hiding a power management tool in software updates to combat performance issues and stop sudden shutdowns on older devices .
Guttman has sued the competition tribunal, seeking compensation of approximately £ 768 million for up to 25 million British owners of a number of older iPhone models.
It claims that Apple misled users about the incident by forcing them to download software updates that are said to improve the performance of some devices, but actually slowed them down.
The allegation relates to the introduction of a power management tool released in a software update for iPhone users in January 2017, which was released to slow down older iPhone models with aging batteries that may have been difficult to run the latest iOS software to prevent the device from shutting down suddenly.
Gutman said information about this tool was not included in the description for downloading the software update at the time or that it would slow down the user’s device.
He claims that Apple introduced this tool to cover up the fact that iPhone batteries are unable to meet the new requirements for iOS processing and that instead of downloading products or replacing batteries, the company instead forced consumers to download software updates.
The lawsuit says Apple added a mention of the tool to notes on the update of its website at a later date, but said the company failed to make it clear that it would slow down older iPhones.
In late 2017, after some users noticed performance issues, Apple apologized for tackling the problem and said it would replace the batteries at greatly reduced speeds for a limited time and also introduce a feature that allows users turn off the power management tool.
At the time, the company said it never did and would never do anything to deliberately shorten the life of a product, and Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly apologized for the incident, saying the company had never tried to mislead anyone about the tool.
But Guttman claims that Apple has failed to sufficiently publicize its £ 25-plus-return battery replacement services and that the company has abused its market dominance.
The statement applies to the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S, 6S Plus, SE, 7, 7 Plus, 8, 8 Plus and iPhone X.
He seeks redress for each model he owns and is a waiver claim, which means that customers will not have to actively join the case to seek redress.
Apple said: “We have never and will never do anything to … worsen the user experience to stimulate customer upgrades.
“Our goal has always been to create products that our customers love, and to make the iPhone last as long as possible is an important part of that.”
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