Apple will be facing lawsuits over their revelation of intentionally slowing down older iPhone models.
According to The Guardian, two separate class-action lawsuits were filed against the Cupertino-based company on Thursday, Dec. 21 by iPhone users in California and Chicago. The plaintiffs argued that Apple did not have consent to slow down their devices.
The Chicago locals, along with residents from Ohio, Indiana, and North Carolina, claimed that the company's iOS updates were "fraudulently forcing iPhone owners to purchase the latest model offered by Apple."
They also added that Apple purposefully and knowingly released software updates for the iPhone 5, iPhone 6, and iPhone 7 models that slowed down the performance of the central processing unit (CPU) of the device.
"Corporations have to realize that people are sophisticated and that when people spend their hard-earned dollars on a product they expect it to perform as expected," said James Vlahakis, the attorney for the complainants.
The Californian plaintiffs Stefan Bogdanovich and Dakota Speas are seeking damages and are asking for compensation. Bogdanovich and Speas claimed that they "were never given the option to bargain or choose whether they preferred to have their iPhones slower than normal."
Apple admitted on Wednesday, Dec. 20, that they are intentionally slowing down older iPhone models. This was revealed after the Geekbench benchmark results indicated that the CPUs of the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S, iPhone SE, and iPhone 7 devices decrease the phone's performance as the battery ages and loses capacity.
Apple noted that the feature was added because the lithium-ion batteries in the aforementioned devices become less capable of delivering power to the device during cold conditions. Also, as the batteries age, the device gets lower battery charge.
Apparently, Apple has also planned on releasing the feature on the iPhone 8 and on future iPhone devices as well.
As of writing, Apple has not released a comment regarding the lawsuits.
