Apple Sued in Israel for Deliberately Slowing iPhones With Old Batteries

Two Israelis have filed an over $120 million (roughly Rs. 760 crores) class-action lawsuit against Apple a week after the maker confirmed that it is deliberately slowing down iPhone models with old batteries to avoid the devices from shutting down.

According to a report in Israeli newspaper Haaretz late on Monday, the suit filed here argued that the company breached its basic duties toward users by failing to disclose that 'innocent' software updates would negatively impact their phone use.

The claimants said that the software updates impaired their ability to browse the web, check email and use various applications.

"There is no doubt that information about the device slowing is important, and cardinal, and users had the right to get (that information) from Apple before deciding whether to install the software updates," the lawsuit was cited as saying.

On Friday, Apple faced two class-action lawsuits from iPhone users in the US. Apple was sued for not disclosing sooner that it issued software updates deliberately slowing older-model phones so aging batteries lasted longer, saying Apple's silence led them to wrongly conclude that their only option was to buy newer, pricier iPhones.

The allegations were in a lawsuit filed Thursday in Chicago federal court on behalf of five iPhone owners from Illinois, Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina, all of whom say they would have never bought new iPhones had Apple told them that simply replacing the batteries would have sped up their old ones. The suit alleges Apple violated consumer fraud laws.

A similar lawsuit was filed Thursday in Los Angeles. Both suits came a day after Apple confirmed what high-tech sleuths outside the company already observed: The company had deployed software to slow some phones. Apple said it was intended as a fix to deal with degraded lithium-ion batteries that could otherwise suddenly die.

Written with agency inputs

Did Apple make a big mistake by not informing people about slowing down older iPhones due to battery wear? We discussed that on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast. You can listen to it via Apple Podcasts or RSS or just listen to this episode by hitting the play button below.