Consumer champion launches £750m legal claim against Apple for iPhone battery throttling

Justin Gutman has launched a £750m claim against Apple for misleading iPhone users by hiding a power management tool in software update iOS 10.2 which reduced performance

Consumer rights advocate Justin Gutman claims that Apple deliberately misled millions of iPhone users over a January 2017 update, which was deployed to prevent the sudden shutdowns that many users of older phones were experiencing.

Gutman claims that the issue arose when Apple became aware that older iPhones and their batteries were unable to cope with the demands being made on them by new iOS software. Instead of being open about the issue and replacing ageing batteries and phones, Apple tried to hide the issue by throttling performance.

Gutman alleges that Apple failed to disclose information about the throttling tool in the software update download description given at the time, and failed to inform users that performance would be reduced.

Apple did acknowledge the issue, and made a statement that the update "smoothed out" the peaks in processing power that were causing shutdowns - but not until December 2017 after months of complaints from users, negative press and legal action.

After acknowledging the issue, Apple did offer a £25 plus shipping battery replacement service for certain iPhone models, but Gutman claims that Apple failed to sufficiently publicise this service and abused its dominant market position.

The claim seeks compensation for each model owned and is an opt-out claim, which means that customers do not need to be actively involved in the case to seek damages.

In a statement, Apple said: "We have never, and would never, do anything to … degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades."

It continued: "Our goal has always been to create products that our customers love, and making iPhones last as long as possible is an important part of that."