Apple may soon pay its 2020 $500M iPhone throttling settlement

Owners of iPhone models who were part of throttling lawsuits that ended up with a $500 million settlement from Apple may soon receive their payments, after a judge denied objections against the offer.

In May 2020, a proposed settlement to end a series of class action lawsuits over the so-called iPhone slowdown controversy was given a preliminary approval by courts. Two years later, and the settlement is getting very close to actually being paid out to affected Apple customers.

The settlement was objected against by two iPhone owners, who took the case to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals over its terms, according to SiliconValley.com. The court denied the appeal, paving the way for the settlement payments to commence.

The settlement pertains to a software feature Apple introduced to iOS that throttled the iPhone processor under instances of heavy loads. The idea of the feature was to reduce the negative effects of iPhone batteries aging, such as random shutdowns, for a range of iPhone models.

The affected iPhones included the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus to the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, as well as the iPhone SE running iOS 10.2.1 or later before December 21, 2017, or the iPhone 7 and Plus running iOS 11.2 or later after that date.

Consolidating multiple class action suits into into one settlement, the list of claimants reached around 3 million people who were accepted by a deadline on October 6, 2020.

Under the settlement, Apple will be paying out a total of between $310 and $500 million, with the actual value depending on the number of valid claims after applications complete processing. It is reckoned that the average compensation claim per claimant will be around $65.

14 Comments

robin huber 4026 comments · 22 Years

About 1 year ago

No good deed goes unpunished. The “throttling” was not nefarious, but a good faith effort to protect consumers from overheating phones. In other words what tort attorneys call a business opportunity.

MplsP 4047 comments · 8 Years

robin phuber said:

No good deed goes unpunished. The “throttling” was not nefarious, but a good faith effort to protect consumers from overheating phones. In other words what tort attorneys call a business opportunity.

Like I’ve said before, had Apple simply been more clear in disclosing the throttling there would have been no issue. Since they didn’t, they left their intentions open to interpretation. Whether they did to protect consumers or as an underhanded move to drive sales is completely dependent on your view of Apple. Even in the charitable view they may have driven people to unnecessarily buy new phones when a simple battery replacement would have sufficed.

Draco 44 comments · 3 Years

robin huber said:

No good deed goes unpunished. The “throttling” was not nefarious, but a good faith effort to protect consumers from overheating phones. In other words what tort attorneys call a business opportunity.

The throttling wasn't done to prevent overheating. It was done to prevent "unexpected shutdown" which is a case where the phone's battery display shows a relatively high state-of-charge like 20-30%, yet the phone shuts off immediately after a heavy load is applied such as CPU, GPU, camera, etc.

Users should have been given the ability to opt into this behavior, but Apple, always trying to keep things simple, made the behavior automatic for all users.

macgui 2471 comments · 17 Years

MplsP said:

robin phuber said:

No good deed goes unpunished. The “throttling” was not nefarious

Like I’ve said before, had Apple simply been more clear in disclosing the throttling there would have been no issue. Since they didn’t, they left their intentions open to interpretation. Whether they did to protect consumers or as an underhanded move to drive sales is completely dependent on your view of Apple. Even in the charitable view they may have driven people to unnecessarily buy new phones when a simple battery replacement would have sufficed.

Exactamundo on both points. I think Apple didn't want to say in any way "our iPhones slow down" because they knew there would be ugly YTers mugging for their cameras shouting "APPLE THROTTLES iPHONES SPEED" and "YOUR iPHONE IS SLOW" or whatever. And as it happens that's what they got anyway.

Given that some well known provider throttle "unlimited" throughput I can see why Apple might want to avoid "nannyism" backlash. And they got it anyway.

If they had braved that in the beginning it might have cost them a lot less than $500M pocket lint. $500M here, $500M there, pretty soon we're talking real money.

alandail 773 comments · 20 Years

Draco said:

robin huber said:

No good deed goes unpunished. The “throttling” was not nefarious, but a good faith effort to protect consumers from overheating phones. In other words what tort attorneys call a business opportunity.

The throttling wasn't done to prevent overheating. It was done to prevent "unexpected shutdown" which is a case where the phone's battery display shows a relatively high state-of-charge like 20-30%, yet the phone shuts off immediately after a heavy load is applied such as CPU, GPU, camera, etc.

Users should have been given the ability to opt into this behavior, but Apple, always trying to keep things simple, made the behavior automatic for all users.

Why would anyone opt out of ensuring their phone doesn't unexpectedly turn off. Apple wrote software to improve reliability and are being fined for it. It's an absurd cash grab by the attorneys.