Apple has received a €25m fine for purposefully slowing down older iPhone models without making consumers aware of this going on.
The fine has been imposed by the French competition and fraud watchdog, the DGCCRF.
In 2017 Apple did start to make consumers aware that older models of the iPhone were slowed down, however it gave its reasoning as to,“prolong the life” of the devices.
Many people believed that the reason the devices were slowed down was to encourage people to upgrade their handset.
Apple countered this by explaining the lithium-ion batteries in the devices became less capable of supplying peak current demands, as they aged over time.
Therefore, the handset could abruptly shut down in order to maintain its electronic components.
The reason for the fine though is due to this information not being offered to the customers willing as they, “were not informed that installing iOS updates (10.2.1 and 11.2) could slow down their devices”.
Under the new agreement Apple are under obligation to display a warning on the French website for one month.
The DGCCRF went on the say Apple, “committed the crime of deceptive commercial practice by omission”.
This practice of Apple’s has only continued and further slowing of handsets has occurred on the following handsets.
- iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S, 6S Plus
- iPhone SE
- iPhone 7 and 7 Plus
- iPhone 8 and 8 Plus running iOS 12.1 or higher
- iPhone X running iOS 12.1 or higher
- iPhone XS, XS Max and XR running iOS 13.1 or higher
“The effects of performance management on these newer models may be less noticeable due to their more advanced hardware and software design,” Apple said.
