Apple have been slapped with a £25M fine for slowing down older iPhones deliberately! The fine was given to them by France’s competition and fraud watchdog DGCCRF as they said that consumers were not warned.

In 2017 Apple did confirm that they slowed down older iPhones to prolong the lives of the devices. Apple said in a statement that it had resolved the issue with the watchdog.

Why did Apple slow down old iPhones?

While many consumers had long suspected that Apple were slowing down their older iPhones in an attempt to encourage upgrades, it was never confirmed unti 2017. Though Apple said that they did it to help consumers devices run better and prolong the lives of them.

The tech giant said that the lithium-ion batteries in the devices became less capable of supplying the growing demands of the phones newer software as they aged.

It could result in an iPhone unexpectedly shutting down to protect itself. So they released an update for the iPhone 6, 6s and SE which smoothed out performance.

The practice was confirmed again after a customer shared performance tests on reddit. Showing their older iPhone 6S had slowed down considerably as it aged. Yet once the battery had been replaced it sped up.

Regulators

DGCCRF said that iPhone owners  “were not informed that installing iOS updates (10.2.1 and 11.2) could slow down their devices”.

So, as part of the agreement, Apple must display a notice on its French-language website for a month.

They said that Apple had “committed the crime of deceptive commercial practice by omission” and the tech giant agreed to pay the fine.

Does it still happen?

Yes. Since the 2017 fix the software battery smoothing out process has been implemented it on several more iPhones including:

• iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S, 6S Plus, SE, 7 and 7 Plus
• 8 and 8 Plus running iOS 12.1 or higher
• X running iOS 12.1 or higher
• XS, XS Max and XR running iOS 13.1 or higher

The setting for these phones is only enabled once the battery begins to degrade. The iOS software now shows clear information to consumers when performance management has been enabled.

“The effects of performance management on these newer models may be less noticeable due to their more advanced hardware and software design,” Apple said.