Apple sued in Europe over ‘battery gate’ scandal

Late last year, Apple began to put the ‘battery gate' scandal to rest by settling one of the more prominent class-action lawsuits over the issue in the US. In December though, it quickly became clear that Apple was still in trouble with consumer groups in Europe. Now, a consumer advocacy group has filed a new class-action lawsuit against Apple in the EU.

As reported by TechCrunch, Italy's Altroconsumo consumer protection agency has put forward the new lawsuit, arguing that Apple's battery gate scandal was an instance of ‘planned obsolescence' to push consumers to upgrade from the iPhone 6.

For those who are out of the loop, or simply don't remember what ‘battery gate' was, the story begins back in 2017. At the time, Apple began throttling the speeds of older iPhones in order to preserve the batteries within those phones. Many took this as Apple's way of purposefully slowing down older iPhone models in order to push users to upgrade – this is the argument that Altroconsumo's case is based on.

Apple did eventually make battery degradation and performance throttling more transparent on iOS but there have still been successful lawsuits. In the US, Apple has already paid back $500 million to consumers affected by this. In Europe, the class action lawsuit seeks a pay-out of €60 per consumer impacted.

KitGuru Says: Apple has yet to comment on this lawsuit, so these are all the details we have for now. We should have more updates on this in the weeks to come.

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