iPhone owners get $92 payouts from Apple in throttling settlement

Apple’s iPhone 6
In yet another testament to the expediency of the U.S. judicial “system,” iPhone users had to submit claims in Apple’s iPhone thottling settlement by October 2020. They finally are getting paid in January 2024.
The fiasco was otherwise know as “Batterygate.” Apple agreed in 2020 to pay up to $500 million to settle lawsuit alleging it secretly slowed down phones to address issues with older batteries.
Jon Brodkin for Ars Technica:
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The settlement was for a minimum of $310 million and a maximum of $500 million, including attorney’s fees of $80.6 million and the costs of distributing the settlement fund. Apple agreed to provide $25 payments to affected users for each eligible iPhone, though that amount could have increased or decreased based on the number of approved claims.
It seems the standard payment increased, as various people reported getting $92.17 payments this past weekend. I was one of the people who received an email notice stating I was eligible for the settlement about 3.5 years ago, and I submitted a claim on July 24, 2020. I received a $92.17 deposit to my bank account on Saturday that was labeled “IN RE APPLE INC Payouts.”
iPhone owners were required to submit their claims by October 6, 2020. The payments were for US-based owners of an iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, 7, 7 Plus, or SE who “experienced diminished performance” on their devices while running affected versions of iOS before December 21, 2017.
The class-action lawsuit alleged that Apple made “materially false statements and omissions concerning the iOS software.” As is typical in settlements, Apple didn’t admit any wrongdoing. Apple is still fighting a similar lawsuit in the United Kingdom…

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MacDailyNews Take: There won’t be another iPhone Batterygate because Apple wants, and needs, previously-owned iPhones to known for reliability as the secondary market is key for Apple to grow their iPhone users base, which in turn feeds Apple’s Services business and provides a halo for other products such as iPads, Apple Watches, Macs, Apple TVs, HomePods, etc.
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You can see why some think that Apple wanted to keep what they were doing a secret. If people knew that a $79 battery replacement would give them an iPhone that performed like it did on day one, a meaningful percentage would take that option versus buying a new iPhone. Now that it’s just $29 this year, that percentage will naturally increase.
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Then again, as Hanlon’s razor states: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
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Apple’s made up of people. People are imperfect. We’ll take Apple’s word for it that they “always wanted… customers to be able to use their iPhones as long as possible” and that they “have never — and would never — do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades.” — MacDailyNews, January 3, 2018
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Again, it’s Apple’s lack of communication that is the problem here. If Apple had clearly explained what was going on in the software, we’d know to recommend a battery replacement when users complained their older iPhones were getting “slow.” As it was, we were pretty much left to assume that the processor/RAM wasn’t up to par with demands of newer iOS releases and we’d naturally recommend getting a new iPhone.
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Just yesterday, we had a friend complain that his iPhone 6 was acting “slow” and we knew to recommend a battery replacement (even though he instead opted to get himself an iPhone X on our strong recommendation). — MacDailyNews, December 29, 2017
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As has almost always been the case with Apple, unfortunately, transparency comes later, not sooner, and usually as a reaction to negative publicity. A simple Knowledge Base article would have preempted all of this Reddit sleuthing and the attendant handwringing and erroneous presumptions. — MacDailyNews, December 20, 2017
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