Canadian iPhone users can submit a claim to receive a share of Apple's Batterygate settlement
At the beginning of this year, Apple started distributing to iPhone users in the U.S. their share of the $500 million Batterygate settlement. When Apple released iOS 10.2.1 in January 2017, iPhone users had been complaining that their phones were shutting down for no apparent reason. What Apple didn't tell anyone until December was that this update throttled the CPU cores for the models that had been shutting down.
The whole story went like this. Certain iPhone models, especially the iPhone 6 and 6s lines, had weak batteries that could not generate enough power to keep running when a power-intensive task was attempted on these devices. As a result, iPhones were crashing left and right. Since Apple didn't tell its customers what iOS 10.2.1 was designed to do, iPhone users didn't know why their phones were getting slower after installing the update.
A week after spilling the beans and admitting everything, Apple apologized and cut the price to replace the batteries on iPhone models by as much as 63% to $29 for a year. It also added the Battery Health feature (Settings > Battery > Battery Health) allowing iPhone users to know the current strength of the battery powering their phones so they can see for themselves when it is time to make a change.
One good thing came from Batterygate, the Battery Health feature on the iPhone
Lawsuits ensued and knowing how slow the U.S. legal system runs, it should be no surprise that it wasn't until this past January that Apple started paying class action members $92.17 for each successful claim. Even though Apple agreed to put $500 million into the fund, after the lawyers got their beans, only $310 million was left for the Plaintiffs.
Unfortunately for Apple, Batterygate was not strictly a U.S. embarrassment. According to MacRumors, Apple has agreed to pay up to 14.4 million Canadian Dollars to settle a class action lawsuit in Canada that accused Apple of doing the same thing to Canadian iPhone users that it did to American iPhone users: secretly throttle their phones and slow them down without informing them. By the way, 14.4 million Canadian Dollars is equivalent to $10,602,216 U.S.
To submit a claim, tap on this link and you'll be taken to a website where you can turn in your claim online after answering some simple questions. The iPhone models involved in the class action suit include:
Apple iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, or SE that ran iOS 10.2.1 or later prior to December 21, 2017.
Apple iPhone 7 or 7 Plus that ran iOS 11.2 or later prior to December 21, 2017.
Apple iPhone 7 or 7 Plus that ran iOS 11.2 or later prior to December 21, 2017.
If you believe that you do qualify for a share of the Canadian Batterygate settlement, you have until September 2nd, 2024 to file your claim.
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