Apple to Pay Out $500 Million to Users in Batterygate Settlement

Five years after Apple agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging that it throttled the performance of iPhones, the consumer electronics giant will finally pay up. Granted, the delay wasn’t Apple’s fault: two iPhone owners who objected to the settlement kept this case unnecessarily tied up in the courts until this week, when a judge in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied their final appeal.

“This appeal is voluntarily dismissed,” the ruling reads. “The parties shall bear their own costs and attorneys’ fees.”

Batterygate dates back to 2017, when Apple finally admitted after years of complaints from customers that it was throttling the performance of older iPhones. The conspiracy-minded claimed that the firm was doing so to force customers to upgrade to new iPhones, but Apple said that this was necessary to preserve the health and longevity of the device’s batteries. And in an act of good faith, it temporarily allowed iPhone users to get battery replacements for just $29, a service that at the time cost $79.

But this clearly wasn’t good enough, and so Apple in early 2018 said that it would implement a user interface in iOS that would let customers choose between longer battery life and better performance. That change arrived in iOS 11.3 in March 2018. And you might think that’d be the end of it, but instead Apple’s customers banded together in a class action and sued the company for its years of quiet abuse.

And so Apple settled the case in March 2020, agreeing to pay up to $500 million to impacted U.S. customers who had owned an iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, 7, 7Plus, or SE before the end of 2017. The firm admitted no wrongdoing as part of the settlement, and it was expected that each person who filed a claim would receive $25.

Flash forward three years and a few things have changed: Apple received millions of claims related to the settlement, but it was fewer than expected, and so each person who filed and was approved will now receive an estimated $65. (The time to file a claim has long since passed, in October 2020.) And two members of the class action appealed the settlement, seeking a higher payout. Their legal challenge is now over, however, with their final appeal denied.