The Attorney General of Arizona is reportedly looking into Apple’s practice of slowing down the performance of older iPhones to preserve battery life.
Apple admitted it was doing this back in 2017, and gave users control of if and when it happens. But the investigation by the Arizona AG goes on.
Several states are part of the probe, according to Reuters. And it’s been going on since 2018.
It’s not clear if this is the same multi-state investigation into Apple that Texas is part of. The Attornies General of Texas and Arizona declined to talk to Reuters.
The long saga of ‘Batterygate’ and Apple throttling iPhones
In 2017, Apple admitted that it was surreptitiously slowing down aging iPhone models, claiming it was doing so because otherwise the devices could crash when their processor required more power than their nearly worn out batteries could deliver.
There were accusations that Apple was actually throttling older devices to convince their users to buy new ones.
An iOS update released in 2018 ended automatically throttling older devices, but it gives users of these iPhones the option to do so themselves, especially if their handset crashes because its battery is getting old.
And Apple settled a class-action lawsuit over “Batterygate” earlier this year. Cupertino agreed to pay up to $500 million in compensation, with users of affected devices getting $25.
