The Zurich Apple Store evacuated workers and fans on Tuesday after an iPhone battery overheated.
The handset was being repaired when its battery malfunctioned, leaving one employee with minor burns and forcing around 50 people to leave the store, according to Swiss police.
French consumer watchdog DGCCRF, part of the country’s economy ministry, is investigating Apple over its alleged deception concerning the “throttling” of older iPhone models.
French law makes it a crime to purposely shorten the lifespan of a product in order to force customers to replace it. In the event that a company is found guilty of this, it can face fines of up to five percent of its annual sales.
An activist investor and pension fund with shares in Apple is asking the company to respond to a “growing public-health crisis” concerning smartphone addiction among young people.
Jana Partners and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, or Calstrs, sent a letter to Apple over the weekend, asking it to develop software to let parents limit phone use. They also want Apple to carry out a study investigating the impact of smartphone overuse on mental health. The two groups control a total of around $2 billion worth of AAPL shares.
Apple is in trouble with Brazilian authorities for throttling the performance of older iPhones.
A state agency dedicated to tackling consumer issues has demanded that Apple explains to customers how they can obtain cheap battery replacements. Company employees have reportedly refused to sign the notification.
LG will be the sole supplier of OLED displays for an upcoming iPhone X Plus, according to a new report. Sources say the device will arrive during the second half of 2018.
Apple’s first quarterly earnings call of 2018 will take place on Thursday, February 1, the company has revealed.
Apple will host a conference call to discuss its first fiscal quarter results for the year. This will happen at 2:00 p.m. PT or 5:00 p.m. ET, and is available to listen to online.
New Apple support documentation leaked from one of its retail stores that the company’s new $29 battery replacement program is a lot less strict than some customers originally feared.
Earlier in the week, some iPhone customers reported that the genius bar refused to swap their battery if it wasn’t under 80% capacity. According to a new documentation though, employees have now been instructed to replace batteries no matter what.
Apple’s decision to throttle CPU speeds on iPhones with older batteries isn’t a feature its competition is eager to copy.
Both Samsung and LG have come out with statements today saying that none of their phones use similar power management tactics. Their claims echo other Android makers Motorola and HTC who made the same claim yesterday.
Apple has been the subject of multiple class action lawsuits since admitting that it purposely throttles the speed of older iPhones. However, no lawsuit is quite as big as one that’s brewing in South Korea — where nearly 67,000 iPhone users have applied to join a suit against Apple.
The number of potential plaintiffs reportedly doubled over the course of Friday — from 34,000 applicants in the morning to 66,800 by the end of the working day, claims law firm Hannuri Law.
Apple has offered iPhone customers yet another apology for intentionally slowing down the CPU on some older iPhone models in order to increase overall performance.
In a letter to customers this afternoon, Apple explained that it added a feature in iOS 10.1.2 that successfully reduced the occurrence of unexpected shutdowns on iPhones. Apple was able to do so by lowering CPU performance so that it drew less power from older batteries, but the company is now offering an olive branch to customers: cheap battery replacements.