Apple slapped with criminal lawsuit over slowing down older iPhones

It seems like Apple's woes are to continue as the company's CEO Tim Cook faces a new lawsuit. A South Korean consumer group has filed a criminal lawsuit against him over the slowing down of older iPhones. It comes at a time when Apple is already facing several lawsuits in the US and elsewhere for the same reason. It all started when a report last month alleged that the Cupertino giant intentionally slows down old iPhone models with iOS updates.

The South Korean advocacy group, Citizens United for Consumer Sovereignty, accused the iPhone maker of destruction of property and fraud in its complaint. "For the sake of its loyal fans, Apple has to take responsibility over the slowing iPhones," said Park Soon-jang, an official at the advocacy group in an interaction with Reuters over phone.

The group had also filed a civil damage suit against the company earlier this month. As expected, Apple has not made any comments on this regard. And, we don't think the company will release any statement in future.

Apple released a note last month admitting the claims, but the company also explained the reason behind its action. The iOS updates were sent to prevent random shut downs of old iPhones with degraded batteries. The company also conveyed its apologies to the customers through the not. However, iPhone users all around the world were outraged to say the least.

Soon after that Apple found itself in hot water as people all around the world started accusing the company of breaching their trust. iPhone users were never told that the iOS updates were affecting the performance of their devices, which eventually forced them to buy newer iPhone models. Apple, however, was quick to take any step to fix its damaged reputation.

It launched a new battery replacement program, which brings down the repairing cost of old batteries from $79 to $29 for iPhone 6 or newer models. Unfortunately for Apple, despite slashing the price of battery replacement, it is still facing a lot of flak.

On a positive note, Tim Cook recently said in an interview with ABC News that the next update to iOS 11 will allow users to disable battery performance throttling on their iPhones. The update will first arrive in a developer release next month, followed by a wider public rollout.