Did Apple throttle your iPhone? Settlement will give you a whopping $25

iPhone users are slated to get $25 each from an up-to-$500 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit over Apple's decision to throttle the performance of iPhones with degraded batteries. People eligible for the payments are US residents who used affected versions of iOS before December 21, 2017, on the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S, 6S Plus, 7, 7 Plus, or SE.

The settlement, which was submitted to a judge for approval, stems from numerous class-action complaints that were consolidated into a case against Apple in US District Court for the Northern District of California. The consolidated complaint said that, in fall 2016, iPhone users experienced a shutdown problem that "resulted from a significant design defect: the battery was not designed with enough power to meet the peak demands of the phone's processor as the battery aged. The result was that iPhones worked as expected when new, but even after a few months or years, began to cease functioning, i.e., switching off at random intervals, when the iPhone processor required too much power of its flagging iPhone battery." Apple was accused of concealing the defect by intentionally slowing down phone performance with a software update. "Throughout 2017... Apple failed to inform customers that the 'fix' to the shutdown problem in iOS 10.2.1 came with a significant—and undisclosed—tradeoff: the update artificially slowed down the processors in Apple's Devices," the complaint said.