Apple Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over iPhone 5/5s Data Usage

Apple Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over iPhone 5/5s Data Usage
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It’s been just over a month since a class action lawsuit against Apple was filed by users looking to recoup costs from data overages due, in part, to the Wi-Fi Assist feature introduced in iOS 9.

A new class action lawsuit against Apple that relates to data overages has been filed, this time by AT&T customers alleging that Apple concealed a defect in their iPhone 5 and 5s models that resulted in data overages.

121815-IPHONE5CLASSACTION-2The lawsuit alleges that a flaw in how the iOS 6 operating system operated with the iPhone 5 and 5s phones caused significant data overages for its users. The iPhone 5 and 5s could, unbeknownst to their users, switch from using Wi-Fi to using cellular data under certain circumstances. According to Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, the law firm taking on Apple in the lawsuit, the error occurred “when a consumer streamed high volumes of data for a period even as short as a couple of minutes.”

The iPhone 5 and 5s’ “graphics processing unit (GPU) would take over all video decompression, decoding and presentation to the display.” Because the GPU took over the processing, the phone’s CPU would then “sleep” in order to preserve battery, causing the Wi-Fi to shut off and switching the streaming to cellular data.

The flaw was discovered in September of 2012, and a patch was quickly sent out to Verizon iPhone 5 owners. No such update was issued for AT&T users, however, and the lawsuit alleges that although Apple had immediate knowledge of the problem, they “failed to fix it for AT&T wireless subscribers for years,” neglecting to even acknowledge the problem existed. The firm claims that the issue was never addressed until the release of iOS 8.1 in October of 2014.

The lawsuit has yet to be assigned to a judge, and no hearing is scheduled at the time.

Learn More: After Years-long Battle, Samsung to Pay Apple $548 Million for Design and Technology Patent Infringements

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