Two iPhone users have filed a class action lawsuit against Apple Inc., claiming the tech giant misrepresented the phone’s storage capacity after users upgrade to the latest iOS 8 operating system on the iPhone 5S, 6 and 6 Plus devices.
Paul Orshan and Christopher Endara filed the complaint in a California court on Tuesday. The lawsuit alleges that Apple did not inform users that installing iOS 8 would use up to 23.1% of the phone’s storage space, according to Time.
[quote text_size=”small” author=”– Bill Anderson” author_title=”Attorney for plaintiffs”]
Our clients and consumers across America were provided less than Apple promised them and we look forward to vindicating their rights through the lawsuit.
[/quote]
The iOS 8 operating system requires up to 1.1 GB of space and it requires 5.8 GB to install wirelessly. iOS 7 required just 3.3 GB of space for a wireless download. Many users had to delete personal photos and apps from their phone to make room for the upgrade.
Each gigabyte of storage that eaten up by the operating system shortchanges customers to about 400 to 500 high-resolution photos, according to CBS News.
The lawsuit also alleges that Apple is limiting the use of storage capacity to force consumers to pay for upgrades to their iCloud storage service — which costs $0.99 per month for 20 GB of storage or up to $19.99 per month for 1 TB — or a new device. A report released last week by Apple analysis blog Above Avalon predicted Apple will make around $3 billion in 2015 from users upgrading to iPhones with more storage once their 16 GB models are no longer sufficient, according to the Huffington Post.
Apple has been fought over storage space before. A legal complaint was filed over advertised storage for iPods in 2007 as the 8GB iPod Nano had just 7.45GB of usable storage. This latest class action lawsuit comes just one month after a California jury found in favor of Apple in a billion-dollar class-action lawsuit.
