Apple Hit With Lawsuits For Slowing Down Older iPhones This week, Apple released a statement admitting to slowing down older iPhone models. Now, five different customers have filed lawsuits because of their phones' slowed performance. The suit calls Apple's practice "deceptive, immoral and unethical" and says it aimed to "purposefully slow down or 'throttle down' performance speeds." Apple's statement explained that older iPhones were slowed down to preserve their battery life, and it is not a tactic to get customers to upgrade to newer models.