iPhone class action plaintiff clearly doesn’t read this blog

It was only a matter of time before someone was taking legal action over the iPhone: the only question was, on what topic? I would have bet it was being locked to a specific cell phone provider—but then, I would have been wrong.

Gizmodo is reporting that a man by the name of Jose Trujillo has filed a class action suit in a Cook County, Illinois court because the iPhone’s battery is not user replaceable. The crux of Trujillo’s argument is twofold: one, that Apple did not explicitly tell customers prior to purchase that the iPhone battery was not user-replaceable; two, that “The battery enclosed in the iPhone can only be charged approximately 300 times before it will be in need of replacement, necessitating a new battery annually for owners of the iPhone.”

As to the first statement, Philip Elmer-DeWitt at Apple 2.0 has an excellent timeline of what Apple has said about the battery.

But as to the second, well, as we’ve reported, Apple has said that this is blantantly false. Four hundred full charge cycles will lower the battery’s capacity to 80% of its original, and most users are unlikely to go through that many cycles in one year (or, according to PC Magazine’s death clock, even two years). True, it would be nice if we could swap batteries in and out of the iPhone, but I’m not sure it’s an actionable offense. But that’ll be up to the judge to decide.

The moral of this story? Clearly, Mr. Trujillo should read our blog.

[Photo from iFixit]

Copyright Mac Publishing LLC. For personal use only.