CCPA escalates its iOS 18 file against Apple over screen lines and unpaid repairs

India's Central Consumer Protection Authority has moved its iOS 18 case against Apple from a preliminary file to a detailed investigation. A notice dated 29 July told the company the matter had been escalated to the investigation wing. Reuters published the documents on 15 September. The regulator is looking at two linked questions: whether the 2024 software update damaged iPhone screens and microphones, and whether Apple's refusal to warrant software left buyers paying for hardware repairs that the update allegedly caused.

Complaints describe green, pink or white lines on the display after the upgrade, and in some files a dead microphone. Users then paid for screen replacements. A replacement display on an iPhone 15 is listed around Rs 27,900, more than a third of the phone's retail price in some configurations. The authority told Apple that charging customers for faults that stem from the company's own negligence violates fair-trade rules.

Apple's reply

Apple says iOS 18 went through heavy testing and that it found no systemic fault or safety risk in India. It says the case sits on 75 complaints. By June 2026, the company told the regulator, only about 11 percent of iPhones in the country still ran iOS 18. Later versions are already on most of the installed base.

On the warranty point Apple's line is industry practice. Software is shipped with no warranty. Treating every software-linked fault as a hardware claim, the company said, would turn a software vendor into an insurer against all technological risk. That sentence is the legal core of the file. If the authority accepts it, the case shrinks to a handful of repair disputes. If the authority rejects it, Apple and every other phone maker that pushes system updates in India would face a new duty to cover hardware damage blamed on code.

What the authority can do

The CCPA can levy fines. It can order refunds. It can tell a company to change contract terms. Lawyers who work in this field say an order that rewrites software warranty language would be a first. The authority has not published a finding. Escalation means the investigation wing will collect more complaints, service invoices and technical notes before a final view.

Apple already sells and assembles iPhones in India at a scale that makes the country a core market, not a side list. A forced change to warranty terms would apply to every future iOS release sold here, not only to iOS 18. That is why the 75-complaint figure and the 11 percent residual-install figure both matter. The company is arguing that the harm is small and dated. The regulator is arguing that the contract term is the harm, regardless of how many handsets still sit on that build.

The practical fork

Screen-line faults on iPhones have been reported in other markets since older iOS versions. Some were later tied to hardware lots, some to software, some left unexplained. The Indian file is unusual because it treats the software licence as a consumer-protection object. Most countries still treat the licence as a separate contract from the one-year hardware warranty.

Until the investigation wing reports, buyers who already paid for a line-on-screen repair after iOS 18 have no new refund path. Buyers on newer iOS builds are outside the original complaint set. The live issue is the term itself: whether an update that Apple pushes, and that a user cannot easily refuse if they want a working phone, can sit outside every warranty Apple writes in India.