Why adjusting certain iPhones to the “France” region increases their performance – Frandroid

Research shows that iPhones are faster when the software region is set to France. Explanations.

Source: Benjamin Sow // Unsplash

You probably remember the iPhone “BatteryGate” case? Apple had deliberately, and in secret, slowed down its iPhones to preserve their battery. This case had caused a stir and given rise to numerous trials. In 2021, an interesting discovery was made.

Earlier…

In 2017, users of Reddit raised a performance issue on their iPhone and the founder of Geekbench had looked into the problem, corroborating the theories of Apple customers. Apple had confirmed that they had deliberately limited the performance of iPhones to preserve their battery over time. It was therefore not abnormal to notice a difference in processor frequency with the aging of the phone. This is what we call underclocking.

Note, for example, that this kind of process is often used by Android manufacturers when activating the energy saving mode, which does not prevent using your smartphone, far from it.

However, this decision by Apple has been followed by numerous lawsuits. In November 2021, Apple agreed to pay $ 113 million in the United States to put this “Batterygate” behind him.

In the process, the brand apologized and took a set of actions to provide more transparency and better support. Apple nevertheless suffered a legal attack in France for ” planned obsolescence “. Without being condemned for this reason, the firm still had to pay 25 million euros after having reached an agreement with the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office in early 2020.

A simple change in the settings

These lawsuits have not only cost Apple money, they have also forced the Cupertino company to act on iOS. Indeed, we now know that iPhones do not have this optimization algorithm activated when France is the region selected in the settings, a condition that neither Apple nor the French government disclosed at the time.

If you have an old iPhone, then you can increase its performance fromSettings> General> Language and regions> Region> France. Obviously, this will reduce autonomy.

We do not know the exact list of devices that benefit from this treatment, it includes the iPhone 6 and 6S generations, and certainly other more recent models like the iPhone 7 and certainly the iPhone X. It will be necessary to check if this exception is valid for all iPhones, or only those which were the subject of the complaints.