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So there was never an actual issue with the phone but instead with the testing method. They've given Apple an opportunity to deliberately reduce the performance of an older model and they've taken it.
 
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I wish people would stop freaking about low level non-ionizing radiation which is harmless, and demanding devices emit less of it, resulting in lower cellular performance than could otherwise be achieved.
The things the masses freakout about if someone makes a YouTube video or writes an article…. I’m surprised that people haven’t freaked out and banned water as being the most addictive substance on the planet. The withdrawals are deadly I’ve heard. 🤓
”Most addictive substance is killing those who try and leave it behind!”
 
I wish people would stop freaking about low level non-ionizing radiation which is harmless, and demanding devices emit less of it, resulting in lower cellular performance than could otherwise be achieved.
Unfortunately it may take decades of exposure to low levels and very large high quality studies to answer that question.
Those studies don't exist. Is there strong evidence of carcinogenicity from non-ionizing radiation? No. Have some studies suggested possible harm? Yes. Has it been proven that there is no harm? No.
 
Why would transmit power need to be high when off body or in a pocket? I don’t put my phone in my pocket or hold it to my face when calling. If transmit power is dynamic, wouldn’t it just adjust depending on signal strength?
 
Why is it only the iPhone 12? All other iPhones emit less radiation?
Something is fishy about the explanation
The reality is much more prosaic. Like all industries passing qualification tests (cars, fridges, whatever), Apple products detect when they're tested and throttle outputs to stay under the cap. France added or modified a test, and oops, it was not detected. The software fix consists of throttling again when test conditions are met, plus possibly being in France. So, in normal operation, the iPhone 12 may sometimes hit the cap, as the paper explains.
The fridge example is rather funny: some vendors implement(ed) transistor-level light sensors to recognize the door openings/closings test sequence of the European Union, and cut electric consumption to get better marks.
 
Apple says that it is being turned off despite the fact that the country's Agence Française Nationale des Fréquences or ANFR regulatory group made an error when doing its radiation tests.

ANFR used a testing protocol that did not account for the ‌iPhone‌'s off-body detection mechanism, which Apple says has been 'thoroughly tested and verified internationally to be an effective mechanism to comply with SAR requirements.'"

Apple is not claiming that France's regulators made an error with their radiation testing: the test performed correctly detected that the SAR limits are exceeded in the scenario of having the device on a solid surface.

While Apple argues that international standards allow for increased SAR limits in that particular scenario, France is not required to adopt those increased limits.
 
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Unfortunately it may take decades of exposure to low levels and very large high quality studies to answer that question.
Those studies don't exist. Is there strong evidence of carcinogenicity from non-ionizing radiation? No. Have some studies suggested possible harm? Yes. Has it been proven that there is no harm? No.

Science is never "proven", that's not part of what we do. You can never prove that something is completely impossible through experiments, because you can always argue that the next measurement would have been the one to produce the result that appears to be impossible. Instead, we gather data and analyze it, producing the best explanation for the process under study, and then we develop new, better instruments and do it again, improving or replacing the best explanation with something even better.

In this particular case, the physics of how radiation interacts with matter makes it pretty clear how this works. Note that "radiation" isn't the kind from nuclear reactors, those are actual particles of matter that can directly impact your cells and damage the DNA. This radiation is electromagnetic...visible light is radiation in this case. The energy required for electromagnetic radiation to damage a cell directly is really large, up in the UV...you can get skin cancer from sunlight because some of it is UV, and if you go higher it's more possible (which is why there are annual limits on X-ray exposure, for example). The iPhone outputs radio, which is very low energy, much lower than even visible light...it's so low level that the possibility of a radio photon directly causing damage to your DNA is, well, impossible. The heat can cause damage, but the radio just doesn't have the power to do anything to you. Quantum mechanics makes it clear that a particular radio photon might, possibly, damage a cell somewhere in the world, but it's so low probability that you're going to be long dead of something else first.

People fear radiation because of nuclear energy (and for good reason, when that gets out of control it does kill quickly), they just don't understand that it's a totally different thing than what is in the world around you. Heck, people themselves are radioactive (yes, you really are), but it's not dangerous at all to get close to another human (well, not for that reason anyways ;) ). The radiation from an iPhone is safe, it's not going to give you cancer of any kind, so don't fall prey to people who want to use ignorance about it.
 
Will it do this if I take a US-bought phone to France? Or is this only for devices made for sale in France?
 
The radiation from an iPhone is safe, it's not going to give you cancer of any kind, so don't fall prey to people who want to use ignorance about it.
That's what they told us about Roundup too. Let people form their own opinions rather than forcing something on them. Perhaps Apple could create a "low radiation" setting and let customers decide what is safe for them. People have different levels of sensitivity and resilience.
 
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Will it do this if I take a US-bought phone to France? Or is this only for devices made for sale in France?

Apple's statement is:

iOS 17.1 includes an update for iPhone 12 for users in France to accommodate this specific test protocol that requires reduced power when off-body on a static surface.

It seems to me that it implies it will affect all iPhone 12 users in France, regardless of from where the iPhone itself comes from.
 
I had absolutely no idea iPhones adjusted signal strength if they detected they weren't being carried. That's both technically really interesting, and useful to know for times when you're in a marginal signal situation and trying to get a connection--put the phone down on a stable surface and you might get slightly better reception.

I feel like I may have inadvertently done this a few times in the car, and assumed that it was less mass surrounding the phone improving the signal, when in fact it might have just been a radio power bump.
 
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