Apple Will Update iPhone 12 in France After Regulators Said It Emitted Too Much Radiation (apnews.com) 46
Apple has agreed to install updates for the iPhone 12 in France after French regulators ordered the company to stop selling the model because it emits electromagnetic radiation levels that exceed European Union standards. From a report: The company, which just unveiled its newest generation of iPhones, insists the 12 model is safe and the phones have been certified in countries around the world since its introduction in 2020. It says the problem raised by the French government agency that manages wireless communications frequencies is "related to a specific testing protocol."
The French agency said the iPhone 12 recently failed one of two types of tests for electromagnetic waves capable of being absorbed by the body. On Tuesday, France's government ordered a halt to sales of the iPhone 12 and told Apple to issue a software update to address the problem or face a recall. Apple said in a statement Friday that it "will issue a software update for users in France to accommodate the protocol used by French regulators." It did not elaborate.
The French agency said the iPhone 12 recently failed one of two types of tests for electromagnetic waves capable of being absorbed by the body. On Tuesday, France's government ordered a halt to sales of the iPhone 12 and told Apple to issue a software update to address the problem or face a recall. Apple said in a statement Friday that it "will issue a software update for users in France to accommodate the protocol used by French regulators." It did not elaborate.
Only for France? (Score:2)
Re: Only for France? (Score:1)
How funny you should say this. Most people are iodine deficient. It's in table salt. (Iodized table salt.) But when salt is added to foods (fast foods/frozen), typically non-iodized salt is used.
Mod parent down! (Score:1)
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Re: Only for France? (Score:2)
Look up the FCC ID and test reports. It's all fairly transparent, most people don't have time to mess with all that.
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The USA does not subject phone makers to FCC testing for SAR. They allow manufacturers to self test and self report. Better look up some other country's results.
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You betcha. Not only that, they're gonna find a way to punish everyone for USB-C.
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You betcha. Not only that, they're gonna find a way to punish everyone for USB-C.
Oh, FFS! Just stop.
They issued a firmware update to fix this pronto; WTF else do you think they should do; give everyone a new iPhone 15 Pro Max?
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Well, no, but my anger is more about how this happened in the first place. This is reminiscent of how I felt about years of wondering how Volkswagen was getting so much better horsepower out of their new "clean diesel" cars than everyone else on the day we all discovered they were just blatantly cheating on the government tests.
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Well, no, but my anger is more about how this happened in the first place. This is reminiscent of how I felt about years of wondering how Volkswagen was getting so much better horsepower out of their new "clean diesel" cars than everyone else on the day we all discovered they were just blatantly cheating on the government tests.
Except this wasn't Cheating. It was finding a software fix for an at least annoying, and even potentially (in the right circumstances) dangerous, property of, well all batteries, to suffer drastically reduced instantaneous power (current) delivery capacity in cold temperatures. Coupled with the naturally-uneven current draw of the cellphone, and the fact that, just like trying to start a car with a half-dead (or old) battery on a frigid day, as the instantaneous current capacity of the battery was exceeded,
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Should they artificially neuter everyone's device just because France decided to use a testing protocol their own people acknowledge is atypical, which recorded SAR levels they acknowledge are safe, or limit inflicting this misery on the good citizens of France that voted for this silliness?
From TFA: "France’s digital affairs minister said the iPhone 12’s radiation levels are still much lower than what scientific studies consider potentially harmful to users, and the radiation agency acknowledg
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Should they artificially neuter everyone's device just because France decided to use a testing protocol their own people acknowledge is atypical, which recorded SAR levels they acknowledge are safe, or limit inflicting this misery on the good citizens of France that voted for this silliness?
From TFA: "France’s digital affairs minister said the iPhone 12’s radiation levels are still much lower than what scientific studies consider potentially harmful to users, and the radiation agency acknowledged that its tests don’t reflect typical phone use."
If that's true, France should be publicly apologizing to Apple for Defamation. Also, using the term "radiation", even though technically correct, was unnecessarily Alarmist, and France bloody-well knew it!
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France has NOT defamed Apple (through implying that their devices were bad or dangerous). They noted the radiation levels were above the limits set in the law, and asked for correction. That they use an atypical procedure that results in larger radiation values is only a problem for French citizen, who get phones of all brands that have a lower range as compared to the same model purchased in other countries. It is common for phone manufacturers to sell slightly different variants of the same phone model du
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If that's true, France should be publicly apologizing to Apple for Defamation. Also, using the term "radiation", even though technically correct, was unnecessarily Alarmist, and France bloody-well knew it!
No, there is a known dangerous level, and the legal limit is 10% of this. Exactly for a situation like this, so someone exceeding the legal limit by 100% still doesn't cause damage.
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Exactly, it's set so that someone who spends 8 hours a day at work on the phone doesn't get a harmful dose of radiation.
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The only way to lower radiation is to lower the power of the transmitter, which results in weaker connections with cell towers.
This ain't rocket surgery.
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That's not entirely true. It's certainly the simplest way, but modifying the way transmissions are made can also change things.
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but modifying the way transmissions are made can also change things.
Apple can't change the 3GPP air interface specs just to appease France (or anyone really)
Any change they can make to how transmissions are made will have a non-zero impact on performance. A smarter change than lowering tx power might be to cap the number of resource blocks the phone will use and/or limit how many carriers it will aggregate in the upstream. Both of these things would lower the radio duty cycle and presumably SAR. Problem is, they'll also reduce upload performance. Will Joe Q. Public not
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Yes, any change will probably affect performance, but there are options. As you point out, maximum transmit power at maximum duty cycle is a fairly rare thing, so a fix could be quite subtle. Maybe you'll get slightly shittier download speeds when you've only got one bar and your phone is to your ear.
It's also possible that France's "specific testing protocol" and Apple's "software update for users in France to accommodate the protocol used by French regulators" manages to address just the particular situat
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Uh huh, so why is this order only against Apple and not all cell-phone manufacturers? If other manufacturers can stay within a law designed to protect people then Apple, one of the richest companies on Earth should be able to too.
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The only way to lower radiation is to lower the power of the transmitter, which results in weaker connections with cell towers. This ain't rocket surgery.
Except it isn't the only way. You can for example check where the cell tower is and aim the signal at the tower, reducing the power that misses the cell tower anyway. An iPhone detects when you hold it to your ear, so it can keep radiation away from your head when you do that (except that might not change the test results). You can reduce the time were data is transmitted.
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You can for example check where the cell tower is and aim the signal at the tower, reducing the power that misses the cell tower anyway.
If that was easy to implement cell phones would already do it. The power that "misses" your serving cell tends to reach other cells, where it has a non-zero impact on noise floor and attainable performance for customers on those cells. The "missed" power is also wasted power from the perspective of your battery life.
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France decided to use a testing protocol their own people acknowledge is atypical
That isn't what the quote said. The quote said that the tests don't reflect typical phone use, not that the French tests are atypical. The IEC standard is defined in IEC 62209-3 and it's imperfect measure for mobile phone use because there's no perfect way to judge this as different people use their phone differently, and ... as far as SAR is concerned different people will experience different results. An average child will record about 1.5x the SAR than an adult due to body chemistry differences alone. Wo
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Are they going to let everyone else continue using a supposedly dangerous device?
According to last slashdot post, the authorities of two EU countries (Belgium, Netherlands) have specifically mentioned that it was NOT dangerous due to the regulatory limits already including a large safety coefficient. https://mobile.slashdot.org/st... [slashdot.org]
implies this fix is only for France?
Apple replies to a request from an authority (I guess, with the purpose to restart sales as soon as possible) so do what they were asked. Final decisions from other states and from EU is not yet known, they might ask a more complete set of changes; it is wi
This reminds me of California's Proposition 65 (Score:2)
France tested with European guidelines that differ from those of the U.S.A. and so the results were different. But are the European limits really that much safer than the ones in the USA? Maybe ANY radiation is extremely bad, so that's like saying the USA allows five drops of poison per barrel of wine while Europe only allows 3 drops of poison per barrel of wine. Three drops of poison is less, but it's still poison.
If you live in California, cancer warnings seem to be lurking around every corner — on
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Maybe. You should probably play it safe and stay away from your computer, which is probably purposely spraying out 2.4 GHz radiation in the form of wifi, and is definitely inadvertently spraying out similar RF radiation as a side effect of the signals in the processor and on the bus.
Also, anything that is warmer than absolute zero is going to be emitting some so... well, I'm not sure what you're going to do.
Re: This reminds me of California's Proposition 65 (Score:2)
How funny. RF power from Wifi is typically 10 times less intense than cellular emissions. (100mW vs 1W.) Most people's microwave oven emit quite a few also, even through the door. They never intended you to stand with your face at the glass or anywhere near it, lol. 5ft away you're probably safe. 1 inch away? Probably more RF than the France claim.
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The way the snippet is written it implies this fix is only for France? Are they going to let everyone else continue using a supposedly dangerous device?
No one, not even France, has suggested there’s anything dangerous about the levels observed. We’re at least an order of magnitude from any concern of that sort. And reading between the lines, France’s statements seem to suggest this became an issue after initial testing passed the device (presumably due to software updates), and Apple’s response seems to suggest that France’s testing protocol may be different than that of others, hence why this wasn’t observed elsewhere.
How was this not caught? (Score:2)
These are RF-emitting devices. That means the regulatory agencies that manage the spectrum... the FCC in the US, I'm not sure about the EU... test and approve the emissions for compliance before they go on sale, no? Plus, there's Underwriter Labs and Conformité Européenne. I dunno about UL, but the European iPhone 12s are CE certified. The EU doesn't allow digital labelling, so you can see the CE mark lasered onto the thing [macrumors.com]. So how did all of the regulatory, testing, and certifi
Re: How was this not caught? (Score:2)
That's not to say that non-ionizing radiation can't be harmful. Don't stand next to a 1kW radio transmitter, lol. You could be cooked. Heck, a microwave oven cooks food with RF. Raising brain temperature even a few degrees can be fatal. (Hooray for the circulatory system.) But no, your iPhone probably isn't going to kill you. (Other ways? Giving your location away? Raising your stress level through social media? Hahahaa. Maybe. But RF? Hahahaah. No.)
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Re: How was this not caught? (Score:2)
I would have thought they would self certify but be held accountable if they lie...
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Who is to say it hasn't changed over time? Radios in modern devices are software defined. The very same regulatory agency tested the iPhone 12 using the same standard on release and certified it as okay.
Never mind that the allegedly dangerous radiation levels are still plain old non-ionizing RF and not gammas, neutrons, or whatnot.
No one said that the level emitted is dangerous, just that it is above regulatory requirements. Also SAR isn't about ionising radiation it's about energy absorption and tissue heating. Just because RF isn't giving you cancer doesn't mean it can't do things such as make you go blind or induce auditory respons
it's a France-specific solution, though (Score:2)
this solution won't work in other countries due to food safety laws.
Apparently, apple is going to recall the units, and shield them with stinky cheese . . .