Apple’s decision to throttle older iPhones and slow them down due to battery wear was controversial, and Apple was fined by the French competition watchdog for this practice, as well as several US states, which led to a $ 113 million settlement.
Now, a new report suggests that changing the region to France makes old iPhones faster. This suggests that Apple doesn’t throttle iPhones in France, as a response to the country’s competition watchdog’s investigation and subsequent fine.
If your iPhone is a little slow, there is a quick and easy solution
Earlier, Apple had revealed that it slows down old iPhones in order to preserve their battery life, prioritising it over performance. Apple’s critics have argued that this is planned obsolescence – a practice of artificially limiting the useful life of a product in order to push users to purchase a new one.
However, the company maintains that this is done to prevent iPhones from rebooting under heavy load.
While Apple did not pay any fine for slowing down iPhones in China, it was forced to lower the prices of its replacement batteries.
Apple has since added an option called ‘Battery health’ in Settings, allowing users to toggle the option to throttle performance based on the health of the battery. However, some reports suggest that despite this, old iPhones continue to be slowed down.
This is where changing the region to France reportedly helps. If you are experiencing slowdowns on your old iPhone, here’s how you can change the region to France. Then see if this helps in speeding up your device.
- Open Settings and tap on your name.
- Tap Media & Purchases.
- Tap View Account.
- Now, tap Change Country or Region.
- Change the location to France.
What will change?
On the iPhone 12 Pro, a GeekBench 5 test score shows that it is basically the same before and after changing the location to France. This shows that the reduction of the iPhone performance does not affect new iPhones. However, for old iPhones, the case is different.
For example, iPhone 7 before changing the region:
iPhone 7 after changing the region:
The report did a test on the iPhone 7 before and after changing the location to France. The GeekBench running score before changing the location to France is 286,632. However, after changing the location to France, the running score is 298,321.
We can all see that there is a change in the running points when the location is changed. The CPU single-core and multi-core scores reported by GeekBench 5 are consistent with the AnTuTu running scores. The scores before and after the modification of the region are only a few tenths apart.
On older devices, the test results may differ significantly. But you need to keep in mind that changing the region can lead to accelerated battery wear. Therefore, do it at your own risk.
If you are looking for a virtual phone number to receive SMS codes, we recommend our Sms-man.com service. Here you can easily find the right country and service for a cheap price. More information about the service can be found in this article https://sms-man.com/blog/permanent-virtual-number-for-sms/.