Do you have an old iPhone and in the last few years have you broken your head trying to regain the speed it once had? Apparently, there is a solution as simple as it is curious that would make your terminal faster. According to the portal GizChina, changing the iPhone region to France is the key to achieve it. Is it an iOS bug? Not precisely. There is actually a whole story behind that you may remember.
We have to go back to 2017, when a study of Geekbench showed that iOS 11 reduced the performance of older iPhones. Of course, the criticism was immediate and Apple was in the middle of a storm for several months. A good part of the controversy was originated by sensationalist headlines that assured that those of Cupertino had resorted to the planned obsolescence to encourage the purchase of a new terminal.
However, Apple’s true intention was very different. Reducing the performance of the terminal was aimed at protecting the battery and the iPhone in general. There comes a time when the battery of a mobile device reaches a level of degradation in which it is no longer possible to meet the energy demand that is required. In the case of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s, it was increasingly common to see users reporting sudden power outages.
Apple’s solution, then, was to create an algorithm capable of detecting battery degradation and acting accordingly. If it cannot perform optimally over time, iOS decreases the performance of key components such as the processor. So that, battery life is prioritized over performance. Apple’s error was not correctly communicating to users that this algorithm was active.
What does France have to do with the supposed speed increase of old iPhones?
Despite the explanations Apple offered, and even after introducing a new battery replacement program, the barrage of criticism never stopped. In fact, in some regions of the world demands —Some collectives— against the company, and this is when France enters the scene. Why does moving the region to that country increase the speed of the iPhone? In 2018, the French prosecutor’s office launched an investigation against Apple for alleged planned obsolescence practices.
The situation “ended” in February 2020, when France fined Apple 25 million euros for “intentionally” slowing down its terminals. What’s interesting is that so far we know that older iPhones supposedly disable the algorithm when France is the selected region, a condition that neither Apple nor the French government disclosed at the time. You can be sure that in a matter of days more technical analyzes will emerge to try to clear up doubts.