this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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72
Apple iOS Update to Fix iPhone 12 Radiation Levels Approved by French Regulators (www.macrumors.com)
submitted 1 year ago by fer0n@lemm.ee to c/apple_enthusiast@lemmy.world
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[–] peopleproblems@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

... "Radiation Levels"

I cant stand this. While yes, technically radio and microwaves radiate from a source, we do not use that term to describe anything but particles capable of ionizing other particles. Phones cannot produce UV, Xray, or Gamma radiation. If they are emitting particles from radioactive decay, that would be a level of maliciousness.

[–] schmurian@lsmu.schmurian.xyz 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Haha, what? This can be fixed via an update?

[–] overzeetop@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Unless it's a hardware failure causing spurious emission, it just means that transmit power has been reduced in software. Practically, this will reduce the range at which you can communicate to the cell tower. The cell tower reception should remain nominally the the same strength and the same speed, but you will have a reduce range for towers to which you can reliably connect (i.e. dropped connections) because you can't tell the tower you're listening. Also, your upload throughput will be lower at a given distance from the tower as your distance from the tower increases beyond a (now smaller) full-connection-strength radius.

[–] Syldon@feddit.uk 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

power levels

[–] chris@lemm.ee -4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Does this mean my already slower iPhone 12 (due to battery age) will become even slower? Better than cancer, I suppose.

[–] Syldon@feddit.uk 1 points 1 year ago

They could have found a fault in power delivery, which could be the issue. They may just be correcting it. You can guarantee there will be back to back tests done to show any difference, so time will tell.

[–] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 1 points 1 year ago

It's not ionizing. It'd be impressive (and probably highly illegal) if it was. The "radiation" was below the range of visible light (technically, visible light is a form of radiation), meaning it's fairly low energy. In order for it to increase your cancer risk, it needs to be above the visible light spectrum (ultraviolet and higher), otherwise it lacks the energy to damage cells directly. Their use of the term "radiation" is hard-core clickbait.

Radiowaves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet and x-rays are all radiation, and they're all light. If you had the right tools, you could theoretically take a picture using only microwaves and/or radiowaves. Additionally, radiowaves and microwaves are below the visible light range (so they don't cause cancer) and require a ton of power to cook something (microwave ovens are usually +1000 watts, iirc the iPhone was putting out slightly more than 5 watts in the radiowave range, which afaik requires more power to cook something).

[–] glimpseintotheshit@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would assume fixing radiation levels via software update can only mean lower radio power -> worse signal strength.

Because the article doesn't mention it: Will this update be applied to french iPhone 12s only or is this going to affect more phones?

Also, is this affecting the standard 12 only or also 12 Pro and Pro Max?

[–] LazaroFilm@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

What about 12 mini?

[–] scytale@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lmao they’re only doing it for users in France, not everyone else. I know it’s technically not dangerous and the regulations there just makes the threshold lower, but it sounds so maliciously compliant to do it just in France.

[–] acosmichippo@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

or there are functional downsides to the fix.

[–] The_Helmet_Stays_On@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

Just enough of a functional downgrade to comply with the demand and cause people to think they need to upgrade to the new iPhone.

[–] ultratiem@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

Ministers later said that though the radiation level was above the accepted standard, it was not dangerous and people were safe to continue using the phones

So why all the dust? Blew into an international incident get me off this dirt ball!

[–] anon_8675309@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

In other news, the French have banned the sun.