The French iPhone 12 ban still applies to some of the country’s overseas territories, as Apple seemingly forgot to issue the update to those …
Much ado about nothing
The drama began when French watchdog group Agence Nationale des Fréquences (ANFR) last month claimed the three-year-old phone exceeded legal radiation exposure limits, and banned the device from sale.
We previously explained that this was nothing like as scary as it sounded.
While “radiation” is a frightening-sounding term, what the ANFR actually means is radio-frequency radiation, which is a rather different thing.
Mobile radio waves emanating from smartphones can cause localized heating of human tissue. The World Health Organization says there is zero evidence that this poses any health risk, but in an abundance of caution, the amount of RF energy that can pass into smartphone users is limited by law.
The iPhone 12 passed RF radiation tests when it launched, and it’s unclear why it would suddenly fail those tests some three years later.
Apple explained that the ANFR was using a non-standard test, and tweaked the settings of French phones to pass the test, following which the ban was lifted.
But Apple forgot French overseas territories
However, while the over-the-air update was pushed out to iPhone 12 models in France, the same didn’t happen to French overseas territories. Macworld notes that this means the ban is still in effect in six of them.
The French territories that have not lifted the ban are Guadeloupe, Guyana, Martinique, Mayotte, Reunion, and Saint-Martin. Other French territories have legal considerations that affect whether the iPhone 12 is banned or not, according to an ANFR press release.
The ban never applied to a further six French territories, as they have different legal frameworks.
The other overseas territories (Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, TAAF, New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna, French Polynesia) fall under other legal frameworks.
The press release indicates that Apple will issue the update to the affected territories by the end of the year. It’s not clear why the company can’t do so immediately.
Aviation fans will know Saint-Martin as the island where the airport runway begins almost at the beach, with planes passing just over the heads of tourists.
Photo: Alljengi/CC2.0
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