Why setting some iPhones to the "France" region increases their performance

A study shows that iPhones are faster when the software region is set to France. Explanations.

Source: Benjamin Sow // Unsplash

You probably remember the iPhone “BatteryGate” affair? Apple had deliberately, and on the sly, slowed down its iPhones to preserve their battery. This case caused a stir and gave rise to numerous lawsuits. In 2021, an interesting discovery was made.

Earlier…

In 2017, users on Reddit raised a performance issue on their iPhones and the founder of Geekbench had looked into the problem, corroborating the theories of Apple customers. Apple had confirmed that they had deliberately limited the performance of iPhones to preserve their battery over time. It was therefore not abnormal to notice a difference in processor frequency with the aging of the phone. This is called underclocking.

Note, for example, that this kind of process is often used by Android manufacturers when you activate the energy saving mode, which does not prevent you from using your smartphone, far from it.

However, this decision by Apple was followed by numerous lawsuits. In November 2021, Apple agreed to pay $113 million in the United States to put this "Batterygate" behind it.

In the process, the brand apologized and took a set of measures to provide more transparency and better support. Apple still suffered a legal attack in France for “planned obsolescence”. Without being sentenced for this reason, the firm still had to pay 25 million euros after reaching an agreement with the Paris prosecutor's office in early 2020.

A simple change in the settings

These lawsuits not only cost Apple money, they also forced the Cupertino company to act on iOS. Indeed, we now know that iPhones do not have this optimization algorithm enabled when France is the region selected in the settings, a condition that neither Apple nor the French government disclosed at the time.

If you have an old iPhone, you can therefore increase its performance from Settings > General > Language and regions > Region > France. Obviously, this will reduce autonomy.

We don't know the exact list of devices that benefit from this treatment, this includes the iPhone 6 and 6S generations, and certainly other more recent models such as the iPhone 7 and certainly the iPhone X. We will have to check if this exception is valid for all iPhones, or only those that were the subject of the complaints.

AppleiPhone 6s Plus

AppleIphone 6s

AppleiPhone 6

AppleiPhone 7

Apple iPhone SE

AppleiPhone X

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