iPhone 12 withdrawn from French market for non-compliance with EU regulation

I have taken products through this sort of testing in a previous life. There are many hard-to-replicate factors that influence test results.

For example, in my direct experience (not with phones, but networking gear), the way the product is placed in the test fixture and the way cables are dressed has an impact on emissions and measurements. In one scenario, as a product engineer supporting equipment through a certification lab, I had the mandate to pass with a 3 dB margin from the company I worked for, but, after days of testing and failing, it was decided that the equipment under test could pass with cables routed in a special way (which was not uncommon for normal customer use) and with quasi-peak detection (i.e. averaging the emission peaks) that ended up below the regulatory (FCC for example) passing below the regulatory mask/level by a fraction of a dB. I have always wondered whether a different test lab, without support from product engineers, would pass the same test. I think the answer in "no".

Edit: Quasi-peaking was not a dirty trick that was pulled to pass certification. It was an acceptable method of measuring emission power suggested by the lab technicians.

I guess I assumed the flow would be something like:

Apple wants to sell things in France.

Apple submits the devices to some France-certified labs who do the test.

They get an “OK” stamp, and the lab is responsible if there was a mistake in the testing.

If the labs belong to Apple, then there’d just be an obvious conflict of interest, right?

“The government” is big. Lots of people, caring about lots of things. Did you want to be less absolute in your claim?

ANFR is not the government. It’s a public agency not directly controlled by the government.

Nobody in the government cares about the iPhone 12. And concerning the current government, I’m pretty sure they are all owning iPhones, they all would love a selfie with Tim Cook and don’t even know what DAS is.

And thus give them more encouragement them to shake down the next person, as well as you again the next time they see you on the street.

I don't know the spread of this movement but it does exist. For example, the national electric company deployed a new generation of electric meter (Linky) which can communicate data to your supplier using PLC. This communication of course emits EM waves so some people objected to the installation of this meter.

Sounds similar to the '5g rollout caused covid' movement in the states.

Maybe it's just my own perception but it is one of the more widespread "out there" belief in France. It's even supported by national agencies, see my other comment.

Maybe, I'm just saying that the country has a different... opinion on EM waves so that might reflect on this type of action. Just as an example, if you go to their "CDC"'s (not exactly) website, the faq about em exposure from cellular waves starts by saying that there's no real proof for harmful effects buuuut... then goes on to basically say the opposite for the majority of the answer and the article in general.

(Q3)

>In the current state of knowledge, the Agency's work does not demonstrate a causal link between exposure to waves emitted by mobile communications and effects on health.

>However, some publications suggest a possible increase in the risk of brain tumors, in the long term, for intensive users of mobile phones, which is why the IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) has classified radiofrequencies as “possible carcinogenic”.

>Furthermore, the latest ANSES expert opinions have revealed, with limited levels of proof, various biological effects in humans or animals, some of which had already been reported in a previous expert opinion published in 2009: they can concern sleep, male fertility in animals or even cognitive performance.

https://www.anses.fr/fr/exposition-ondes-electromagnetiques-...

So again, it's a different pov. And it's weird that no other country came up to the same conclusion as of now. Q7 is also funny as they recommend not using your phone a lot to avoid em exposure, which is true but in context is obviously implying that there is harm from said exposure.

It's affecting lots of phones.

"Smartphone radiation tests have so far led to 42 sales stops in the country. It is the first time Apple has been affected by such a move."

From https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-disputes-french-fin...

Could the exact same thing be said about whomever the French are hiring? They want to have findings or else all the money they spent ensuring compliance is effectively wasted.

The phone has a finite thickness.

Once again, it all depends on the frequency! Gamma radiation is EM radiation and can cause nuclear fission [1], which in turn can release neutron radiation.

I'm fairly certain that no iPhone model to date emits gamma radiation, though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photofission

Unshielded microwave ovens definitely cause cancer. The energy penetrates the skin, and some of it plays billiards with the atoms in DNA, genetic transcription machinery, etc.

I can’t find a study because the internet is full of blog spam saying your microwave oven has shielding that keeps emissions to a safe level (of course), and studies looking at microwave radiation exposure near the cell phone limit, not 1000x higher, which is roughly what your microwave does if the shielding is missing or the safety interlock is broken.

The point is that radiation can interact with stuff without it always being ionizing, like the water/microwave interaction

Depends on the medium! I'm fairly certain that a high-energy microwave shower would indeed be illegal.

Both frequency and amplitude matter; reductive arguments like this will convince neither laypeople nor people with some understanding of physics.

If it isn't, it's probably only because of a loophole lobbied for by Big Shower. Technically in France it's only a Shower in the shower region, outside of that geographically protected area it must be referred to as an hot water cleanse.

Sorry, but the quoted article seems a bit dubious to me:

> The difference is the kind of microwave radiation each device emits. With regard to cellphones and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, there is an information-gathering component. The waves are modulated and pulsed in a very different manner than your microwave oven.

What is an "information-gathering component"? What does that have to do with pulsed emitters and (averaged) EIRP values, which definitely is a thing for some, but not all of the mentioned transmission technologies: Especially 3G and some versions of Wi-Fi use DSSS or other spread-spectrum techniques which are not pulsed, unlike TDMA.

I could even see an argument being made for "pulsing" making a difference and maybe another measure than the EIRP being needed (just like how the linear-no-threshold model for the effects of radiation on organisms might be a simplification of what's actually going on), but then it doesn't help to just throw a bunch of wildly different wireless technologies, using greatly varying transmission powers from 10 mW to 2000 mW, into a single bag and call them "very different from microwave ovens" without describing what that means.

Why? There is merit to it. Or are you waiting for a newspaper release to tell you it is well-supported?

How do you know that? The article says they measured it is 5,74 W/kg, which Apple disagrees with. So in which paper would that number appear?

The sun emits UV which certainly causes skin cancer if you get too much of it.

..oops sun screen is actually bad too (Octocrylene is the latest problematic newcomer), and would need a very thick application to get the claimed effectiveness.

My point is that if OP cares about those risks, they'd prioritize other higher risks first, and they'd run out of quality of life long before they got to this one.

I've seen people use "constructed" instead of "artificial", and I think it does make sense because it relates to the human action and intention behind the changes we make to the environment. I'm not too sure what would be the alternative to "natural" though.

It is far more likely that it is due to numerous other causes, some even with proven links – there is, however, still no links to mobile phone use, and no known mechanism by which it could even happen. Non-Ionizing Radiation causing cancer is probably as close to a physical impossibility as you get.

Besides, there are numerous of other sources of radiation that is much stronger, including visible lights. You should ban visible light before you ban mobile phones! This stuff is ridiculous,

People living longer and cancer being diagnosed and reported more are the reasons for higher cancer rates. The rates of all kinds of cancer have been rising. If it was being cause by radio waves you would expect it to be certain kinds of cancer. Radio waves from mobile phone don't penetrate flesh very far, so you would expect skin cancer to increase more than other cancers.

High power radio transmissions have been used since the 40s.

> Hmmm…

Why did you stop quoting it there?

> There are several factors that help to explain the increase in incidence: population growth, population ageing, exposure to risk factors, improved screening and improved outcomes in other diseases (meaning that more people are reaching an advanced age, leaving them at risk of cancer). The incidence of different cancer types varies widely between different European countries, due to these factors.

There are better epistemic standards available than "numbers went up so my hobby horse causal ideal is doing it" despite its popularity on social media.

better a bit of caution than a slow and painful death?

If history is any indicator it's a good idea to be more cautious than less

Or maybe because possibly interfering the operation of other electrical devices, that have only been tested to operate with certain levels of external interference; is a bad thing!

According to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37496859, it seems like the article is wrong and the iPhone 12 isn't actually in violation of EU regulations. It's just in violation of France's regulations because France is weird.

The US government has the funds to sponsor all of your neighbors. They could conspire with the US government to pretend like they go to work every day, so that they fool you, who are the only sucker in your neighborhood whose life isn't getting paid by the US government.

I honestly don't think it matters who has funds to do what... :) The "natural health" industry is a multi-billion dollar industry as well, and is a much more insidious than the telco industry if you ask me.

Guess which side is more susceptible to low-quality propaganda.

In this day and age there's virtually no barrier to entry for spreading health disinformation and the quack health industry is huge, they sell a _lot_ of schlock. The fact that the people who are factually correct happen to also hold power doesn't matter since the kooks have no barriers to entry for spamming their disinformation across the internet and they're actually hard to avoid (as we see here). The people who are factually correct are generally at a disadvantage since the truth is boring and quacks can sell sensationalism ("your phone causes cancer!").

As someone who bought a 1k+$ phone from Apple i would be pissed if they dropped upload speed by that much. Surely there has to be an SLA that they have to uphold. No?

?? where are you getting that equation from ??

Linked to SNR, maybe, but that's not the same thing as max TX power unless you're standing right at the edge of the cell.

EDIT: I'll admit I overlooked the US system's origins origins and concepts in France - but even though these concepts are not American in origin, the US is where all the mentions lead-to today.

---

It is an Americanism because the term implicitly assumes two things:

1. That the government is split into branches, following how the US system evolved.

2. That executive power must be confined to a single branch, also how the US is organized.

Then, consider that other-countries-that-are-not-the-US do exist, many of those are liberal democracies that arguably function better than the US for various scores - and of those very few (if any?) of those are modelled on the US’ system. While some other countries have a US system but score poorly overall (e.g. Liberia).

It is demonstrable that deep separation between the agents of the government - and the state - is unnecessary for a functioning liberal-democracy today: many countries using the Parliamentary system have an executive cabinet and an executive PM role which, under the US system, is considered part of the legislature - and the US is hardly the best example of “separation” of the judiciary when you consider how explicitly political the judge appointment process is - and the volume of politically-motivated and arbitrary SCOTUS rulings over the past 120+ years.

———

I understand that (non-crackpot) political-scientists would agree that judicial independence alone is far more important to a functioning democracy than a system that constantly pits an executive President against the legislature whenever their political party affiliation differs.

Don’t get me wrong: accountability is of paramount importance; I just want to communicate that having “separate but co-equal branches of government”, “separation of powers” (and other thought-terminating-cliches from middle-school civics class) is both unique to the US - and is demonstrably unnecessary for a functioning liberal democracy.

Anything can happen in the same way as it happened with Maastricht and the Euro: cooperating countries would just go forward with new entities that inherit the previous institutions, dissolving or mothballing old entities. In the long run, the hard core inevitably wins.

Anything that includes France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, will inevitably drag everyone else one way or another.

>>> Poe's law is an adage of internet culture saying that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, any parodic or sarcastic expression of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of those views

You are welcome

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

I don’t doubt that there has been extensive testing on radiation but knowing exactly which atoms and molecules are essential for the human body to sustain life and the corresponding energy levels at which those atoms and molecules ionize is probably outside the scope of high school physics.