Apple Gives Millions Of iPhone Owners A Reason To Switch To Android - Forbes

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iPhone owners are threatening to abandon Apple’s smartphones after the company implemented a new Headphone Safety feature that turns down loud music after 15 minutes and doesn’t let users turn it back up.

The new controls, recently implemented in the iOS 14.2 and watchOS 7.1 updates, notify the user if they’re listening to loud music for long enough to damage their hearing under World Health Organization guidelines.

When a user receives that notification, the volume on their headphones is automatically cut to safe levels. In certain jurisdictions, such as EU countries and the U.K. (which recently left the EU), it’s not possible to turn the volume back up, leaving users stuck at middling volume.

“My iPhone now halves the sound limit after about 15 minutes… this is Big Brother going mad,” tweeted British iPhone owner, Duncan Rawson.

When it was explained to Rawson that he wouldn’t be able to switch the feature off, he replied: “Are they mad? It will make me think seriously about replacing my phone with another iPhone.”

Apple’s own support forums are also filled with customers moaning about the new limits, as this 45-page thread shows. One user claims to have contacted Apple support to complain, only to be told that “it’s mandatory in my country/region”.

“When I asked on what legal basis, they did not provide any,” the user added.

Many others point to the fact that other smartphone makers don’t force the volume down. “If it’s not fixed by the time I’m ready for a new phone, I’ll switch to Android,” writes one user on the Apple support forum.

Abiding by EU regulations

Apple declined to comment directly on the situation, other than to point out that the feature cannot be switched off in certain regions to abide by local safety standards.

However, other smartphone makers don’t appear to have implemented the regulations in the same manner. Although many Android handsets do issue warnings if music is played at a loud volume, they don’t put a hard, unmovable limit on the volume controls.

To make matters worse for iPhone owners, some Bluetooth speakers appear to have been snared by the new limits, forcing the volume down even when it’s not at dangerous levels. Apple said that this is caused by device makers sometimes wrongly classifying their speakers as headphones and that it’s working on a solution to help customers with the problem.

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January 12, 2021 at 06:25PM
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Apple Gives Millions Of iPhone Owners A Reason To Switch To Android - Forbes
"Android" - Google News
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