If the number of phones is small maybe. Though I doubt they can just throw lithium batteries in a landfill in the EU.
There are manufacturer’s that produce different phones with the same name and different hardware for different regions but I could not find concrete info if there’s actual hardware differences for iphones.
I used to work as tech support and can say that there isn’t.
For instance, in some Asian countries the shutter sound is legally mandated. Apple accomplished this by checking where you are. If the phone’s region is one of those areas, It’ll always make a shutter sound. If your region wasn’t one of those areas, and the phone could still tell it was in the area (like a UK phone taken on vacation) It’ll make the sound while it was there.
There’s a bunch of ways to implement that, but the employee-facing article detailing this feature specified that a user who was from one of those countries but moved here could factory restore the phone to get it unregulated again.it had employees who were asked to do that to verify they weren’t in the original country anymore as a “cover your ass” legal disclaimer kind of thing.
This was multiple iPhone generations ago, now, but I doubt they’ve changed. Economies of scale say having one process is easier.
You have the Americas model, the Japan model, the China model, the Russia model, and then the model for any other country. So the EU ones could be sold in a large part of the world. They don’t even come with power bricks any more so you don’t need to swap out the plug or anything. Maybe some warranty paperwork?
If the number of phones is small maybe. Though I doubt they can just throw lithium batteries in a landfill in the EU.
There are manufacturer’s that produce different phones with the same name and different hardware for different regions but I could not find concrete info if there’s actual hardware differences for iphones.
I used to work as tech support and can say that there isn’t.
For instance, in some Asian countries the shutter sound is legally mandated. Apple accomplished this by checking where you are. If the phone’s region is one of those areas, It’ll always make a shutter sound. If your region wasn’t one of those areas, and the phone could still tell it was in the area (like a UK phone taken on vacation) It’ll make the sound while it was there.
There’s a bunch of ways to implement that, but the employee-facing article detailing this feature specified that a user who was from one of those countries but moved here could factory restore the phone to get it unregulated again.it had employees who were asked to do that to verify they weren’t in the original country anymore as a “cover your ass” legal disclaimer kind of thing.
This was multiple iPhone generations ago, now, but I doubt they’ve changed. Economies of scale say having one process is easier.
There are different hardware models but it’s mainly based on the radio and there are only 5 different models https://www.apple.com/iphone/cellular/#iphone-se
You have the Americas model, the Japan model, the China model, the Russia model, and then the model for any other country. So the EU ones could be sold in a large part of the world. They don’t even come with power bricks any more so you don’t need to swap out the plug or anything. Maybe some warranty paperwork?