Regarding 2. No, it can never report the wrong value. It is taken from the PHP_VERSION constant. What happens is that your host is running different versions of PHP and you need to select which one with .htaccess. However the .htaccess method is not available on restoration therefore you get the default PHP version. The proper solution is to ask your host to enable a specific PHP version on your account by modifying their vhost file.
Please let me stress: the current PHP version can never, ever, no way be reported incorrectly. It is absolutely impossible. We are printing out what PHP itself reports as its own version. It is not a version detection by features, it is direct query to PHP using PHP's own version constant.
Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Lead Developer and Director
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