Ming-Chi Kuo, an Apple analyst broke the news and said that the iPhone 12 series will not include a charger in the box. Instead, Apple is planning to force consumers to purchase the charger separately.
Naturally, people didn’t take kindly to this. Android users were grinning from the sidelines, but Apple enthusiasts voiced their concerns and criticisms. According to a poll conducted by Android Authority, 7.99% were okay with this idea, 14.77% were indifferent to it, and 77.24% felt angry about Apple’s new strategy.
We get it. You pay a huge amount of money for a flagship phone from a premium manufacturer and you expect nothing less. Apple has a history of excluding certain important products from the boxes, most notable, the headphones. But the charger seems like a disastrous exclusion. While those are valid points, the exclusion could also have a few positive impacts. Here are a few:
Your iPhone Will Be Cheaper
Your iPhone will definitely get cheaper. Of course, it still will be a a premium price tag, but the cost is expected to be reduced if chargers are not included.
Transport Gets Easier
No chargers mean the iPhone box will be a lot slimmer compared to the current boxes. This could help transport a lot more iPhones than before. This reduces costs drastically and will also reduce the pollution caused by transport mediums.
Lesser Electronic Waste
One of the most crucial impacts this move might have is the reduction of e-waste. The Verge held an interview with Steven Yang, the CEO of Anker, a company that primarily sells chargers. In the interview, Yang spoke on how in-box chargers add to the ever-growing problem of e-waste. “[Say] every smartphone has a charger with it. We had 1.5 billion smartphones that shipped last year. … That’s only for phones. When we have tablets, laptops, power drills, [and more], we estimate a total of four billion chargers (were shipped last year). We estimate about 300,000 tons of e-waste just from these in-box chargers.”
Hopefully, these three points made you less mad about Apple’s plan.
