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Oh what a difference literally only two months make.
Chinese phone maker Xiaomi is receiving criticism over the news that its next main phone, the Mi 11, will ship without a charger in the box. It’s a huge change that comes just two months after the company joined others to drag Apple down for making the same decision with the 2020 iPhone 12.
Oh!
Confirmation of the move comes from none other than Xiaomi’s CEO, Lei Jun, in a post on Chinese social media platform Weibo (h / t The Verge). In a machine-translated version of the original Chinese post, Jun said the move is “a response to the call of technology and environmental protection.”
He also revealed that there would be more discussions about the decision at a press conference scheduled for December 28.
Apple initially provoked mockery when it revealed in October that the upcoming iPhone 12 would ditch the charging pad and earbuds that have traditionally been included in previous iOS devices. Samsung and OnePlus teamed up with Xiaomi to drag Apple down at the time.
However, this is a somewhat tricky problem, as the chargers (and the built-in headphones) are largely identical and belong to a large portion of the population who have purchased devices within the same family. That has made these accessories a major contributor to the growing e-waste problem.
On the other hand, not everyone has owned an Apple device before (or Xiaomi or Samsung or OnePlus or anything else). And therefore the decision to ditch these somewhat essential items places an additional financial burden on the customer’s shoulders. Especially since the removal hasn’t exactly translated into reduced costs – the base iPhone 11 debuted at $ 699, but the iPhone 12 without a charger actually increased that price to $ 799. It’s a similar situation with Xiaomi’s jump from the Mi 10 to the My 11, and the newer model costs about $ 100 more.
Just before Christmas, Samsung received similar criticism for the apparent removal of a mocking ad from Apple, as rumors suggest the company’s next Galaxy S21 will ditch the charging brick as well.
In some ways, this is all a reflection of Apple’s leadership in the wearable space. Think about the company’s suggestion that removing the headphone jack from their smartphones amounted to a “brave” move. That also sparked mockery at the time, as competitors used the continued presence of their own headphone jacks as a selling point, before many of those same competitors adopted Apple’s thinking on later versions of hardware.
As it was then, customers are the only big losers in the end. Just as people had to go out and deal with tricky adapters and more expensive Bluetooth headphone purchases back then, too many will be forced to spend on carrying bricks now. (Apple’s own brick retails for $ 19.) As much as there may be an environmental argument for ditching these things, it’s easy to understand customer frustration when changes aren’t necessarily reflected in hardware pricing.
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