Lately these have been changes and roundabouts for iPhone fans – we’ve been hit with a series of negative rumors offset by good comforting news, only for the good news to be canceled in turn, but replaced by something good, and so on.
In May 2020, that is, a time that feels about 37 years ago, the rumor began to spread that Apple planned to get rid of the included EarPods from the iPhone 12 case. But that’s fine, we were told, you’ll get the consolation of a powerful 20W charger *.
Then it turned out that the 20W charger was actually going to be for an upcoming iPad, and in fact the iPhone 12 wouldn’t include any charger. But that’s fine, they said, because leaving these accessories out would allow Apple to avoid a price spike despite the addition of 5G, larger displays, and OLEDs in entry-level models.
Then an analyst came out and said that the price will actually go up anyway. But that’s okay because, and this is the last one, the iPhone 12 will come with a stronger, twisted Lightning cable. To be honest, it’s a pretty thin porridge, but we’re trying to make the best of it.
The images of the braided cable emerged, like many hardware leaks, on the Chinese social network Weibo, and were then tweeted by DuanRui and then retweeted by the usually trustworthy fugitive @ L0vetodream. MacRumors notes that the creator of the leak, ChargerLAB, has a history of sharing accurate information, and overall this seems like a plausible rumor.
It’s a Lightning to USB-C cable, which isn’t a big surprise given that Apple uses that standard on the 18W charger that ships with the iPhone 11 Pro. Of course, this creates a little extra wrinkle if the company expects that people continue to use old chargers as their recent survey suggests: you won’t be able to use this cable with the charger (USB-A) for the iPhone 11, or any iPhone that came out before that.
People tend not to update their iPhone every year, so it seems like most potential iPhone 12 buyers will have to either buy a new charger anyway, or use their old charger and cable and miss out on the benefits of this new one. nice cable.
I’ll prepare my post now by saying that I love braided and fabric cables and recommend them to anyone who asks: they feel better, they look better, and most importantly they tend to be stronger. Our roundup of the best Lightning cables is packed with great twisted cables. So this is an attractive prospect.
It just doesn’t align with the green message analysts predict Apple will use to justify the ‘no charger, no headphone’ policy in the fall. Reusing old accessories is good for the planet (charger-based e-waste is a major concern), and enough of us have old chargers out there that it stands to reason to leave chargers out of the box by default. But including a good cable that doesn’t work with most legacy chargers is slightly provocative, and (assuming this leak is accurate) I’d suggest Apple is more interested in the additional sale: getting iPhone 12 buyers also Shelling out a separate 18W / 20W USB-C charger that goes with the cable.
So once again I feel in conflict. Maybe I shouldn’t worry; As this year goes, the next leak will indicate that the cable doesn’t actually come in the box, either. Hear the bad news first by regularly reviewing our iPhone 12 news summary.
* I’m struggling to get excited about the possibility of a 20W charger right now, by the way. This morning I appeared on Tech Advisor’s Fast Charge podcast, where we discussed the myriad of new Android phones that support 120W + wired charging and, in one case, 65W wireless connection. As an Apple fan, I found it quite rube.
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