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Apple Announces a Trade-in Program For Third-Party Chargers
EliSowash writes "In response to recent reports of safety concerns around third-party chargers for iDevices, Apple announced today that beginning August 16, 2013, you can trade in your third-party adapter and purchase an official Apple charger at a 'special price' — $10 USD. From their website: 'To qualify, you must turn in at least one USB power adapter and bring your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to an Apple Retail Store or participating Apple Authorized Service Provider for serial number validation. The special pricing on Apple USB power adapters is limited to one adapter for each iPhone, iPad, and iPod you own and is valid until October 18, 2013.'"
Or I could take that $10 and buy a thousand cheap knockoffs at wholesale prices straight from China and throw them out as they die.
The reason that Apple offers this exchange is not the risk that the charger could die.
why does Apple like to use proprietary chargers/connectors
They don't use proprietary chargers. The chargers have a standard USB port into which you can plug anything.
They use proprietary connectors on the phone end because they are smaller (at least now), also more usable (the current and old connectors are less prone to damage than micro-USB) are easier to attach (the current device plug can go in either way) and also can offer advanced capabilities instead of USB.
The chargers do have a special ability to deliver more power to an iOS device, but that's only because the charger is built to recognize when an iOS device is attached that can handle a larger power flow.
It may be that poor-quality third-party chargers could damage the device.
Generally they can't. But they can be badly grounded and damage you (which actually happened recently).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It may be that poor-quality third-party chargers could damage the device. But then I have to ask, why are iDevices so fragile in the first place? It seems most other smartphones have a standard USB port and can work with any old 5V power supply.
5 Volt chargers that deliver 5 Volt are not a problem. The charger that caused all this didn't deliver 5 Volt, it delivered 220 Volt straight to the user. The iPhone survived, the user didn't.
Ken Shirriff did teardowns of an Apple charger and a generic charger.
http://www.righto.com/2012/05/apple-iphone-charger-teardown-quality.html
http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html
They cost us less than $3 to make (I work in ordering). Add in S&H, packaging etc, and we're making over $5 per unit. Not a huge amount, and won't bring in the money we'd like, but from a PR perspective, we're top news on all decent tech sites and blogs at zero cost, planet wide. No other company can match us for such a trivial issue.
Really? Apple didn't have to do jack shit. We're talking about 3rd party chargers and knock-off's here.
But please, make Apple the bad guy here for essentially warranting 3rd party hardware.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
Because at the time, there was no standard for USB charging (this was way back in 2003). And since you wanted dumb chargers, you needed a way to signal how much current the charger was willing to give (USB devices are only allowed to draw 100mA prior to enumeration, and 500mA only if the host allows). Since that was relatively unacceptable, Apple came up with a way to do it.
First, the resistors pull D+ and D- to various states which signals 4 different charge currents - 100mA, 500mA, 1A, 2A. (the first and last were reserved until later on). This was because you didn't want to pull too much power out of an inadequate charger.
Second, the 30 pin connector was just standardized (back in 2003), because there were no standards for connecting up A/V equipment to a portable device, so Apple used the 30 pin to allow accessory makers to build accessories cheaply - a serial port for control, analog audio outputs so you didn't need a DAC, etc.
Sometime later, the USB guys made a USB charger spec which shorted D+ and D- together to signal a charger. Unfortunately, the USB charger spec is deficient in that it does not signal charge current - the official spec says youc an draw 800mA or so (and it relaxes the 100mA pre-enumeration requirements so you could boost charge your battery until you can boot far enough to detect chargers and such). Of course, without current signalling, things are confusing because your tablet might try to draw 2A out of a 500mA adapter (I've seen cheap adapters blow up because they overheat).
As for what happens here to cause Apple to do this - cheap adapters are cheap. There is often ZERO regard to safety, including things like basic creepage and clearance (how far must high voltage rails be separated), the use of substandard safety parts (snubber capacitors), etc. In some designs, the USB port is barely 1mm away from mains voltage - a particularly humid day can easily bridge the distance and put a rather significant amount of voltage on the USB port. Or a critical part can fail and due to bad isolation, you get line voltage on the USB port.
Here's what a real Apple adapter looks like inside. The green dot recall was because the pins could fall out, and you can see Apple molded them into the plastic so the only way to rip them out is to destroy the plastic cover.
A fake charger torn down. Note the general crappiness.
A dozen adapters tested. Apple is not the best - Samsung chargers are better! But the crappy chargers are clearly crap. In fact, you'll know them because your phone's touch screen stops working when you charge it. This happens on all phones - Apple, or Android. The noisiness of the power rails interferes with the analog touchscreen electronics.
Dave Jones (EEVBlog) tears down two fake chargers he got. He's not impressed and he's really shocked at the lousy nature of it. Taking them apart was the best thing you could do safety wise than using them.
There's nothing special to an Apple charger or any other charger. In fact, modern USB charger controller ICs now have autoswitch modes where they try all known charger methods to be the one universal charger. Youc an convert a standard USB charging charger to an Apple one with a few resistors, and an Apple one to a standard just as e
According to all of the reports I've been able to find, it was handed over to the police following the death, and word soon came out via Chinese state media that the charger was "likely" a knock-off one, rather than the genuine article though they never actually confirmed that was the case. That may be the most we'll get out of them, however, given that the state media has already been caught using celebrities to astroturf in an attempt to try and paint Apple in a bad light.