iPhone 8 and iPhone X Will Support Fast Charging, But Only If You Buy a New USB-C Charger (9to5mac.com)

One little detail Apple didn't mention at its event in Cupertino, California yesterday was the fact that the new iPhones will support fast charging. According to the official tech specs page, the new iPhones can recharge up to 50 percent of their battery life in a 30-minute charge. The catch? You have to use a USB-C charger and Lightning cable (sold separately). 9to5Mac reports: iPhone 8 battery life is roughly equivalent to the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. On a full charge, expect up to 12 hours of internet usage on iPhone 8 and iPhone X, with up to 13 hours on iPhone 8 Plus. With a 50% quick charge in 30 minutes, you are effectively gaining hours of additional battery life during the day, even if you only plug in for a short period. However, to take advantage of fast-charging, you cannot use the Lightning to USB-A cable that is bundled in the box. Fast charging requires a USB-C to Lightning cable and the USB-C wall charger. More specifically, one of three USB-C wall chargers. Apple sells 29W, 61W and 87W variants of its USB-C power adapters. Prices range from $49 to $79. Apple doesn't break out specific numbers on how each model affects charging times, it's not clear if the cheapest 29W model can achieve the advertised 50% recharge in 30 minutes.

Comments

Re:the right thing to do?

[blindseer]

They've changed the iPhone connection port once in the entire history of the product and loads of morons still bitch about Apple unnecessarily changing ports and how they only do it to make money on cables.

If you include the entire line of "iDevices" and go all the way back to the original iPod the ports changed twice, from FireWire to 30-pin, and then 30-pin to Lightning. That's over 15+ years. Changing the charger port on such devices every 5 or 10 years doesn't seem excessive to me, especially when the capabilities of the devices have changed considerably in that time and inexpensive adapters are available (for some definition of "inexpensive").

If they changed away from Lightning now, they'd get it all over again. They are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

No doubt. The Lightning connector predates the USB-C connector, and the USB-C port isn't really catching on outside of smart phones. As evidence I give the many posts here on Slashdot on Apple putting USB-C ports on their laptops. Which is it? Is USB-C good or is it bad?

I'd prefer that Apple included a USB-C cable and charger with their iDevices, it would do away with this odd situation of having their laptops charge from USB-C out of the box and their pocket sized devices charge from USB-A out of the box.

A similar debate came up with Apple before about including a keyboard and mouse with their computers. It used to be that all of their computers came with a new keyboard and mouse, and ones that weren't all that bad either. I liked them anyway. People complained about having to buy a new keyboard and mouse every time they upgraded their desktop. So, in their lower cost lines, they stopped including a keyboard and mouse. Then people complained about not getting a keyboard and mouse with the computer. Comparisons to buying a car without tires came up.

Would people prefer Apple didn't include a charger and cable with their iPhones? That way people aren't buying a charger they may not need, especially if they are upgrading from a previous iPhone or already own an iPad. There's an idea, don't put a charger in the box. But then these are $500+ phones and the charger and cable cost $40 retail, it costs Apple less than that to make them of course. By not including the "inferior" charger it'd save what? $10 maybe on the final retail price.

Shut up about the charger already. Buy the overpriced phone. Then buy the charger you want. When you open the boxes and unpack everything then toss the "inferior" charger in a drawer and forget about it until you lose or break your preferred charger.