Apple Says MagSafe Charger Limited to 12W for iPhone 12 Mini

[rjp1]

You're plugging it in wrong.

 

[lordhamster]

Personally? It is rare. For friends in the area, it is a frequent occurrence. A short interruption - not hours of powercut. But it might only take a few seconds of interruption to cause dropping to some arbitrary safe charging rate.

The price you pay for living in the sticks.

If this is a concern, I'd either get a UPS or just charge with a wire. Either way, I think this is an edge-case.

 

[tranceking26]

Seriously cannot see the appeal of magsafe. Something will be plugged in either way, might as well keep using lightning.

 

[Agneev]

Any company that purports to care about the environment shouldn't support wireless charging on their devices - it's up to 50% less energy efficient than wired charging.

Exactly. I'm surprised that more people aren't talking about this.

 

[RFolk]

This MagSafe Charger is showing its limitations. Great idea but not so well executed.

 

[macduke]

What a half-baked technology. They should've just put a 15W Qi charger in it and used the extra magnet space for battery. Easy. The magnets are pretty useless. But then they couldn't jack up the prices for accessories and a special charger.

 

[MrCrowbar]

Well the charging cable delivers 15W and it's up to the phone to tell it how much juice it can take. The smaller iPhone mini battery will be charged at a proportional rate. The full 15W probably would heat it up just enough to damage the battery measurably.

I'm almost willing to bet an iPhone 12 mini will charge up than a regular iPhone 12 on the same Magsafe connection.

 

[BootsWalking]

There is a good article on the inefficiency of wireless here. The alignment of the charging coils is the main problem, and the main reason why magnetically aligning them actually makes a difference.

Wireless Charging Wastes Tons of Energy. Will MagSafe Help the iPhone 12?

A new charging method could make a big difference

debugger.medium.com

The article also has a link to a technical article and that link indicates wireless inefficiency can use an extra 30 to 60 percent more power, so if my math is correct that 30% extra would make it 77% as efficient.

Wireless is not going away, so anything to make it more efficient is a good thing.

Qi is rated at up to 80% efficiency. Again, it's the difference of theory vs actual measurements in practice. We'll have to see how much magsafe actually improves the situation. But I thint 3% of maximum theoretical efficiency is an optimistic stretch.

 

[phalseHUD]

It takes courage to release $hite like this.

 

[Psychicbob]

Well, we need a MagSafe ear adapter (iEar, and I copyright that) which attaches to you ear and magnetically clamps the phone to your ear, hands free. Then, and this is the master stroke, you have a case with a solar panel back, so you charge your iPhone Mini while you are using it.

I must check what’s in that herbal tea I bought!

 

[polyphenol]

While efficiency matters, the consequences of lower efficiency are a lot less when the device uses so little power to begin with. A wirelessly charged iPhone is still going to save tons of energy if you watch a show on it instead of a TV or browse the internet on it instead of a laptop or desktop.

I think that has to be questioned. You could well be right, especially with some of the monster televisions around these days. But the program has to be squirted from a server somewhere, through numerous hops - possibly round the world - even via satellite, including your router, and a wifi hop - just for you. Add all that up compared with broadcast television signals.

Someone, somewhere, has surely counted it all up.

 

[bgillander]

Apple is introducing too many variables in the picture. Unlike the Apple of yore, bringing the best for everyone. Now we have another reason where there will be many who will go that they want the 12 or 12 Pro for that extra 3 W charging power.

Seriously? You are thinking that someone is going to base their phone purchase on the wattage of the charger? That’s insane! So you are probably correct as that fits the vibe of 2020 perfectly.

 

[MrCrowbar]

They saw it. They know it will break and that most people will proceed to buy a new $39 charger.

Knowing Apple cables, the outer rubber layer the cable will rot and wear earlier than that. Which isn't saying it's high quality, quite the contrary. Apple cables are not fit for normal use IMO, magsafe power cables, earpods, lightning cables, they're just terrible.

Had to get 3 replacement magsafe power adapters already because one started spontaneously lighting on fire (it was like half a year old, Apple wouldn't even replace it...), two have lost too much of the rubber material for comfort and going the whole length with electrical tape just sucked. My earpods all have shrink tubes to fix the spots where they fall apart. I don't even unbox the original lightning cables anymore, they always got unreliable within months.

I'm Anker and AmazonBasics all the way now.

 

[alexhardaker]

When they remove the charging port we will get even more space for the battery. Wireless is the future.

 

[JosephAW]

iottie car mount. Just works

 

[jz0309]

You are talking about different things now. The phone has controllers for charging, even if the 20W were provided by the source the software can decide how much to take in or to charge at all. iPhone even have a setting that will only let you charge up to 80% and then complete to 100% based on usage patterns even if it is connected to the power source the whole time.

Now the efficiency issue relates to how much power is actually effectively transmitted from the coils to the receiver in the phone. Even if 20W are used by the mat creating this magnetic field to transfer power to the coils on the back of the phone is not as effective as just plugging in a cable. Much of that power is transformed to heat, as much as 70% of all of it, and the energy your phone receives is only 30%. Since this mats do not have active cooling systems all this heat cannot dissipate easily and can cause degradation of the battery. There is also concern about the electromagnetic emissions. This is partly the reason why Apple shelved their announced inductive charger, they simply could not make it work effectively.

I am not taking about different things ... max efficiency draws 20W from the brick and puts 15% into the phone ... so call that 75% for simplicity's sake ... when the phone draws less, say 5W, then it will not draw 20W from the charger, the losses will be higher in that scenario but efficiency is probably ~ 70%.
Magsafe's advantage is that the phone is optimally placed for wireless charging, with a non-Magsafe, you can incur higher losses due to not placing the phone optimally on the charger

 

[bb9]

At 12W, will it still charge the mini at the same RATE as the other models, if yes, then no big deal. Funny this article did not confirm any of that. 👎 for doing an incomplete article.

 

[bgillander]

I’m still confused on why the 6 18w power bricks from Apple I have laying around only charge at 7.5 and I had to buy a 20w to get 15. It makes no sense.

Because it needs Power Delivery Version 3. Apple went with the most recent standard, which is what everyone complains about if they don’t (or if they do.)

The real story behind MagSafe, USB-C PD, and why you need a 20W AC charger | AppleInsider

If you want to charge your iPhone 12 using MagSafe, Apple recommends using certain 20W AC adapters — and they don't need to come from Apple, despite what you may have heard. We explain what the requirements are, and why an older 18W adapter just won't cut it.

appleinsider.com

 

[mkelly]

As a physicist, this makes perfect sense to me. You can't have everything kids - smaller size + fast charging = more heat in a confined space. Plus, depending on the size of the Mini's battery, it may still take the same amount of time to charge as the larger iPhones ... or even less. Dumping excess energy into a small battery is not the best of ideas.

I'd really love to see a mandatory introductory thermodynamics course for all tech reviewers (and most users) please It would definitely cutdown on the rants about physical size vs. battery life vs. charging speed vs. CPU power.

 

[one more]

One more reason to use your old iPhone/iPad charger. 🖐

 

[bgillander]

You might be right there.

Nonetheless, if you were expecting 12 or 15W and you only get 7.5, that could be at least disappointing.

I’m pretty sure that if you leave it charging overnight it will automatically reduce the charge power anyway. The phones only do quick charge to around 80% charge, I believe, then do slow charge above 80%, no matter the charging method (assuming you have quick charging at all, of course). This is a feature to slow the battery wear. I might be wrong on the percentage, but that is the concept. I doubt your battery would last a month if you were to apply a constant 15 watt charge all night, every night.

 

[neoelectronaut]

I'm onboard for a Magsafe car mount and maybe one of those fancy Airpower-esque 3-in-1 charging stations, but I don't forsee myself using the standalone Magsafe "Puck" charger.

It's all about convenience.

 

[Rafterman]

Magsafe is a nice travel charger. But as a main option, there are other more appealing ones.

 

[boss.king]

I feel like they really dropped the ball by not making this an S year. Magsafe seems pretty half-baked at this point and the compromises they've made to include 5G aren't helping either.

 

[macintoshmac]

Seriously? You are thinking that someone is going to base their phone purchase on the wattage of the charger? That’s insane! So you are probably correct as that fits the vibe of 2020 perfectly.

I am very sure of it, going by the sample of reasons for decisions I find here on MR alone. It is only time someone will say that 12 charges a little faster than 12 mini, I am confused as to which one to buy.