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Not everyone is a veteran with a plethora of cables and chargers. A phone will still function without earbuds, not so much without a way to charge after a few hours of use.
even if it's not included in the box, you can still purchase whatever you need separately. so you'll be fine and we'll spare ourself a ton of waste.

I don't understand why it's so hard to get this fact straight: you can purchase a charger (and a cable) separately if you need one, no one is stopping you.

everyone is complaining about how Apple is greedy, but for me it's clear that at the end of the day, we all, the consumers, are the greedy bastards consuming our planets ressources for stuff we don't need.

I'm not different, I'm also a stupid consumer, so I'm glad that this huge manufacturer take decisions who can help me being it a little less...
 
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I almost exclusively use a wireless charger for my XS (which I think maxes out at 7.5w or something). The one exception is my car, which uses USB-A.

But I still find it odd that they would include only a Lighting to USB-C cable. The vast majority of iPhone (only) users have probably collected a lot of chargers over the years, but they would all be USB-A. The only Apple devices that have ever shipped with USB-C chargers are the (very recent and expensive) 2018 and later iPad Pro and iPhone 11 Pro. In other words, most people wouldn't have a compatible charger, unless they went out a bought a USB-C cable and charger themselves. But other than us tech enthusiasts, I can only assume that most people wouldn't do this.
 
I’ve been thinking about this and trying to figure it out as a business reason, why Apple would do this. I’ve actually realised it makes a lot of sense compared to what I first thought.

Why remove the adapter?
When we think about just how many iPhone 12s Apple will ship. Realise if all of them have a power brick that is millions upon millions of power bricks that a vast majority of people will not use. Not only will that eventually end up in landfill but think about the environmental cost to make and ship them is huge. If Apple make less adapters, that’s less emissions. Smaller boxes also means shipping more iPhones on less ships/trucks and planes across the world. That means less fuel and oil is burned.

I like many of you have a fast wireless charger. It will likely last me many phones to come even if I switch to Android. It also has no interacting parts meaning I’m unlikely to have it wear out. Promoting this is a far more enjoyable experience for the customer and so much better for the environment.

What about people first buying an iPhone or who don’t want wireless?
I suspect Apple will do what it did with the headphone jack dongle and offer the seperate fast charge brick at a really low cost like $15-$20. This will make entry still cheap for anyone switching.

Why include a USB-C cord when most people have USB-A power brick?
Most people who have a USB-A adapter already have a lightning cable to go with it! Use that. If you are wanting fast charging or need a new cable, Apple is providing a new generation cable in the box meaning you only need to buy the cheap $15 fast charger.
 
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Did you literally ignore what I wrote? It may not have broken for you, but just spend 5 minutes googling and realise it is a widespread issue...
You found something specific you searched for? Amazing! Googling something doesn't make it widespread enough to matter, my guy. Again, Apple has mountains of data to support the decision.

You could find 10,000 incidents of it and it would be a minuscule number. You people need a lesson in anecdotal versus empirical data.
 
So the cable is going to be USB-C even though most of the extra adapters supposedly cluttering up people’s drawers are most likely the 5W USB-A adapters?

But think of the environment.... /s. I never understood all the fanboys who defend this, yet fail to understand that the new cord is USB-C and not USB-A like the ones they have been including in every iPhone (minus the 11 pro).
 
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I like many of you have a fast wireless charger. It will likely last me many phones to come even if I switch to Android. It also has no interacting parts meaning I’m unlikely to have it wear out. Promoting this is a far more enjoyable experience for the customer and so much better for the environment.
Has anybody run the numbers on wireless charging? I don‘t know how many watt hours it takes to build, ship and dispose of a charging block, but wireless charging is pretty inefficient so there’s some wasted energy everyday for the lifetime of the charger.

I don’t know which wins in the end, but if anyone has a link I’d be curious to read it.
 
Hard to measure price reduction with thousand of bucks devices (if Apple really do price cut), the best method to do that I think by gave user iTunes credits equal with wired earpods and charger price to compensate.
 
Has anybody run the numbers on wireless charging? I don‘t know how many watt hours it takes to build, ship and dispose of a charging block, but wireless charging is pretty inefficient so there’s some wasted energy everyday for the lifetime of the charger.

I don’t know which wins in the end, but if anyone has a link I’d be curious to read it.

Going to be a big calculation. As you also need to consider as we slowly move to more renewable energy, even if wireless is using more power it’s still from renewable source.

So wireless slowly get better with less landfill. While making power bricks will as well shipping them isn’t going to change to much.
 
1) I thought the phone's edges are going to be flat, so what's with the curved well that the phone presumably sits directly in (the paperwork being above the phone)? And 2) If the brick and the earbuds are gone, what (presumably) NEW thing could the square at the bottom be for? Welcome would be: a microfiber cloth, and/or a cheap dock with an end that folds down (thus fitting the space).
 
I envision the Apple marketing folks sitting in a conference room trying to figure out how to spin another cost-cutting measure positively. I mean, it's unlikely they will pass the savings on to the customer, so I guess the Apple sticker will be next, and the paperwork will launch as a pdf during set-up. It all seems logical, but the perception is; Tim Cook is tighter than a cat's meow.😼

Over my dead body!! The day Apple stops giving us stickers is the day I grab my pitchfork!

But for real, that would be sad time if it ever came. Getting a sticker is like a badge of honor for purchasing an Apple product and it’s a great tradition.
 
Going to be a big calculation. As you also need to consider as we slowly move to more renewable energy, even if wireless is using more power it’s still from renewable source.

So wireless slowly get better with less landfill. While making power bricks will as well shipping them isn’t going to change to much.

Seems the calculation is the same, no? Using renewable electricity to run the plant, using electric vehicles to ship the product?

And, as you say, we're moving to renewables slowly. So a significant fraction of the power you're consuming is still fossil fuel based, or blocking a river somewhere.

And, given how many people here complain about the 5W chargers when they want the new fast chargers, what will the upgrade rate in charging technology be? Let's say you keep your wireless charger twice as long as you keep your wired one-- they're larger, more complex and heavier than the plug-in-the-wall kind, so they're probably more damaging to build. Are they less than twice as bad for the environment?

I agree it'll be a complex calculation-- which I think is what would make it interesting to see. I guess I didn't respond to your post because I disagree with what you're saying, the logic you lay out is reasonable. It's counter to my intuition though-- I don't think of wireless charging as "eco-friendly", I think of it as convenient. And it's really rare that the more convenient thing is also better for us. I was just wondering if anyone actually knows how the the numbers work out.

Ok, nobody knows, but maybe someone's taken a stab at estimating.
 
What's the point of a portless phone when you gotta carry an endless amount of dongles to support it
I get that the move to USB-C created this whole dongle PTSD, but I have to ask: don't dongles, by definition, need a port to plug them into?

I don't think that's the downside of a portless phone. I'd think not being able to use a dongle when you want to would be the downside... If you hate dongles, then there is one less downside.
 
I am a huge Apple fan. Huge. But unless they discount the value of EarPods and/or the Power Adapter from the base price of the iPhone this has become the most greedy practice ever.

How will you know whether the price of the phone you're interested in was discounted by the cost of the charger or not? What if it was, but the price stays the same or even goes up because of extra cost from other hardware added to the phone? You're setting yourself up for disappointment and outrage with an impossible-to-measure yardstick.

1) I thought the phone's edges are going to be flat, so what's with the curved well that the phone presumably sits directly in (the paperwork being above the phone)? And 2) If the brick and the earbuds are gone, what (presumably) NEW thing could the square at the bottom be for? Welcome would be: a microfiber cloth, and/or a cheap dock with an end that folds down (thus fitting the space).

As I read the render the phone sits on top, rising above the lip. Square is a pamphlet, circle is cable (that's why it's deeper). It's just a guess, but it's a boring guess so likely correct (whether this render shows an actual iPhone 12 series box insert or not is another thing entirely).

Why the big round cavity? A wireless charger?

No, that's for the cable. Wireless charger is wishful thinking, and Apple has a way of doing great products while squashing wishful thinking.
 
Why include a USB-C cord when most people have USB-A power brick?

I could be wrong, so please someone correct me if I am: USB-A v3 specifies a maximum power delivery at 4.5W. Now that iPhones support fast charging at higher wattage, you need to move to USB-C which is spec'd to allow up to 29W though iPhone 11 is conservatively capped at 18W. Thus it makes sense that you get a USB-C cable to enable fast charge.
 
I almost exclusively use a wireless charger for my XS (which I think maxes out at 7.5w or something). The one exception is my car, which uses USB-A.

But I still find it odd that they would include only a Lighting to USB-C cable. The vast majority of iPhone (only) users have probably collected a lot of chargers over the years, but they would all be USB-A. The only Apple devices that have ever shipped with USB-C chargers are the (very recent and expensive) 2018 and later iPad Pro and iPhone 11 Pro. In other words, most people wouldn't have a compatible charger, unless they went out a bought a USB-C cable and charger themselves. But other than us tech enthusiasts, I can only assume that most people wouldn't do this.
If you've collected a ton of USB-A chargers, you've probably collected a ton of USB-A cables...

If you have a modern Mac, you have a USB-C charge source and probably wish you had more USB-C to lightning cables.

For me, I still sync to my local machine (I won't backup to iCloud), so it would also give me a data sync cable.
 
That's great - nickel and dime you for a $1000 phone.

And before fanboys complain about this being an eco-friendly move: Why don't they first design cables and headphones that last longer than a couple of months (and don't say they last for me - search it, it is a well known problem that both the earpods as well as charging cables keep breaking)

what “search it” does it even mean and what value your search has anyway? If you find hundreds or even thousands of people on the internet that had, over the years, experienced this problems, out of billions of chargers and EarPods , do you realize what a insignificant number it is and how it’s totally normal that out of billions of mass-produced pieces a tiny fraction will break due to use? Then normalize the number of broken pieces for the amount of years they have been used, the different levels of care they have been given, and you can see how your internet search results value amount to nothing.

If you “search” for the correlation between vaccines and autism online you could find even more proof that the correlation exists than the iPhone cables are defective, but thisdoesn’t make it real.
 
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