Apple's rumored 18W USB-C adapter might not be sold separately at launch
Apple is rumored to debut a high-power 18W USB-C compliant power adapter alongside new iPhone models later this year, but supply constraints might restrict the part to in-the-box bundles until 2019.
Citing supply chain sources, Japanese blog Mac Otakara on Tuesday reports orders for packaged components will put factories earmarked to produce the part at full capacity. As such, the 18W adapter is unlikely to show up at Apple stores as standalone accessories, at least this year.
Apple tapped Flextronics, Delta Electronics, Lite-On Technology, Artesyn and other minor suppliers to manufacture the part, the report said.
In addition, third-party USB-C to Lightning cables will also be unavailable until 2019, as the new Lightning chip, dubbed "C48B," is expected to enter the MFi program in November or December. Further complicating matters, only four MFi-certified manufacturing plants have been approved to produce the part.
Word of the 18W USB-C adapter surfaced in May when a sketchy report offered details on a European version of the accessory, complete with prototype renders from a supplier source. More recently, however, photographs of what is claimed to be an engineering sample popped up on a Chinese website, lending credence to earlier rumblings.
Markings on the device suggest power output stands at 5 volts at 3 amps, or 9V at 2A, meaning a total of 15 Watts are delivered to iPhone.
Current iPhones ship with a 5W USB-A to Lightning charger, though Apple's latest iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X support fast charging via a USB-C to Lightning cable and higher wattage charger. Using the USB-C adapter supplied with certain MacBook models, current generation iPhones can charge to 50 percent capacity in about 30 minutes.
Citing supply chain sources, Japanese blog Mac Otakara on Tuesday reports orders for packaged components will put factories earmarked to produce the part at full capacity. As such, the 18W adapter is unlikely to show up at Apple stores as standalone accessories, at least this year.
Apple tapped Flextronics, Delta Electronics, Lite-On Technology, Artesyn and other minor suppliers to manufacture the part, the report said.
In addition, third-party USB-C to Lightning cables will also be unavailable until 2019, as the new Lightning chip, dubbed "C48B," is expected to enter the MFi program in November or December. Further complicating matters, only four MFi-certified manufacturing plants have been approved to produce the part.
Word of the 18W USB-C adapter surfaced in May when a sketchy report offered details on a European version of the accessory, complete with prototype renders from a supplier source. More recently, however, photographs of what is claimed to be an engineering sample popped up on a Chinese website, lending credence to earlier rumblings.
Markings on the device suggest power output stands at 5 volts at 3 amps, or 9V at 2A, meaning a total of 15 Watts are delivered to iPhone.
Current iPhones ship with a 5W USB-A to Lightning charger, though Apple's latest iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X support fast charging via a USB-C to Lightning cable and higher wattage charger. Using the USB-C adapter supplied with certain MacBook models, current generation iPhones can charge to 50 percent capacity in about 30 minutes.
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And cue the claims that Apple are doing this deliberately to force people to buy the 30W Charger to take advantage of the fast charging capability. Followed by calls for Tim to resign, and this never would have happened under Steve.
Meanwhile, in the real world, this is slightly annoying, as this charger will presumably also fast charge the new iPads Pro when they come out (not to mention existing iPhones and iPads). It would be handy to have a spare or two lying around. I presume there's nothing stopping you from using the existing USB-A Chargers with the new devices, if you're not in a hurry, but who has time to wait?
However only the iPhones 8, 8 Plus and X can be quick charged. Using the higher capacity iPad charger on earlier models works fine but doesn't deliver a quick charge. If you've been doing this with your iPhone for 3 years then yours can't be one of these compatible models, and so its 91% remaining battery capacity doesn't say anything either way about quick charging.
In general fast charging Li batteries can shorten their life expectancy. However this also depends on what the charging control circuit is designed to allow — how quick is "quick"?
I did buy the 30W (MacBook) USB-C charger to use with an iPad Pro, which supports quick charging. That's convenient when traveling, but at home I still use regular speed charging overnight in order not to stress the battery for no reason.
its interesting how we got people insisting that Apple would force people to buy these separately, rather to put them in the box, so that Apple could make more money off those who didn’t want the 5 watt models that came with the phone. Hopefully, that silliness is over. But now we’re getting if from the other side. Oh well, I guess some people are not happy unless they’re making up some dumb conspiracy.
while my 7+ doesn’t “quick charge”, it does charge much more rapidly with a bigger charger. We’ve got a lot of 10 and 12 watt iPad chargers around, and so we never use the 5 watt models that come with the phone. I find myself giving them away to people who somehow seem to lose theirs. I also bought the 29 watt Macbook charger and the lightning to USB 3 cable for my iPad Pro 12.9”. It charges that much more quickly, and charges my 7+ faster than the 12 watt charger does, though just by another 5 to 10 minutes. Still, it’s a noticeable difference.
quick charging can eventually shorten the life of batteries that aren’t designed for the extra heat that very fast charging results in. Batteries have an internal resistance. While that resistance is low when compared to the input of an a/v device, it’s high enough to siphon off part of the charging power, and the power used when playing an intense game. That why the phone gets fairly hot during these times. When the Samsung Note 7 burst into flames, it was because the battery expanded during heavy charge and use. That shows what happens when power is entering and taken from a battery at a high rate. Unfortunately, that battery wasn’t a part of the original design, and was put in at the last minute, even though the phone didn’t have enough room for the expansion, so the charge crushed the battery, leading to shorting, rather than having the battery expand into enough space.
apple uses 1,000 charge batteries for its phones, as opposed to the 500 charge batteries most others use. Those batteries are more robust. I would think that Apple thinks this out more carefully before they go into it, rather than rushing a feature out, which is likely one reason it took several years before they followed the crowd on this.
I’m not sure that my iPad Pro 12.9”, first or second generation supports “quick charging”, which is a very fast charge rate. I haven’t seen any evidence of that. But it does support quicker charging, and I’ve measured the difference, and it’s significant.
I guess that depends on how one defines "quick charging". Quick Charge is the marketing name of fast-charging tech (and underlying specs) from Qualcom (published in versions 1.0 - 4.0+). The fast-charging spec Apple has settled on starting with the iPad Pro 12.9" Gen 1 is USB-PD. Incidentally, Quick Charge 4.0+ is also USB-PB compatible. Like you correctly point out, some older model Apple devices are able to charge faster with higher output chargers maxing out somewhere in the 12-15W range even though they were never officially marketed with this capability nor was their conformity to any official fast-charging spec published. This points to the prior integration of some Apple special-sauce variety of a fast-charging spec (likely a variant of, or an alternative to, Qualcom's Quick Charge 2.0).
That being said, a mobile device which is capable of using a charging input of at least 10W could be considered "fast-charging" since the original Quick Charge spec promulgated in 2013 had a max power limit of 10W.
This suggests that there will shortly be a new standard for USB-C to Lightning cables to be certified MFi that requires a new version of the Lightning chip. So current USB-C to Lightning cables, whether certified MFi or not, will not be certified under this new standard, and it may take time for cables that are certified under the new standard are available.
Non-MFi certified cables will probably continue to be available, but Apple recommends you only use MFi certified cables and accessories. I use a range of things, many of which are not certified MFi, and get varying results with them.
"The done deal is the availability of quick charging in the phones, and iPads."
So now I'm a little confused by your statement quoted above.
I would additionally like to point out that fast-charging specs do not directly define charging times (i.e. 50% charge in 30 min and full charge in 1.5 hours), but rather they refer to charging power inputs that, in turn, have the effect of charging a device faster than the "normal" 5W power input that was commonplace (and still is) before "fast charging" specs were promulgated. Since the Pros never shipped with 5W chargers, I would say reduced charging times as relative to the included 12W charger is a fair metric for "fast-charging".
it would be ridiculous to talk about a 5 watt charger for an iPad, and except for an emergency, I don’t see anyone using that. It’s either the older 10 watt chargers, of which there remain a lot of, and the later 12 watt chargers which make a small difference in charge speed for the 12.9 models.
I'm confused by your statement because Apple does indeed "call" or market the iPads Pro (and only the iPads Pro) as fast-charging.
From their product page for the 30W Charger here:
"You can also pair it with iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X, or select iPad Pro models to take advantage of the fast-charging feature."
The individual select iPads Pro models (including both Generations of the 12.9") are listed in the compatibility section.
As I previously stated, when comparing charging times (roughly 5 hours ) while using the included 12W charger, the ~2 hour charging time facilitated by the 30W charger (or its 29W predecessor) would be fast-charging. Additionally, the iPads pro should reach a 75% charge in about 90 minutes and the last 25% is reached after another ~45 minutes. . The slow down is there, but not quite so pronounced as in iPhones likely owing to the relatively large size of the battery and its ability to dissipate heat and deal with expansions better than the smaller batteries in iPhones.
Just because you might like it to be even faster, doesn't mean it isn't fast-charging now.
I have been using the ipad charger for my iphone 6, and it is significantly faster to charge than the iphone charger (almost twice as fast). The reason for this is that the iphone always had the capacity to charge at a higher wattage, but the iphone charger used to limit what it could deliver. While this is not 'fast charging' as defined nowadays, it is sufficiently fast to make life easier.