[BYazfVCcq]

They also assume that everyone who bought an iPhone bought a charger at full price directly from Apple.

I'd be surprised if even half bought a new charger, most people who needed one probably just got a cheap one from Amazon.

[tyingq]

It's funny to me if it's true that people buying $1000+ phones would all be buying those low-end white-label chargers. They are somewhat notorious for being unreliable, and even dangerous.

Edit: Yes, there's decent, branded, 3rd party chargers too. Just commenting on the really cheap ones.

[bradfa]

Anecdotally, people I know who aren't tech people and who have expensive phones almost always have cheap chargers and off-brand charging cables. The general public seem to perceive that the phone is the valuable thing, a charger or cable is a commodity so they're all the same and work equally well/poorly.

Clearly this is misguided, but I think if I tried to explain how to shop for a good and reliable USB charger to my mom, dad, brother, or sister that they'd each roll their eyes at me.

Of note, the last time I bought a new multi-port USB charger (a few years ago now), it was very difficult to find one which was reasonably priced and which carried the UL (or equivalent) mark in the USA. Another previous multi-port charger I had bought made by Anker had claimed "getting UL approval" in the product description and showed the mark in the pictures on Amazon, but once delivered the physical charger did not have any safety marks present on it. The Anker charger failed after a year and Anker sent me a replacement under warranty, the replacement also did not carry any safety mark.

[bluedevil2k]

The Anker iPhone accessories like cables, chargers, and charging pads are MUCH higher quality than Apple’s. Their cables are so much better than Apple’s garbage cables which fray and break after a few months of careful usage. You wonder why Apple would damage their “high quality” brand image with their terrible accessories.

[bradfa]

How many of your Anker chargers carry a UL or other safety approval mark on them?

All of Apple's do.

Having a UL mark is not an indication that a product is 100% safe to use, but it at least shows that the manufacturer cares enough about making a safe product to do the paperwork and have a 3rd party like UL review their design and manufacturing to ensure the product is as safe as can be.

[ac29]

Mine is IEC 62368-1 conformant (the corresponding UL standard is also 62368-1). It also has a TÜV SÜD marking for US compliance.

[bradfa]

That's good to hear! Maybe Anker has improved in this area since the last time I bought one of their products.

[xboxnolifes]

How many people even know what a UL safety approval mark is or cares about it's existence on a charger?

[bradfa]

Effectively no one, unless you're an engineer who has part of their job be UL compliance or until you as a consumer have to talk to an insurance company about why your house burned down.

[bigbizisverywyz]

>Apple’s garbage cables which fray and break after a few months of careful usage

We must be using them very differently then.

I still have charger cables for my original iPod (2007) which I use regularly that are not broken or frayed.

Also from older phones - which is one of the reasons I was happy that they stopped shipping all the chargers and headphones as I still already had them from previous purchases.

Cableitis is unfortunately a wasteful by-product of our current electronics culture.

[frederikvs]

For some people, a $1000+ phone comes with bragging rights. The charger? Not so much.

I'd wager that's one reason some people buy the expensive phone and the cheap charger. The other is simply that most people can't tell the difference between chargers - they both charge, right?

[sokoloff]

I suspect it’s a mix, but if you stay off the absolute bottom of the barrel, there are plenty of third-party USB supplies and wireless chargers that work great and are significantly cheaper than the Apple ones.

Anecdote of one: wife bought an iPhone 13 mini yesterday at an Apple store and turned down all the hard sells on accessories and AppleCare.

[InitialLastName]

> third-party USB supplies and wireless chargers that work great and are significantly cheaper than the Apple ones.

Have you checked those chargers against the UL certification database to confirm that the people who check the "won't catch on fire" part of the "works great" is actually true?

[sokoloff]

I do not cross-reference the UL database on each of my online shopping trips. I trust that the middle-priced brands (Amazon, Anker and the like) are not selling crap.

[InitialLastName]

That's mighty self-assured, given Amazon's track record of selling (and commingling) crap.

[teekert]

I still mostly use the charger that came with my HTC Legend. It has been under the bed and its usbA port has seen at least three types of cables over the last decade (12 years even I think).

[teekert]

Ok worthless claim then. I did buy 4 usbA-lightning cables to put in several places (iPhone 12 mini is my first iPhone) though. But not from Apple.

I also have a non-Apple MagSafe charger in the car. The only thing I hardly ever use is the included usbC-lightning cable ironically. They could have earned some more money on me.

[tonmoy]

Or they already owned an old charger