Flagship phones want to cancel the charger, now is not the time

On December 28, 2020, Lei Jun released Mi 11 in the Mi Technology Park. As Xiaomi’s high-end flagship product once again, all the upgrades are so natural: a more beautiful screen, a stronger SoC, and better imaging Quality.

But for this "lightly loaded" new flagship, people seem to be more concerned about the 55W charger that was taken away.

Butterfly effect caused by a charger

Mobile phone manufacturers will cut off the charger in the packaging. If you travel back to 5 years ago, no one will believe this absurd statement, but today, people are beginning to worry about who the next manufacturer will cancel the free charger.

The earliest discussion about cutting off the charger appeared in the news about the iPhone 12. This rumor was confirmed at the iPhone 12 conference in October last year. The iPhone 12 series became the first mobile phone series to cancel the included charger.

Consumers’ attitude towards this matter is worthy of fun. Some consumers feel that it does not matter if Apple cuts off the charger. If you want to select the most useless thing in the whole house, the 5W charger that Apple provides can be used with a treadmill purchased on impulse. Tied for the top spot.

Another part of consumers believes that when consumers buy a mobile phone worth tens of thousands of dollars, but cannot charge it after receiving it, Apple's practice of cutting off the charger violates the interests of consumers.

It is worth mentioning that after cutting off the charger and headphones, the iPhone 12 still comes with a USB-C to Lightning charging cable that supports 20W fast charging.

However, when an Apple mobile phone user updated from iPhone X to iPhone 12, the old "Five Fortune and One An" charger does not match the included C port charging cable. In order to use this fast charging cable, he needs to go Buy an additional charger that supports 20W fast charging. Is this still environmentally friendly?

Apple’s foothold is also very interesting. Cook said that Apple’s cancellation of the "Five Fortunes and One Peace" is because consumers already have too many chargers in their hands. For the sake of environmental protection, Apple had to shed tears.

This sentence is true. "Five Goods and One Safe" should have been eliminated by history as "e-waste", but elimination and cancellation should be two different things.

For the sake of "environmental protection", it is the same as the "larger internal space" when the 3.5 mm headphone jack was cancelled. It is intended to promote new consumption and explore greater profit space.

The latter is to promote the rapid development of the newly launched true wireless headset business, abruptly opening up a brand-new commercial market and becoming one of Apple's main sources of revenue.

After canceling the charger, the most intuitive change is that the packaging box can be made lighter and thinner, which of course not only saves paper for environmental protection, but also improves transportation efficiency.

Apple said that after removing the charger, the smaller product packaging box not only means that less raw materials are consumed, but also 70% more equipment can be installed in the original transportation conditions. A series of operations can reduce carbon emissions by more than 2 million tons and, more importantly, also save a lot of transportation costs.

There is still a big business behind the cancellation of the charger. According to Comprar Acciones data, Apple plans to produce as many as 230 million iPhones in 2021, a 20% increase from 2019. If 100 million Apple owners choose to purchase additional fast chargers with an average price of US$20 each year in the future, it can bring about US$2 billion in incremental market space.

Although consumers have praised and replied about this radical approach, people found that the user experience has not changed significantly after the cancellation of the "Five Fortunes and One Peace", and they have gradually become accustomed to Apple's no longer providing mobile phone chargers.

This is of course not because we no longer need a new charger, but because we no longer need a "five fortune and one peace" charger.

Android will also cancel the charger, is it too much?

Prior to the release of Mi 11, the availability of a charger has always been the point that Mi Fans are most concerned about for the new generation of flagships. At the press conference, the emotions of the rice fans were ups and downs like a roller coaster:

The bad news is: there really is no charger.

Rice noodles: tearful

The worse news is: not even the charging cable.

Rice noodles: crash

The good news is: the version with the charging kit is the same price.

Rice noodles: Good!

Not to mention whether the twists and turns are premeditated marketing, or after leaks, in order to calm the strong resistance of rice noodles, this method of selling chargers separately is still a precedent in the Android camp. , And this was incredible before.

Before changing to a new phone, entangled in whether to invest in the iOS camp or the Android camp, one consideration that cannot be bypassed is fast charging technology.

Starting with 30W, 65W mainstream, and 120W leading the way, domestic Android manufacturers have always regarded fast charging as one of their important selling points. For example, Xiaomi, which took the lead in cancelling the charger, has 120W extremely fast on the Mi 10 Extreme Edition launched last year. Charging is also one of its repeatedly mentioned selling points.

If you want to cancel the fast charge charger that comes with it, you will undoubtedly discount the leg of the super fast charge with a stick. Is this really realistic?

According to Lei Jun, Xiaomi’s reason for canceling the charger is the same as that of Apple. They are acting for environmental protection. This reason seems to be noble and great, but logically it cannot stand.

Consumers already have too many chargers, but this does not mean that consumers no longer need new fast chargers.

The reason is very simple. Due to the existence of barriers to the fast charging agreement of mobile phone manufacturers, most of our chargers do not support fast charging of new mobile phones.

Such barriers not only exist between different brands. Due to the rapid development of fast charging technology, fast charging agreements for different mobile phones of the same brand are also very different.

Take Xiaomi as an example, its fast charge charger has gone through the development of 12W to 120W. At Xiaomi Mi 8, the standard fast charger can only support 18W fast charge. By Xiaomi Mi 10, it has already developed by leaps and bounds to 50W.

In other words, unless the user who updates the Mi 11 is using Mi 10 Pro or Black Shark 3, or has previously purchased a Mi Gallium Nitride charger, consumers still need to purchase a new fast charger in an additional package The charger, which is obviously hard to get along with environmental protection.

What's more, more chargers do not mean that they will be wasted, and one more fast-charge charger does not have to worry about the problem of "setting up fast charging in the company or at home". And with the increase in wearable devices, watches, bracelets, and true wireless earphones have become part of our lives, and we still need more chargers to charge them.

Earlier, Xiaomi issued an announcement to thank 20,000 users who chose the "environmental protection version" of Xiaomi 11 for supporting its environmental protection cause. How many of these 20,000 users really have surplus chargers at home to support environmental protection, or are they snapping up the "environmental protection version" for more sources of supply, and subsequently purchasing a 1 cent charging kit, we have no way of knowing.

Will this give more manufacturers the courage to remove the charger from the box? This is worth worrying about every consumer.

You must know that the charging kit of Xiaomi 11 is not a gift. At Xiaomi's press conference, Lei Jun said that the price of the kit version should have been set at 4,098 yuan. The reason why the price remained unchanged was because Xiaomi subsidized the price difference to rice noodles.

So next year, if the Xiaomi Mi 12 is also removed from the charger, will the charger be subsidized? The current 1-cent charger set may be a psychological hint to consumers that "the charger and the mobile phone can be sold separately", it is a pot of warm water before the frog is gradually heated.

If you want to take away the charger, please give me a better charging experience

Counting the fast charge agreements of Android manufacturers is like a group of martial arts masters discussing swords in Huashan. Each school has its own unique skills.

Huawei has SCP, Xiaomi has Charge Tubo, Green Factory has VOOC, DART, Warp, vivo has Super FlashCharge, Meizu has mCharge, and Samsung has AFC.

In order to improve the core competitiveness of their products, various manufacturers have invested huge research and development resources when studying their own charging protocols.

Most of these various fast charging principles are different. Some use high voltage to improve charging efficiency, and some use high current to find another way. As a result, fast charging protocols between different manufacturers are not compatible.

Take OPPO’s 65W ultra-flash and 45W PD fast charge chargers as an example. When charging mobile phones in your own camp, the charging efficiency can be fully expanded, while when charging other brands of mobile phones, the efficiency will be greatly reduced.

Most of the current Android mobile phones have adopted the Type C interface, but very few mobile phones support the 65W PD charging protocol introduced by the USB-IF Association. One of the most important reasons is that the manufacturers are reluctant to have invested huge research and development costs under their own agreements, as well as the control of unique charging technology.

In this enclosing operation about the charger, no one wants to share the same pie with others.

The upgrade between different mobile phone brands will result in the waste of the previous fast charging charger, and the upgrade of the same brand of mobile phones will also have the embarrassment of not keeping up with the wattage. It is not the consumers who are willing to update their phones, but the industry that causes the excess chargers. Fast charging protocol barriers that are difficult to unify and fast charging technologies that are difficult to be upwardly compatible.

When Apple cut off the 3.5 mm headphone jack, it launched a new consumer market with true wireless headphones. After taking away the charger, can the newly added MagSafe lead the mobile phone manufacturer's wireless charging trend?

Buying an additional wireless charging pad or wireless charger for a more advanced charging experience sounds like a more worthwhile reason than a common fast charger.

Compared with wired charging, the wireless charging protocol is much more unified. The Qi protocol formulated by the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) can be said to dominate the field of wireless charging. But when it comes to wireless fast charging, there are still mutually exclusive wireless fast charging protocols.

OPPO’s AirVOOC, which supports up to 65W wireless flash charging, and Xiaomi’s 55W ultra-fast flash charging base, all use private charging protocols.

With the development of wireless fast charging in this way, it is still difficult for us to obtain a new and unified charging method for us to abandon the charger. The additional proprietary protocol wireless charging board may become a new Waste" products.

When buying a mobile phone in the future, you have to check a charging accessory worth 288 yuan to place an order, otherwise you can't experience the full function of 200W fast charging, then buying a Porsche mobile phone may really be no different from buying a Porsche ——If you don’t buy it, it’s not complete, even the buying experience is the same.

A better way to protect the environment should be to break through the agreement barriers between manufacturers as soon as possible, so that consumers can enjoy fast charging while reusing the charger instead of simply transferring the cost of the charger to the consumer. on.

I will applaud the manufacturers who continue to provide fast-charge chargers as standard, because once the charger is separated from the standard, it will be difficult for the manufacturer to plug it back.

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