breaking news apple drops the charger on the new iphone 12.
good news if you happen to drop the charger onto your new iphone 12 you're unlikely to break the
screen because it's four times stronger than that on the iphone 11 is that what you had in mind
not exactly Gary what we've just discovered we've been talking to Tim Cook had some time with him
earlier on you did you didn't look very happy when he dropped the news on you though Gordon
some people won't be very happy gary because the familiar white block we've been used to getting
in our phone when we get a new phone is gone so when i open up my new box and i get my phone i've
got my iphone 12 and i've got a charging lead and it's quite important the two ends on that charging
you've got usbc and lightning why is that so important gordon well people might that might have
been thinking that apple was going to get rid of the lightning connector you're right they haven't
but what has changed is it's now a usb c connector at the at the sending end should we say oh the
bit that should plug into the charger that's no longer in the box and it was one of those things
we were looking out for because on the new ipad pro 2020 um that's got usbc on both ends and so
is your laptop so they just kept the lightning probably on for one more generation of phone
but it's that charging end that's really important because we've got a ton of chargers down here
with the majority of them being a's yes so yes i mean just so everyone knows let's have a little
look just so you can tell uh that's a usba charger okay that's very familiar everyone's seen around
for years and then if i bring in the usbc right uh and this is a it's a fast fast data connector and
they'll handle up to 100 watts depending obviously on the charger at the front end which is why
you're seeing on laptops and the iphone so from from their point of view they're trying to reduce
their carbon footprint so by not giving you one of these charging plugs in your actual phone itself
the iphone 12 they're reducing the packaging they've got they can get a lot more on a pallet
and they're presuming you might already have a charger even though not been around for that
long you agree yes i mean that's how they've sold it you know doing saving the planet however you
know the european union has been on the case on this for quite some time and they published a few
years ago again if i just bring that in an impact assessment on common charges of portable devices
so basically they got wise to all these different devices we have all having different charges and
want a standard solution because it's getting a ton of e-waste what sort of tons are we talking
about in Europe it's between 11 and 13 000 tons a year of e-west just from charges themselves so the
old charges we're just getting rid of because we've already got replacement charges etcetera
and that probably doesn't include i've probably got 20 in various drawers in my house alone that
haven't made it to landfill yet and we easily found this collection here from the stuff we
had in the studio so we've got plenty of these charging units itself so of course there must be
an impact to the electrician and he wants to get ahead of that in order that maybe
he's offering a better service for his customers so what are you suggesting should well has been
over the last few years of people installing sockets that have integrated charges okay so
what we're talking there is both in this case we've got a usb a which we used to do but look
you've got the usbc already in that unit itself we can overcome it by having wireless charging agreed
we can yes and i mean apple brought this in again following some of the other manufacturers with
the iphone x iphone 10 and best that's like a toothbrush charger you slap your phone on there
and the power magnetically couples in there right now buried in that announcement gary was another
announcement they've brought back a technology they have they've brought back this technology
here so they've brought what's it called so this is the magsafe so this is an inductive charger
that basically magnetically sticks to the back of your phone and that improves the efficiency of
that wireless charging right so let's just get it right they're trying to reduce the amount of waste
they create but bring back a different charging method which you can buy separately is that true
yeah well i just think of the mag magsafe as a different connector right you don't get a charger
with it it's an accessory guess what it's got the magsafe at one end and it's got a usbc at the
other end you see the other end yes so the wafer is usbc um that that's quite exciting so i used to
have one of those on an old laptop i've probably still got that charger and it was very reliable
system so we're thinking now we're going to have that usbc connection that we're going to have to
make in order to start charging our devices so if we use this one here that we connect into the usbc
we're charging our device likewise we can use one of our old favorites what's really good about this
one well we can so this is a euro module charger and the good thing about your module they're
standard and you can upgrade them and change them you know to standard size as as check as charging
technology develops you'll be able to upgrade that keep the nice faceplate and now luckily
our friends at knightsbridge have sent us some of their usbc charging solutions along yeah so
what we're saying for the electrical contractor is if i was going out tomorrow and i started fitting
a socket outlet that had maybe a usb a in it i'd be thinking let's try and put a c in it as well
yeah do you agree gordon absolutely i mean you can get cables that go usb a to c on the other end
but the problem is the usbc is a much better charging protocol can handle much higher powers
and these ones here from nitrogen there's a fast charge option in there that can you know
charge devices a lot quicker than the usb airport okay but there is some of the protocols with the
fast charging now we've got to make sure that uh apple are on board with that haven't we so what
we don't know is today apple haven't supported some of the some of the protocols that are out
there from companies like qualcomm um you know so that plug an apple device into a fast charge port
you're not necessarily guaranteed faster charging it stays at five volts and you can get still get
up to four arms depending on your choice of cable and things like that but with the some
of those other protocols out there there's a sort of what you call a handshake process goes on the
device says i'm connected to usbc how much power can you give me and and then the charger and the
device communicate and get the optimum power levels now apple have done that but theirs has
been proprietary and we don't know whether they've carried that forward into this new iphone 12. okay
however if you haven't got a usb c anywhere you can't plug the charging lead in they gave you any
out even if it wasn't fast charging can you no so usbc is the future it is and let's have a look a
couple of the other little useful gizmos we've got here gary yeah so so here's a clever one
so this has got an inductive uh charging pad on it so you can just slap your phone on there
but it's also got if i push this button there it's got a hidden a secret usbc and still that legacy
usb air charger in there so this would be good inter kitchen yep so you know you pop that down
there and that's not going to get any any water or splashes in there or perhaps if you've got
your desk and you're not using inductive you can have this direct plug-in and a cable facility to
go down there through your desk as well for some other devices but again with usbc and usb air
so knightsbridge you've got it all covered yeah they're on the case but yeah so the
key thing here if an electrician's coming to your house or you're going to somebody else's
house to fit some of these sockets you really want to be thinking usbc
europe's pushing it apple's adopting it and trying to sneak in another thing
samsung companies like that have already brought it in extensively across the range and i would say
that's even if you've perhaps got an iphone 9 or 10 or maybe you've got the 11 that you've got to
be thinking future proof that it's going to be a usbc we think both ends isn't it very shortly
so as always we're interested in your comments what's your feeling on getting rid of the usba
and moving over to usbc is it something good is it something you already saw coming
we'd love your comments please leave them below and we'll try and get back to as many as we can
you