iPhone 13 Charger - Which generic brand on Amazon is best?

[idc]

Consider a magsafe generic wireless charger.

One of the reliability problems you will inevitably face with wired charging is damage to the physical connector. Nothing to do with the electronics, the frequent plugging and unplugging might eventually mechanically wear out the connector. Wireless charging is not only inexpensive, but also very convenient. Most everybody uses the same electronics, just buy one on Amazon that has good reviews and is <$20.

Got one for Christmas as well as a phone holder for car. Really like it.

And as noted here, the plugging/unplugging is what damages cables. There is always just a tiny little electric hop that damages the connectors over time. Better cables last longer, but physics eventually kicks in. I like the wireless so far.

I've never had an iPhone charging connector fail. I don't charge my iPhone wirelessly because it's quite a bit slower and produces more heat - the latter will definitely cause the battery to wear more quickly.

Faster charging will produce a lot more heat in the battery than wireless charging

Not true at least for the iPhone, which doesn't offer the crazy fast wired charging speeds of some Android phones. Wireless charging is much less efficient and therefore produces quite a bit of excess heat. Even the slow 7.5W Anker Qi chargers I've tried with my iPhone produced significantly more heat than 20W wired charging.

Don’t mean to start a debate, but we’re debating basic physics. 7.5 W is ~ 3x less power than 20 W, no? How can it produce more heat?

I used to work on power management for operating systems. Wireless charging is a little less efficient than wired, but the heat is not produced in the battery and charging slower gives heat more time to dissipate, so peak heat is far less. Wired charging is fast and dissipates the heat straight in the battery. In fact, charging is one of the most power hungry components of a phone. You won’t be able to sense that though as it is deep in the guts behind heat sinks, but it is what is damaging components.

But modern phones are so efficient these days it is not going to make a material difference to battery longevity anyway.

[02nz]

Got one for Christmas as well as a phone holder for car. Really like it.

And as noted here, the plugging/unplugging is what damages cables. There is always just a tiny little electric hop that damages the connectors over time. Better cables last longer, but physics eventually kicks in. I like the wireless so far.

I've never had an iPhone charging connector fail. I don't charge my iPhone wirelessly because it's quite a bit slower and produces more heat - the latter will definitely cause the battery to wear more quickly.

Faster charging will produce a lot more heat in the battery than wireless charging

Not true at least for the iPhone, which doesn't offer the crazy fast wired charging speeds of some Android phones. Wireless charging is much less efficient and therefore produces quite a bit of excess heat. Even the slow 7.5W Anker Qi chargers I've tried with my iPhone produced significantly more heat than 20W wired charging.

Don’t mean to start a debate, but we’re debating basic physics. 7.5 W is ~ 3x less power than 20 W, no? How can it produce more heat?

I used to work on power management for operating systems. Wireless charging is a little less efficient than wired, but the heat is not produced in the battery and charging slower gives heat more time to dissipate, so peak heat is far less. Wired charging is fast and dissipates the heat straight in the battery. In fact, charging is one of the most power hungry components of a phone. You won’t be able to sense that though as it is deep in the guts behind heat sinks, but it is what is damaging components.

But modern phones are so efficient these days it is not going to make a material difference to battery longevity anyway.

Heat is wasted energy, in other words energy that's not going into the battery. Wireless charging produces more heat because it's a lot less efficient. It's the same reason why incandescent bulbs put out so much more heat than LED bulbs.

[idc]

I've never had an iPhone charging connector fail. I don't charge my iPhone wirelessly because it's quite a bit slower and produces more heat - the latter will definitely cause the battery to wear more quickly.

Faster charging will produce a lot more heat in the battery than wireless charging

I

Not true at least for the iPhone, which doesn't offer the crazy fast wired charging speeds of some Android phones. Wireless charging is much less efficient and therefore produces quite a bit of excess heat. Even the slow 7.5W Anker Qi chargers I've tried with my iPhone produced significantly more heat than 20W wired charging.

Don’t mean to start a debate, but we’re debating basic physics. 7.5 W is ~ 3x less power than 20 W, no? How can it produce more heat?

I used to work on power management for operating systems. Wireless charging is a little less efficient than wired, but the heat is not produced in the battery and charging slower gives heat more time to dissipate, so peak heat is far less. Wired charging is fast and dissipates the heat straight in the battery. In fact, charging is one of the most power hungry components of a phone. You won’t be able to sense that though as it is deep in the guts behind heat sinks, but it is what is damaging components.

But modern phones are so efficient these days it is not going to make a material difference to battery longevity anyway.

Heat is wasted energy, in other words energy that's not going into the battery. Wireless charging produces more heat because it's a lot less efficient. It's the same reason why incandescent bulbs put out so much more heat than LED bulbs.

It is all in the details. Is your statement based on some facts or some generic information? Incandescent bulbs produce heat resistively mostly, wireless charging transfers energy inductively, different things.

Wireless charging wastes 30% energy. That means at most 2W goes to heat. A phone can easily dissipate 5W of heat sustainably. Wired charging happens at 3x the current, which produces heat at the square of the current value. The peak current and temperature will be higher, as the power regulator will inevitably overheat beyond what the phone can passively dissipate.

Here some mildly informed information https://www.cellularsales.com/blog/wire ... -benefits/

[02nz]

Wireless charging wastes 30% energy. That means at most 2W goes to heat.

iPhone supports up to 15W wireless charging. 30% wasted means almost 5W.

A phone can easily dissipate 5W of heat sustainably.

Source of info? How is dissipation measured? That's surely not the same for all phones. Anyway, the waste heat from wired charging can be dissipated much more readily (throughout much of the body of the phone) than the waste heat from wireless charging, which is concentrated near the charging coils, which are also necessarily covered by the charging pad, making dissipation more difficult.

[abuss368]

I picked up an Apple OEM on eBay very low cost.

Best.
Tony

[Peculiar_Investor]

Count me in with the Anker crowd. Only brand I will buy and use when travelling. Constantly recommend to friends and family.

[DSInvestor]

When I bought my iPhone 12 mini, I just used the apple chargers/cables that I had from my older phones (iPhone 5S and iPhone 7). These were lower power chargers but worked to charge the new phone. I also have chargers from iPad, iPad mini and iPad Pro which have more power and would charge the phone faster.

If you did not have other Apple devices, I would recommend the Apple 20W USB C Power Adapter which you can buy at Apple, Amazon, BestBuy etc for $19.

If you have multiple devices to charge, Anker makes some interesting options that are compact and have multiple ports.

[quantAndHold]

Perfect timing. There’s a Wirecutter article on chargers today.

[idc]

Wireless charging wastes 30% energy. That means at most 2W goes to heat.

iPhone supports up to 15W wireless charging. 30% wasted means almost 5W.

A phone can easily dissipate 5W of heat sustainably.

Source of info? How is dissipation measured? That's surely not the same for all phones. Anyway, the waste heat from wired charging can be dissipated much more readily (throughout much of the body of the phone) than the waste heat from wireless charging, which is concentrated near the charging coils, which are also necessarily covered by the charging pad, making dissipation more difficult.

This is becoming a funny discussion, but entertaining for me nevertheless . I poured my soul into mobile phones power management for years and no OEM will make publicly available how much power gets passively dissipated. But 5W is a conservative figure and a function of a number of things, including materials, safety limits, regulations/laws, ambient temperature, etc. The coils produce heat in a different place than where the battery is and where the power management circuitry for the battery is, you should look up the internet to see a heat map of how uneven any phone gets heated while in use/charging etc. The largest and most concentrated heat sources on a phone are the SoC, power management circuitry, networking, cameras, flashlight/LED. They are deep in the phone and they will cause thermal issues. Wireless coils are close to surface and have a large area, hence much easier to have heat dissipated from.

Furthermore, charging wirelessly is a relatively benign operation, compared to heavy use scenarios, such as video calling, gaming, etc. The thermal stress is minimum, as is inconvenient to use the device while charging.

But if you feel battery health is affected by wireless charging why do very reputable OEMs, including Apple, bother to have the feature in the first place? They do care about return rates for hardware defect, one of the key business loss metrics, and that's why they design the charge rate to be slower on wireless than wired. It is a matter of engineering and business tradeoffs.

OEMs and OS vendors have sophisticated telemetry to track aggregated reasons for defects. They tune their charge rates specifically to avoid reduced battery longevity and track defects in the population in real time. It is fun for example to see how daily battery life goes down in the summer as longer days force screens brighter and increase battery consumption in phones, laptops, etc. If you feel that device telemetry affects your privacy, you have no idea how much money is saves you in creating more reliable consumer electronics.

Yes, wireless charging is slower, but there is a good engineering and business reason for it. But other than gut feeling and hearsay urban myths, do you have any other reason to believe modern engineered phones have worst battery longevity when charged wirelessly?

[02nz]

Wireless charging wastes 30% energy. That means at most 2W goes to heat.

iPhone supports up to 15W wireless charging. 30% wasted means almost 5W.

A phone can easily dissipate 5W of heat sustainably.

Source of info? How is dissipation measured? That's surely not the same for all phones. Anyway, the waste heat from wired charging can be dissipated much more readily (throughout much of the body of the phone) than the waste heat from wireless charging, which is concentrated near the charging coils, which are also necessarily covered by the charging pad, making dissipation more difficult.

This is becoming a funny discussion, but entertaining for me nevertheless . I poured my soul into mobile phones power management for years and no OEM will make publicly available how much power gets passively dissipated. But 5W is a conservative figure and a function of a number of things, including materials, safety limits, regulations/laws, ambient temperature, etc. The coils produce heat in a different place than where the battery is and where the power management circuitry for the battery is, you should look up the internet to see a heat map of how uneven any phone gets heated while in use/charging etc. The largest and most concentrated heat sources on a phone are the SoC, power management circuitry, networking, cameras, flashlight/LED. They are deep in the phone and they will cause thermal issues. Wireless coils are close to surface and have a large area, hence much easier to have heat dissipated from.

Furthermore, charging wirelessly is a relatively benign operation, compared to heavy use scenarios, such as video calling, gaming, etc. The thermal stress is minimum, as is inconvenient to use the device while charging.

But if you feel battery health is affected by wireless charging why do very reputable OEMs, including Apple, bother to have the feature in the first place? They do care about return rates for hardware defect, one of the key business loss metrics, and that's why they design the charge rate to be slower on wireless than wired. It is a matter of engineering and business tradeoffs.

OEMs and OS vendors have sophisticated telemetry to track aggregated reasons for defects. They tune their charge rates specifically to avoid reduced battery longevity and track defects in the population in real time. It is fun for example to see how daily battery life goes down in the summer as longer days force screens brighter and increase battery consumption in phones, laptops, etc. If you feel that device telemetry affects your privacy, you have no idea how much money is saves you in creating more reliable consumer electronics.

Yes, wireless charging is slower, but there is a good engineering and business reason for it. But other than gut feeling and hearsay urban myths, do you have any other reason to believe modern engineered phones have worst battery longevity when charged wirelessly?

I'd love to respond in detail, but don't have the time. Unlike you, I'm not sitting around waiting for the wireless charger.

[idc]

I'd love to respond in detail, but don't have the time. Unlike you, I'm not sitting around waiting for the wireless charger.

No worries, it is good fun, very few people get convinced one way or another in an internet debate

[bluebolt]

Fast charging has been a big improvement for me. So, definitely get an 18W charger that can support iPhone fast charging.

Here's an Anker 2-port 40W USB-C charger for charging two devices. I got it on sale for under $30.
https://www.anker.com/products/a2038

I also like the Anker Nano 3 for charging my iPhone or Macbook Air:
https://us.anker.com/products/a2147

[EnjoyIt]

I prefer Anker over Apple products.

They are more compact and more reliable. Especially their cables. A good Anker cable will outlast anything made by Apple.