Thursday, March 28

The two options that Apple manages to comply with the universal USB-C charger in Europe


The future has to be standardized and sustainable, or so the European Union believes. That’s why Apple is faced with a difficult choice: how to get rid of its Lightning port. Right now they have two options on the table.

As you well know, this week the European Union legislators agreed on new proposals to force manufacturers of all kinds of technological products, from smartphones and headphones to tablets, to use the same universal charging port: USB Type-C.

The plan is for the new rules to take effect in the fall of 2024, after which these devices that charge with a cable will have to do so through an integrated USB-C port.

The biggest impact of this legislation is likely to fall on Apple’s iPhone.. While the rest of the smartphone industry has uncomplainingly adopted USB-C as a single, standardized charging port, Apple has stuck to its guns with Lightning.

This, for those who don’t know, is the proprietary connector that it introduced with the iPhone 5 in 2012. And EU law could force it to change after 10 uninterrupted years.

The EU regulation is only a provisional agreement for now and will have to be approved by the European Council and the European Parliament before it becomes official. That is expected to happen after the summer break, which ends on September 1.

It will enter into force 20 days later, and most manufacturers will then have 24 months to comply.or, hence the fall 2024 compliance date.

The exception is laptops, because the type of high-voltage USB-C chargers these devices require are less common than phone chargers. These will be 40 months old, which brings us to roughly early 2026.

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The latest public drafts of the proposed legislation specify that the USB Type-C connector used for charging must remain “accessible and operational at all times“, meaning it’s unlikely that Apple will be able to fix the ballot with an adapter in the box.

And it makes sense, as this is because the EU rules are designed to reduce e-waste, with a universal charging rule that will hopefully allow more chargers to be reused instead of going to landfill.

The EU calculates that the rules could reduce 12,000 tons of electronic waste per year and save customers €250 million in unnecessary purchases.

The two options that Apple has to comply with European regulations

Apple could make iPhones with USB-C and ship them exclusively to the EUBut given Apple’s emphasis on supply chain efficiency, which leads it to sell a narrow selection of very similar devices around the world, that approach seems unlikely.

there is at least one way Apple could avoid having to ship USB-C ports on its phones, and that’s with wireless charging. Current EU legislation only covers wired charging, so if a phone only charged wirelessly, it could bypass the rule altogether.

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This is a theoretical distinction, as portless phones don’t really exist outside the realm of a couple of concept phones and gimmicks. But it’s important, because Apple is rumored to have considered going that route with the iPhone.

These rumors have been swirling ever since Apple introduced the MagSafe wireless charging standard with the iPhone 12 lineup. But it has since been ruled out. At the moment we have to wait, we will see with what move Apple respondsbut it looks like they’re going to have to jump through hoops.

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