It’s not just about changing the USB charger. Owners of new iPhones pay extra for accessories

Apple is keeping information about new Apple phones under wraps. There is nothing strange about it, the American electronics giant never reveals or comments on its plans before the official unveiling of products.

But it is almost certain that the new generation of iPhones will come with a new charging connector. According to the already approved European Union (EU) regulation, all phones must exclusively use the USB-C standard from 2024. Although Apple will introduce new phones already this fall, it will not defend its existing lightning interface as expected and will comply with the EU regulation earlier.

But for Apple phone users, this means that they will have to change all their chargers – at home, at work and in the car. In addition to chargers, they will also be forced to replace the accessories they used to connect to the phone – from power banks to external drives and docking stations to various port replicators or headphones.

This will be a much more expensive change than it might seem at first glance. According to MacRumors namely, with the new iPhones, which according to the current custom will bear the number 15, only accessories certified as part of Apple’s Made for iPhone (MFi) program will work.

Until now, it was customary that people could also routinely use accessories from secondary production, which were significantly cheaper. Currently, it is possible to get non-original accessories two to four times cheaper than in the case of those that come from the MFi program.

For example, families of four, where everyone uses iPhones, can easily pay several tens of thousands of crowns in addition to the purchase price of the phones themselves. As Apple’s backyard manufacturer, Foxconn has reportedly already started mass-producing official accessories with MFi certification. Here, the chip in the phone will verify directly.

The European Union has been fighting for several long years to introduce a uniform charging connector across the entire electronics market. The final decision to introduce a new regulation on the use of the USB-C interface was made last fall.

Manufacturers must use this type of connector from 2024. In addition to mobile phones, this also applies to, for example, cameras, electronic readers, tablets and a number of other devices. The only exceptions are laptops, which are affected by the unification of power connectors only from the end of 2026.

A number of devices already routinely use USB-C connectors. However, some devices still relied on the microUSB interface, which is cheaper for the manufacturer. We could encounter the older interface mainly with cheaper electronics.

Apple was considered to be probably the biggest opponent of a unified charger, which still did not want to give up its lightning interface for iPhones. And this despite the fact that Apple offers several models of iPad tablets with USB-C connectors.

The advantages of this solution are undeniable, for example faster data transfers and charging, but also support for a much larger number of accessories. Apple also used chargers with USB-C for its MacBooks, but for the latest generation it chose its standard again and left the USB-C interface only as an alternative charging option.

Questions about why Apple didn’t switch to USB-C chargers for iPhones a long time ago were regularly ignored by company representatives.