In recent weeks, Xiaomi and Samsung are deleting from social networks the messages they had used to make fun of Apple on the day of the launch of the iPhone 12 Pro. “We give the charger”Wrote Xiaomi in October.
After Samsung now comes the confirmation that too Xiaomi will not give the charger to those who buy the Mi 11. Only those who choose some variants will be able to ask for it, and it will be provided free of charge. The announcement was made on Weibo.
Apple has been guiding market choices for years with its decisions: it has built the true wireless headphones category with AirPods and has created what is now called the “premium” range, leading to global price growth: iPhones are no longer phones that cost more than others, today almost all manufacturers have high-end phones in their range that cost as much as iPhones, sometimes even more in the case of some more technologically advanced products such as foldables.
By removing the charger from the iPhone packaging, Apple has unfortunately led other manufacturers down the same path. The only time where the best solution was not to copy what Apple was doing.
We have already spoken several times about the choice made in Cupertino: it is an environmental choice that it has also led to a series of benefits for Apple also in economic terms. It served to keep the margin constant on each smartphone sold, a margin that the introduction of expensive 5G components would inevitably have eroded.
Apple has had a serious environmental protection policy for years. It can be moved by a true love for the land, it can simply be a way to be more beautiful in the eyes of the people, but what Apple has done is demonstrable by reading all the reports produced. From trees planted to the conversion of factories and datacenters, to the choice of materials and the discovery of new ways of working with materials.
Apple draws up accurate and precise environmental reports for every single product it sells, and in the case of the reports related to the new iPhones it shows that there has been a small reduction in the environmental impact, linked to transport.
Samsung is attentive to the environmental issue, but only produces generic reports that do not actually tell us what the impact of individual models is and what has been done over the years to reduce the impact of production. In recent years it has done a lot, it has removed the plastic from the packaging, it has improved the efficiency of the loaders, but there is no real data on the impact these changes have had. Nothing comes from Xiaomi: total absence of transparency on the environment.
According to the latest GreenPeace report on the environmental policies of companies Xiaomi is one of the number one enemy companies on the planet. In recent years, nothing has been done to be environmental friendly, to try to reduce emissions or to use eco-sustainable materials, on the contrary, toxic materials have also continued to be used in production.
Xiaomi does not publish environmental reports on products, does not release data of any kind and does not explain how it has helped the environment in recent years. It’s hard to believe that now Xiaomi has been struck by Greta Thunberg’s latest speech and has decided to become an environmental friendly company. If that were the case, and we hope so of course, there would be dozens of things to do before removing a charger from a top-of-the-range phone that won’t sell tens of millions of pieces worldwide. It would have made more sense to remove the charger from all the mid-range phones, the ones that represent the bulk of the market, but this would obviously have caused discontent.
The removal of an accessory such as the charger, already annoying, becomes even more so when we are faced with products that use fast charging standards that require special chargers. In the case of the new top of the Android range comes the QuickCharge 5, which requires the most modern version of USB Power Delivery: not everyone has at home the charger necessary to manage the profiles that will allow the phones to reach the advertised values, often obtained also with non-standard combinations.
A global agreement between all producers would have been much more “environmental friendly” for no longer use proprietary charging solutions, born only to be able to boast higher charging speeds but often incompatible between different brands.
This was one of those cases where it was better to leave Apple on its way: if you really wanted to emulate the environmentalist spirit, there were other ways to do it and demonstrate it. First of all with more transparency towards consumers, explaining how and how phones are produced and what is done every year to reduce the impact that such production inevitably has on the environment and on the extraction of raw materials.
Without all this it is really difficult to make believe that the choice not to put the charger in the package is linked to the protection of the environment and not to the safeguard of profits.
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