Looking at several antique iPhone chargers in our hands, we can’t help but think of the era of 5V1A wall chargers that are gradually being forgotten. Today, let’s review the charging evolution of the iPhone with everyone. Below is the overview of the Evolution of iPhone charging interfaces since 2007
iPhone Wall Charger In 2007
The first-generation iPhone was released on January 9, 2007. As the first-generation smartphone launched by Apple, its charging interface uses the Apple 30-pin, an Apple-proprietary interface introduced by Apple in 2003 for the iPod. form. The matching charger is a 5V1A 5W charger, but it is not the ancestral five-volt-one-ampere that we are familiar with, but looks more like the early iPad charger
Unlike Apple, which we know today as lagging behind in charging, in 2007, a 5W charger was considered advanced for mobile phones at the time. At that time, the interface of ordinary USB chargers was still in the USB 2.0 era, and the defined output power was only 5V500mA 2.5W. The 5W charger used in the original iPhone already had twice the charging power of ordinary USB chargers at the time. Since 5V1A was not the output of the standard USB in 2007, the charging protocol used by the iPhone at that time was called Apple 5V1A.
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2009 iPhone 3G/3GS
On June 9, 2008, the first batch of iPhone 3G/3GS was launched. At that time, the charger included in the package was still a 5V1A 5W large charger, Model A1205. And with the introduction of the USB BC protocol with a power of more than 5W, the Apple 5V1A protocol disappeared in the long river of time and is forgotten by people today.
iPhone 5 Charging interface 2012
On September 12, 2012, the iPhone 5 was released. As the lightest iPhone in history, it not only eliminated the Apple 30-pin interface that has been used for ten years but replaced it with the Lightning interface that we can’t wait to eliminate today (after all, it has been around for ten years).
At the same time, it also brought an ultra-compact 5W charger, model A1443, for the first time. What we scoff at today, was exquisite in 2012.
The innovative stacked motherboard design will greatly reduce the volume, and this design concept is still used today. It is a pity that in the following year, the mobile phone started the road of fast charging, and it gradually fell behind in the face of the increasingly accelerated charging speed. With the iPhone 12 canceling the supporting charger, it also disappeared from the iPhone box.
What Type Of Charger Was Introduced With iPhone 6/6 Plus in 2014
On September 9, 2014, the iPhone 6 Plus, the first Plus model on the iPhone, was released. Its battery capacity is 2915mAh, fully twice that of the iPhone 5.
Although Apple still only equipped it with a 5W charger, they actually added support for Apple’s 2.4A charging protocol to the iPhone 6 Plus. Apple 2.4A is the charging protocol supported by the 12W charger used by the iPad.
It first appeared on the iPad 4 released on October 24, 2012. The total power is 5V2.4A 12W. That is to say, if you use the iPad charger to charge the iPhone 6 Plus, it will be much faster than using the original 5W charger. Of course, because the size of the iPhone is much smaller than that of the iPad, Apple has set a charging limit for it, and the actual charging power is about 7~8W. The non-Plus iPhone 6 does not have this kind of treatment. Even with the iPad charger, the actual effect is almost the same as the original 5W.
The 6s and 7 generations of models released later, whether they are Plus models or not, all support the Apple 2.4 protocol.
2017; The Release of first-generation 12.9-inch iPad Pro
Fast-forward to 2017. At that time, smartphones had gone through the first wave of fast-charging development, and various fast-charging protocols were born on the market. Xiaomi’s 18W QC3.0, OPPO, OnePlus’ 20W VOOC/Dash flash charging, Huawei’s 22.5W SCP,, Vivo’s 22.5W dual-engine flash charging, the iPhone’s 12W Apple 2.4A is a bit behind.
In response to this, as early as the spring conference in 2015, Apple launched a USB-C interface and charger that supports PD fast charging on the 12-inch New MacBook. The PD protocol is the second-generation fast charging standard launched by the USB-IF organization after the first-generation unified charging standard USB-BC, which aims to unify the USB charging standard. The interface form it chooses is USB-C.
On September 9 of the same year, Apple released the first-generation 12.9-inch iPad Pro. With the name of Pro, Apple also added support for PD fast charging, with a peak power of 30W. However, the interface of its body is still Lightning, and the accompanying charger and cable are still the traditional 12W Apple 2.4A standard. But since then, the industry has been rumoring that Apple will bring PD fast charging to the iPhone. ,\
Introduction of PD fast Charging to The iPhone
The iPhone 7 series in 2016 missed PD fast charging, and on the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X models released in 2017, Apple fully increased support for PD fast charging. The latest version of the PD specification at that time was PD3.0, and support for PPS programmable power was added at the beginning of the year.
However, the iPhone did not introduce support for PPS but chose to use a fixed PD gear. Take Apple’s first PD charger, which was born with the New MacBook, as an example. It has two fixed PD gears, 5V2.4A and 14.5V2A.
When the iPhone 8 generation is charged with a PD charger, it will first shake hands with the charger for the first gear of PD, and then shake hands for the second gear. And if the charger supports PD gears of 3rd gear and above, the iPhone will not continue to request the third gear, it only requests the second gear at most. And limited by the size of the body and battery capacity.
Apple has also set the upper limit of PD charging for the iPhone. The iPhone 8 is about 12W, and the 8 Plus and X are about 15W. Of course, you know that even though the iPhone already supported PD fast charging 5 years ago, and the standard PD must be based on USB-C, the supporting charger at that time was still the well-known five-volt-one-ampere and an A to Lightning line.
Apple Charging Protocol From 2018 – Present
The iPhone Xs, Xs Max, and XR generations released on September 12, 2018, increased the PD charging power to 18W. The iPad Pro 2018 released the following month was equipped with Apple’s official 18W PD charger for the first time, model A1695. It was the first PD charger purchased by many iPhone users.
In the next year’s iPhone 11 generation, Apple barely equipped the 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max with 18W PD chargers, but the 11 box is still 5V1A. Just when we thought that the next-generation 12 series will be equipped with PD chargers as standard, Apple announced that due to environmental protection considerations, the 12 series will cancel the standard charger and only include a C to Lightning cable.
In order to prevent everyone from wasting money to buy an 18W PD charger, in 2020, one month before the release of the iPhone 12, Apple launched a new 20W PD charger on the iPad Air 4, model A2244.
But at the same time that Apple launched the 20W PD charger, the PD charging power of the iPhone also exceeded 20W. The normal charging power of iPhone 12, 12 Pro, and 12 Pro Max has reached 22W. In the next 13 and 14 generations, the highest power reached 27W. It was also during this period that third parties launched 30W PD chargers one after another, and Apple’s official 20W was a bit behind when it debuted.
At this year’s WWDC, Apple rarely introduced the charger at the press conference. With the release of the MacBook Air, Apple brought us a 35W dual USB-C PD charger, model A2579, which supports full power charging of iPhone and iPad.
Now we have confirmed that this year(2023), iPhone 15 will be replaced with a USB-C port, and it is almost certain that PD fast charging will still be used. Of course, with Apple’s experience in operating MFi, there should be corresponding certified accessories for sale at that time. However, we still don’t know how much charging power the iPhone 15 series will give, whether it supports PPS, and how to add its own unique accessory certification on the basis of public PD. Everything can only be revealed in September this year.
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