So the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro actually shipped this week, Friday the 23rd, if you were one of the people camped out (virtually, this year, thanks pandemic) refreshing the Apple Store app at 8pm on preorder night. I wasn't one of those people. I'm still on an iPhone XR that I dropped in a parking lot in March and has had a spiderweb crack in the corner ever since. But I've been reading way too many reviews and unboxing threads the last two days, and there's one thing that's bugging me more than it probably should.
Apple didn't put a charger in the box. Or EarPods. You get the phone, a USB-C to Lightning cable, and a little folded pamphlet, and that's it. $799 for the base iPhone 12, $999 if you want the Pro, and you better already own a USB-C power brick or you're charging at, like, 5% an hour off some ancient 5W adapter you had from 2014.
Apple's official line is environmental: smaller boxes, less packaging, fewer accessories means more units fit on a shipping pallet, which apparently adds up to a meaningful carbon reduction when you're moving tens of millions of these things. And okay, I actually don't think that's a lie. I believe the math on that. What gets me is the timing and the framing, because this is also a company selling a $19 20W adapter as an accessory now, on a phone that they insist charges faster than the model it's replacing. You can be right about the environment and also be making more money off the change. Those two things are not mutually exclusive and I wish reviewers would just say both instead of picking a side.
I've got a drawer (actually it's more of a shoebox at this point) full of old Apple chargers going back to 2011. Little white 5W bricks, at least six of them, from every phone my family has bought since the iPhone 4S. None of them get thrown out because you always think you might need a spare. So on one level, sure, I have plenty of bricks lying around and don't need Apple to give me a seventh. But not everyone does. My mom just has the one, plugged into the wall by her nightstand, and if her next phone doesn't come with a replacement she is going to be very confused in a Best Buy trying to figure out which adapter is the right wattage.
The other thing everyone's talking about is MagSafe, which is back as a name but is now a ring of magnets on the back of the phone instead of the connector on old MacBook chargers. You snap a circular charging puck onto the back and it aligns itself and charges wirelessly. It looks genuinely clever in the demo videos. It also means there's now a whole new accessory category (cases, wallets, car mounts) that only works if you buy into the magnet ring, and the puck itself is another $39 that also isn't in the box. I don't think this is some grand conspiracy. I just think "no charger in the box, plus a new proprietary accessory ecosystem, arriving the same week" is a combination that deserved a little more skepticism than it got in most of the coverage I read.
5G is the other headline feature and I'll be honest, I have basically nothing to say about it because coverage where I live is patchy enough that it wouldn't matter which phone I bought. My carrier's 5G map for my zip code is, charitably, aspirational. Maybe by the time I actually replace this cracked XR it'll mean something.
Anyway. I'm not upgrading yet — the crack is annoying but the phone still works fine, and I'd rather wait and see what the Pro Max looks like when it ships next month before I decide anything. But I did finally order a proper 20W USB-C adapter for myself regardless, cracked screen and all, because it turns out my current one is old enough that it's charging my phone slower than a phone from 2017 should be charging. Small, boring purchase, felt weirdly satisfying to finally deal with it.