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Apple iPhone charger teardown: quality in an tiny expensive package
- J3L2404 14y agoHas anyone tried running these in parallel to get super clean bench top power?
- kens 14y agoThat's an interesting idea, but it would probably be cheaper to buy a real bench power supply, e.g. Mastech. Also paralleling probably wouldn't work well; for instance you might end up with one power supply providing most of the power. For details on running power supplies in parallel, see http://www.weidmuller.ca/system/files/webfm/downloads/pdfs/literature/PS06_Parallel_Operation_of_Switchmode_Power_Supplies.pdf http://www.weidmuller.ca/system/files/webfm/downloads/pdfs/l...
- J3L2404 14y agoThank you for the link. Been looking for this for a while.
- westbywest 14y agoOr worse, since the supplies' outputs will not be precisely identical or vary over their tolerance range in in sync with each, one supply could end up injecting current into another and cause damage. Such power supplies are generally designed for a specific load impedance, and connecting the supply outputs in parallel can effect a smaller load impedance than tolerable.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- dmishe 14y agoGood to know. Though, $30 still feels kinda high
- antirez 14y agoBut much more reasonable now, I used to think that this were technologically the same as cheap chargers. It's good that's not the case :)
- dmishe 14y agoYeah totally, i thought that they just sold $2 LG chargers in pretty packages :)
- to3m 14y agoI got one with my iPad. If you don't like the idea of spending $30 on a power adapter, perhaps spending $500 on an iPad and getting a free adapter would work better, psychologically speaking? :)
- rdl 14y agoRight after the iPad 1 came out in the US, I was in Thailand on vacation and didn't have my cube charger with me. I was hoping I could get a 10W iPad charger at the big electronics mall, looked...and they were $79. While grey-market iPads were actually selling for about $650. (I just charged using my laptop). Apple chargers are one thing which I like to buy used; especially for magsafe, I haven't found any counterfeits. Being able to have 10 extra chargers around home/office saves a lot of hassle, and when they're $25 it's reasonable to do that.
- idspispopd 14y agoIf you're going into market charging more than everyone else and making a massive profit - it's only possible to have a clear conscience when the consumer is indeed getting something better, and not merely an ordinary design with a higher price.
- jarek 14y agoLooks like Samsung has about $15-19 of conscience more than Apple by this measure.
- Karunamon 14y agoThat assumes that charging a high price for something involves conscience or morals whatsoever.
- bonzoesc 14y agoCorporations don't have to worry about a clear conscience. They have to worry about support costs and customer happiness affecting repeat business. When Apple ships a charger that makes iPhone touchscreens work poorly, customers get irritated and either figure it out and cost Apple money at the Genius Bar or don't figure it out and don't buy iPhones. The higher price is because people are willing to pay it.
- wpietri 14y agoCorporations don't have to worry about a clean conscience, but some of them do. Certainly, some of their employees care a lot. And in Silicon Valley, the people building this stuff have a lot of options. Apple has managed to attract a bunch of people who like making great stuff. Some of those people would find jobs they liked more if Apple tried to make things that were too junky.
- halayli 14y agoThe cost of products doesn't just come from the raw material used in it. What about R&D cost for example? There's a lot more to establish a product price than simply summing up material cost.
- kens 14y agoGood point. A quasi-resonant switching power supply takes about 10 person-months of development to get to production (according to "Power Supply Cookbook"). Multiplying by the cost of an engineer and dividing by 100 million chargers, works out to less than one cent for R&D. (Also, I expect STMicrosystems and Flextronics are doing most of the R&D.)
- dskhatri 14y agoThat's correct. In my experience, with such high volume opportunities, most semiconductor suppliers will provide their engineering expertise in doing (or supporting) not only the development but the reliability processes.
- slantyyz 14y agoUnrelated to the OP, most normal people (rightly or wrongly) tend to ignore the value of time in general. That's why people who otherwise make >$30 an hour will line up for 30 minutes for gas to save maybe $3 when they hear gas prices will go up the next day. That's also why your relatives think nothing of your time before asking you waste several hours of your precious time to help fix their malware infested PC.
- pooriaazimi 14y agoThat's fascinating. I now fault Apple a tiny bit less for its extremely-expensive peripherals. Does anyone know of a good disassembly of 'MiniDisplay_Port/Thunderbolt -> VGA/HDMI/DVI/...', or 'iPad Smart Cover' (like this one) that justifies their premium price?
- kragniz 14y agoNote the section "Apple's huge profit margins". Samsung produces a similar product with components costing about $1 lower than Apple's. However, Apple sells their charger for $20 more.
- schraeds 14y agoAlso note market share, consumer satisfaction surveys, brand awareness, average selling price, etc etc.
- X-Istence 14y agoDo note also that Apple's device contains far more filtering compared to Samsungs design.
- itg 14y agoYou also have to put in the time and resources that Apple spent into making this. Samsung's came out after Apple brought it out to the market.
- petsos 14y agoApple sold 156 million iOS devices in 2011 alone. Multiply that by the $20 difference and you get 3 billion dollars. I have to assume that R&D of the power adapter cost less than that.
- pooriaazimi 14y agoWell, they include these adaptors with iPhones and iPads. Only iPod touch users have to buy them, or those iPhone/iPad users who broke theirs! I had iPod touches for 2.5 years and never needed to charge them using an AC power adaptor, and now that I have and iPad & an iPhone, I still rarely use them. So your calculation of a $3B margin is off by (almost) two orders of magnitude.
- nextparadigms 14y agoThey should just conform to EU standards and adopt a micro-USB charger.
- AllenKids 14y agoThe charger itself is a usb charger, the cable on the other end has a 30 pin connector. Nobody is stopping you from using the iPhone charger to charge other things via standard usb cable.
- blub 14y agoCongratulations for completely missing the point. Every manufacturer shipping for the EU market is using a standard USB cable on both ends. Apple says they will follow the EU guidelines and then they ship a crappy Apple-to-USB adapter in the box...
- robhu 14y agoAm I missing something here? The reason they use this non-standard 30 pin connector rather than a standard USB connector is because their connector /does a lot more/. Looking at a pin-out table, it seems it also does (or can do) video (composite / s-video), audio, and has pin(s) for adapters. USB doesn't do that. I have an Android phone, which is perfectly nice, but it's just not as capable as the iPhone - it doesn't have these capabilities, because it just has USB.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoMost Android phones have MHL or MicroHDMI and most of the other stuff mentioned can be quite happily accomplished over USB.
- sbuk 14y agohttp://pinoutsguide.com/PortableDevices/micro_usb_pinout.shtml http://pinoutsguide.com/PortableDevices/micro_usb_pinout.sht... http://www.allpinouts.org/index.php/Apple_iPod,_iPad_and_iPhone_dock http://www.allpinouts.org/index.php/Apple_iPod,_iPad_and_iPh... Apple solve the manufacturing problem by having one port on the device to do the job. This also serves an aesthetic purpose. The adapter that Apple have produce to ensure compliance with the EU regulation as actually an excellent solution to the problem. I would also argue that the regulation suffers from typical political myopia in that it only really considers the notion of charging a device.
- wr1472 14y agoIt feels like it is over-engineered. If a cheaper charger does the job (assuming it's not so cheap it violates safety regs) isn't this a case of over-optimisation? PS: I'm not an electronics engineer so please educate me, on why this "filtered" and "cleaner" power supply is necessary to charge a phone?
- kens 14y agoBad power really messes with the touch screen. Capacitive touch screens need to sense pico-Coulombs of charger, and this is really hard when the power supply (and the display) create tons of noise. This is a bigger problem as phones get thinner because it's harder to shield the touch screen. For details, see http://www.cypress.com/touch/Noise_Wars_Projected_Capacitance_Strikes_Back.pdf http://www.cypress.com/touch/Noise_Wars_Projected_Capacitanc... My totally hypothetical theory is that Steve Jobs tried a prototype charger, the touch screen didn't work well, and he said to do whatever is necessary to make sure that didn't happen again. (edit: more info)
- georgieporgie 14y agoThey link to another tear-down of a fake charger that takes potentially dangerous shortcuts. Also, it generates noise which can interfere with the touch-screen. http://www.arcfn.com/2012/03/inside-cheap-phone-charger-and-why-you.html http://www.arcfn.com/2012/03/inside-cheap-phone-charger-and-...
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- TamDenholm 14y agoThe thing is, Apple get away with charging a premium on its products because they are very well made. I'm no Apple fan but I admit the stuff that Apple produces, especially in hardware, is extremely well built. In my own opinion, Apple products are probably about 30% better than competitors, but probably have 20% less features, however because they're simply better, they can charge probably 70% more than competitors simply because a lot people want and are willing to pay for the quality. (Please dont read into the figures i've just used, i pulled them out my arse, they're for illustration purposes only.)
- gouranga 14y agoHaving had piles of apple kit over the years, I can assure you that the quality is an illusion generated by the high price. Here's what has died on me just outside a year since 2006 MacBook pro (logic board failure), iMac (won't boot), a MacBook (won't charge), just about every damn usb cable they've ever given me (broken at type a connector), airport express (melted). A friend of mine's MacBook pro caught fire. I won't even bother to catalogue the 22 dead iPhones my company has... My iPod nano and a 2009 macbook are still fine. conversely, my circa 2007 Lenovo t61 cost around $100 2 years ago and has been dropped, yanked off tables and has a couple of drinks in it and it just stares at you and takes it. It had a new battery last year and a new power connector (self installed) with no problems as they have full service manuals available. That's engineering and service. (I am a qualified EE so will not comment on the initial article as it makes me squirm a bit)
- kens 14y agoPlease feel free to send me comments on the parts that make you squirm; I would be happy to update it and learn what I got wrong.
- gouranga 14y agoIt's just the gushing over the thing that does me in. It's pretty standard for a vendor shipped item and TBH the only reason it's like it is, is due to the fact the last one they shipped was a pile of shite. In the EU we have quite hefty electrical safety laws and I doubt it could be CE marked or approved in the UK at least based on the line voltage isolation.
- recursive 14y agoBut they still value aesthetics over quality. The lack of strain relief causes increased wear on the cable ends. http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/a-kickstarter-project-aims-to-solve-the-frayed-ipod-cable-issue-20110810/ http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/a-kickstarter-project-a...
- rkudeshi 14y agoDidn't they recently fix this?
- ben1040 14y agoAfter one of my Apple cables started fraying, I preemptively wrapped the ends of the rest with Sugru in hopes that it will help. Worked well so far, sucks that I had to do it at all.
- hej 14y agoBut they are aware of the problem and trying to fix it. The strain relief of this year's iPad cable tripled in length compared to last year.
- gouranga 14y agothe entire cable will become strain relief and then the problem will start again! I've had the same problem with all apple cables. Design over substance.
- hej 14y agoCan you hear that sound? It’s the sound of my eyes rolling. So, uhm, I’m not exactly sure what you want. Why are you so convinced that this updated design will also fail?
- gouranga 14y agoHistory repeats itself. Apple cables have been fraying since FireWire ipods. I've heard the promise so often its now boring me.
- joejohnson 14y agoTo all the people complaining that Apple charges too much: don't buy their products! If you don't see the benefit in using Apple's peripherals or cables, there are plenty of cheaper options, albeit usually of lower quality.
- TeMPOraL 14y agoImpressive article! The blue "Y" capacitor reminded me of http://backtothefuture.wikia.com/wiki/Flux_capacitor http://backtothefuture.wikia.com/wiki/Flux_capacitor Kind of adds to the magic of those charges :).
- noonespecial 14y agoI think part of the lesson here is that so few manufactures bother to put any effort into design or quality at all that the ones who do get to name their price.
- nimrody 14y agoOr maybe the point is that nobody cares or bothers to check the labels (safety? We don't need this...). It all comes down to price and most customers (myself included in this case) do not know any better.
- speleding 14y agoThe consumer does not have to know about UL labels or other safety markings. If the device doesn't have the required markings, the vendor is not allowed to sell them.
- mbell 14y agoThis is not true. The UL label is not a "requirement". In fact Underwriters Laboratory has no government affiliation what-so-ever, its a distinct entity. UL isn't the "requirement" normally, just an "acceptable safety certification", it has just come to pass that UL is the defacto safety certification in the US, UL has cornered the market. Safety certification of some sort is only "required" in some markets, some jurisdictions, etc. For instance a safety certification is required for devices in a public school, is usually required by the local fire inspector in commercial structures. etc. Getting a UL stamp on a consumer device is actually just a "cover your ass" move. If a device were to short out and kill someone or set a structure on fire, the existence of the UL certification allows the manufacturer to avoid legal responsibility for damages in most cases. The only generally applicable certifications that are actually legally required for sale to end users are the FCC part 15 electrical interference tests. Other than that, there are market requirements for schools / hospitals but those are not requirements for sale, but rather requirements for use in particular markets.
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- thrownaway2424 14y agoThere's a fairly obvious way to see that the Apple one is higher quality than the Samsung one, if you happen to own both, like I do. Plug them both in and be quiet. You can hear the Samsung one making a high pitched ring, while the Apple one is silent. This is probably due to the superior diode bridge snubbers in the Apple design (if, indeed, they exist at all.) Having a high-speed diode connected directly to a transformer is an almost guaranteed way to setup an oscillation, which can lead to audible sound, and always leads to electromagnetic interference. And the sound is really annoying.
- quarterto 14y agoI've noticed the same with the Kindle charger (silent) and HP Touchpad charger (mosquito whine). The Kindle charger is a lot more compact. Doesn't provide enough juice to charge the Touchpad though.
- Steko 14y agoPeople are fixating on the price but I don't see people lining up to buy $30 apple chargers and earbuds or paying top dollar for them on ebay. I'm sure Apple sells a fair number due to the inelastic demand curve (people who lose theirs need a new one now) along with the branding, convenience factor, lack of choice at Apple store etc. but in the grand scheme of things they aren't in business to sell these, in fact they give them away with the phone.
- dsirijus 14y agoMy rabbit chews a lot of cables. He chewed iPhone charger - I almost cried. He chewed other cables too - I've bought them just round the corner at thrift shop dirt cheap. I've seen at least 2 iPhones breaking beyond repair just by falling. My SGSII flew around 4 or 5 times, not a scratch. It does look and feel cheap though. So do Lenovo ribcage plastics as opposed to aluminium shells.
- jrockway 14y agoI've seen at least 2 iPhones breaking beyond repair just by falling. I doubt this. Nothing in the iPhone is beyond repair.
- eropple 14y agoAgreed - the only iPhone I've ever seen DOA-for-real was one immersed in dirty water for most of an afternoon, and I have a feeling that that was reparable if somebody really wanted.
- chj 14y agoPricing is never only about quality. Suppose symsung produces an equally well made charger, it won't be able to sell well with same price. There is a trust in the brand that can not be measured by figures. That is not fanboism. Trust could bring in buyers who like pay higher prices to stay out of trouble. So even i know it is probably economically wise to buy a TP over MBA, i would still turn to the latter 100% of the time, because I don't want trouble. Trust is also very real. I have used quite a lot of laptops from various vendors over the years, and apple just stands out. I am not saying only Apple could do this. Amazon has even bigger trust from me. I would still buy books from them even it is a little more expensive just because I have very few trouble over the years with them.
- gcb 14y agosamsumgs is already as well made. have you read the fine article?
- sbuk 14y agoThat's not what the OP said. The point being made is that it's perceived that Apple generally have a better reputation for build quality which in turn goes to support a premium pricing model. While this isn't easily verifyable fact and it is conjecture on the part of the OP, it isn't worthy of a snarky 'RTFA' type comment. Incidentally, the article says as much. It also points out that Apple's charger has a better build quality and proffers the benefits to the average consumer.
- danbee 14y agoAnybody know of a teardown of the UK iPhone charger?
- methoddk 14y agoThis is an incredible write up. It's no surprise that the insides of these tiny cubes are well engineered, but it is very interesting to see, and learn, the schematics that make it work so well. I think it's worth the price tag. Guaranteed clean and even 5v power is extremely useful. I use that cube to charge everything. Phones, Kindle, etc.
- marvinoamps 14y agoGreat job on iPhone charger analysis. Just wanted to add my idea why the .28 mm air gap in xfmr. The air gap prevents core magnetic saturation. Thus less chance of overheat also widens feedback regulation control. Thanks for the cool write up with great photos. Marv
- macman161 14y agoThis is truly amazing, the detail put into something we All take for granted is truly mind boggling