Apple Announces a Trade-in Program For Third-Party Chargers 117
EliSowash writes "In response to recent reports of safety concerns around third-party chargers for iDevices, Apple announced today that beginning August 16, 2013, you can trade in your third-party adapter and purchase an official Apple charger at a 'special price' — $10 USD. From their website: 'To qualify, you must turn in at least one USB power adapter and bring your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to an Apple Retail Store or participating Apple Authorized Service Provider for serial number validation. The special pricing on Apple USB power adapters is limited to one adapter for each iPhone, iPad, and iPod you own and is valid until October 18, 2013.'"
Re:Why proprietary chargers? (Score:5, Informative)
It may be that poor-quality third-party chargers could damage the device. But then I have to ask, why are iDevices so fragile in the first place? It seems most other smartphones have a standard USB port and can work with any old 5V power supply.
5 Volt chargers that deliver 5 Volt are not a problem. The charger that caused all this didn't deliver 5 Volt, it delivered 220 Volt straight to the user. The iPhone survived, the user didn't.
Re:Why proprietary chargers? (Score:5, Informative)
Ken Shirriff did teardowns of an Apple charger and a generic charger.
http://www.righto.com/2012/05/apple-iphone-charger-teardown-quality.html [righto.com]
http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html [righto.com]
Re:Why proprietary chargers? (Score:4, Informative)
I think you've missed the point. The sort of chargers you are suggesting people buy are the very ones that have been injuring people.
Apple's just turning the spin positive by deeply discounting replacement chargers. It also gets people into their store, and gives them lots of positive PR. They're still making a little bit of money off the chargers, too, it's not a giveaway.
I also found this nugget on Apple's info page especially interesting:
It would likely require physically smashing them open to identify a good counterfeit. So they'll even take back an authentic Apple charger. And it looks like in any condition, so you could for example, take in your dead adapter or drowned / clothswasher'd adapter and get a replacement on the cheap too. That's handy.
Knockoffs are cheap, but they're made cheaply. I recently got a cheap 3pk of usb to dock adapters for spares, and ended up needing one to replace an original that had been in use in my truck for the last two years, the cable at the dock finally started to fray. The first replacement... well it lasted a whole five days before the cable pulled out of the dock connector. It's confirmed, ya gets what ya pays for.
Re:They don't use proprietary chargers. (Score:4, Informative)
Generally they can't. But they can be badly grounded and damage you (which actually happened recently).
The issue is not grounding, as all these chargers are double insulated, but rather creepage and dielectric isolation.
Creepage in electrical engineering terms is the safe distance between electrical conductors of a different potential.
There are tables we use depending on pollution level, voltage, and whether it is surface or air creepage.
Dielectric isolation is the method(s) used to prevent a direct connection between the high voltage input, and low voltage output.
Normally a transformer and opto couplers provide the isolation. Cheaping out, or poor design in this area, is the likely cause of the electrocution.
Checkout this link for a teardown on a cheap chinese fake apple charger.
http://www.eevblog.com/2012/11/20/eevblog-388-apple-clone-usb-charger-teardown/ [eevblog.com]
Re:Why proprietary chargers? (Score:5, Informative)
Because at the time, there was no standard for USB charging (this was way back in 2003). And since you wanted dumb chargers, you needed a way to signal how much current the charger was willing to give (USB devices are only allowed to draw 100mA prior to enumeration, and 500mA only if the host allows). Since that was relatively unacceptable, Apple came up with a way to do it.
First, the resistors pull D+ and D- to various states which signals 4 different charge currents - 100mA, 500mA, 1A, 2A. (the first and last were reserved until later on). This was because you didn't want to pull too much power out of an inadequate charger.
Second, the 30 pin connector was just standardized (back in 2003), because there were no standards for connecting up A/V equipment to a portable device, so Apple used the 30 pin to allow accessory makers to build accessories cheaply - a serial port for control, analog audio outputs so you didn't need a DAC, etc.
Sometime later, the USB guys made a USB charger spec which shorted D+ and D- together to signal a charger. Unfortunately, the USB charger spec is deficient in that it does not signal charge current - the official spec says youc an draw 800mA or so (and it relaxes the 100mA pre-enumeration requirements so you could boost charge your battery until you can boot far enough to detect chargers and such). Of course, without current signalling, things are confusing because your tablet might try to draw 2A out of a 500mA adapter (I've seen cheap adapters blow up because they overheat).
As for what happens here to cause Apple to do this - cheap adapters are cheap. There is often ZERO regard to safety, including things like basic creepage and clearance (how far must high voltage rails be separated), the use of substandard safety parts (snubber capacitors), etc. In some designs, the USB port is barely 1mm away from mains voltage - a particularly humid day can easily bridge the distance and put a rather significant amount of voltage on the USB port. Or a critical part can fail and due to bad isolation, you get line voltage on the USB port.
Here's what a real Apple adapter looks like inside [righto.com]. The green dot recall was because the pins could fall out, and you can see Apple molded them into the plastic so the only way to rip them out is to destroy the plastic cover.
A fake charger torn down [righto.com]. Note the general crappiness.
A dozen adapters tested [righto.com]. Apple is not the best - Samsung chargers are better! But the crappy chargers are clearly crap. In fact, you'll know them because your phone's touch screen stops working when you charge it. This happens on all phones - Apple, or Android. The noisiness of the power rails interferes with the analog touchscreen electronics.
Dave Jones (EEVBlog) tears down two fake chargers he got [eevblog.com]. He's not impressed and he's really shocked at the lousy nature of it. Taking them apart was the best thing you could do safety wise than using them.
There's nothing special to an Apple charger or any other charger. In fact, modern USB charger controller ICs now have autoswitch modes where they try all known charger methods to be the one universal charger. Youc an convert a standard USB charging charger to an Apple one with a few resistors, and an Apple one to a standard just as e
Re:Who really made the charger? (Score:5, Informative)
According to all of the reports I've been able to find, it was handed over to the police following the death, and word soon came out via Chinese state media that the charger was "likely" a knock-off one, rather than the genuine article though they never actually confirmed that was the case. That may be the most we'll get out of them, however, given that the state media has already been caught using celebrities to astroturf [wsj.com] in an attempt to try and paint Apple in a bad light.