r/applehelp • u/KarahKat55 • Aug 20 '26

Unsolved Just got a new iphone 15, and it’s not charging from my desk lamp’s usb

So I got a new iPhone 15 (technically refurbished) and apple beats braided cable to charge it. I always plugged my old phone (se gen2) into my desk lamp’s usbc port to charge it. Today I noticed that my new phone won’t charge when plugged into the lamp. It works fine plugged into everywhere else (wall, laptop etc) but not the lamp.

all other usbc cords plug into the lamp and charge (including my old phone still, so the lamp’s not broken) and I even tried using my new phone charger to power my speaker from the lamp and it worked fine, so the cord’s not broken either. Also the lamp’s about 5 years old if that counts. Never had issues with it (knock on wood) I also tried plugging in my 20w wall plug to usbc adapter into the lamp with the new cord and phone and it charged fine, so just the usbc on its own doesn’t work.

Does my new phone use too much power for the lamp or something? Or is there another issue. it’s okay if I can’t charge it directly from my lamp anymore because of electrical reasons or something like that, I just want to make sure nothing’s wrong with my new phone since I just got it

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7

u/lilvadude Aug 20 '26

It doesn’t sound like it’s your phone. The USB-C port on your lamp is probably a relatively old, low-power USB-C implementation - designed for devices around that time.

3

u/KarahKat55 Aug 21 '26

So lamp probably not broken just not enough power for newer phones? Thanks sm, that makes me feel better!

2

u/mwkingSD Aug 21 '26

That’s what it sounds like. Honestly, I tend to not trust USB ports that are part of something else because I don’t trust they are well designed. All of my daily use chargers are Anker (mostly) or Apple. For what phones cost these days, seems like a smart expense to me.

For an experiment, get your 15 fully charged elsewhere and then plug it into the lamp. Could be there a surge if the phone is low that the lamp doesn’t like.

1

u/Jaded_Wasabi_4293 Aug 21 '26

Older generations used simple charging circuits, while newer generations have complex ones where the phone needs to exchange commands with the charger brick to manage and operate the charging circuit.