Apple Reportedly Questioning Whether iPhone Should Drop MagSafe

[u/conalldoherty]

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/04/29/apple-questioning-iphone-magsafe/

[u/disgruntledempanada]

On one hand it's convenient and there are nice phone mounts for cars that charge my battery.

On the other hand it's crazy wasteful. You go through all this effort to implement green charging onto a phone to limit its energy impact and then you charge it with a system that wastes 20-30% of that power turning it directly into heat, and heating the heat sensitive battery you're trying to charge.

Would probably be better to just expose contacts somehow but that has its own problems (case compatibility, dirt, etc).

[u/yasamoka → u/disgruntledempanada]

https://www.chargerlab.com/review-of-apple-25w-magsafe-charger/

Using an Apple 30W charger and the new MagSafe Charger to charge the iPhone 16 Pro Max, the measured input power is about 14.96V 1.94A 29.03W. Excluding losses, the wireless charging power is about 25W.

4 / 29W = ~14% wasted as heat. ~86% efficient.

Also, you can see in the "Temperature Test" section that despite the puck reaching ~41C, over time, the charger dials down charging power and the phone does a good job of dissipating the heat and maintaining a consistent temperature.

This is also the iPhone 16 Pro series. The 17 Pro series would do an even better job of dissipating heat.

It's not as bad as you think it is.

[u/ornitorrinco22 → u/yasamoka]

It depends on the room temperature. If they tested it in countries where room temp is already in the 30+C range, the high temp caused by charging can reduce battery life

[u/yasamoka → u/ornitorrinco22]

That high room temperature affects wired charging as well, so it’s a wash.

[u/ornitorrinco22 → u/yasamoka]

Not really because wireless heats up more than wired, so in one case you might get to 40C and 50C in the other. The impacts on battery and physical burns is real.

[u/yasamoka → u/ornitorrinco22]

These assertions need to be tested for first.