Roger Fingas
Apple has quietly updated its support website to warn people against using counterfeit batteries and power adapters, or even just some third-party options in general.
These products "may not be designed properly and could result in safety issues," Apple writes. Instead the company is recommending first-party power adapters, and directing people to go to an Apple store or authorized service provider for replacement batteries.
Apple often charges high prices for first-party accessories and repairs, which can lead many people to turn to outside sources. While certified third-party accessories are typically safe, unauthorized and/or counterfeit products have been known to work poorly or even cause fires.
Underwriters Laboratories — better known as UL — recently tested 400 fake Apple chargers, and found that 99 percent of them were unsafe. In October Apple filed a lawsuit against one counterfeit vendor, Mobile Star, accusing it of violating copyrights and trademarks through sales on Amazon and Groupon.
Amazon is reportedly poised to engage in a major crackdown of its own, creating a registry of recognized sellers that vendors will have to match against to get their inventory on sale. In its Mobile Star suit, Apple claimed that almost 90 percent of Apple accessories sold as genuine through the "Fulfillment by Amazon" program were fake.
Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
Andrew Orr
17 Comments
If someone plugs in a counterfeit charger, the iPhone should shut down or present the user with a screen to sign away their rights to sue or seek compensation for death or damages.
And by "unsafe" they mean they can actually KILL you. They're designed and built so shoddily that failure of a single component like a capacitor can lead to the presence of 110V at the tip of the Lightning connector. If you're lucky, it will fry your phone instantly. If you're a little less lucky, it will kill you. If you resent paying $40 for a stupid phone charger, just look at all the cool options available from reliable known brands like Anker on Amazon, they sell excellent multiport chargers at low prices.
Some people are just very cheap, and when you combine that with extreme ignorance, you get a combination that can be fatal.
Is saving a few bucks really worth the risk?
Just because an item or a knockoff may look almost the same on the outside, that doesn't mean that it's the same on the inside at all.
I've seen some tests of original Apple chargers VS some of the counterfeits, and the difference is like night vs day.
As an example, they were measuring the temperatures of the chargers and the Apple was measuring around 40 c while in use, and one of the counterfeits was around 100 c.
I pity the cheap fool who thinks that they were smart because they saved a few bucks. They must not value their own lives or the lives of their family very highly.
I liked an article one of my colleagues found a few years ago that went into great technical detail breaking down the poor design of a cheap adapter off Amazon. Safety gap between the 110V and 3V sections? um... nope. toss!
Here's the best comparison tear-down and analysis between real and fake Apple chargers I can find:
http://www.righto.com/2014/05/a-look-inside-ipad-chargers-pricey.html