Despite being a famous brand for smartphones, iPhones have one major drawback: the iphone chargers are always faulty. Ask any iPhone user and he or she will be quick to point out that the cable causes a headache for being easily damaged.
Once the chargers are ruined, which are usually frayed or overcharged, the users are forced to buy another. This is disheartening especially that iPhone chargers have a league of their own. Instead of buying the original which is often too expensive, they resort to purchasing counterfeits.
A recent study doesn’t recommend anyone to do this. It was discovered that such imitation devices are not at all safe, with 99% of the them failing the basic safety test.
Conducted by the Canadian division of power safety compliance firm UL, the research involved 400 counterfeit Apple iPhone chargers bought online, which are available in 8 countries including the US, Canada, Colombia, China, Thailand, and Australia.
The devices were put to an electric strength test. They were applied with high voltage between the input and output side to check the current flowing in the charger.
With the amount of current at a certain threshold as the standard to be considered the charger as safe, only 3 out of the 400 samples passed the safety test. The others which failed pose a great risk in shocking a user because of the insufficient insulation.
Moreover, the results showed that 22 units were immediately damaged after being energized, which resulted to impairment of testing equipment. Twelve of the samples have leaked great amount of current enough to electrocute a person.
So where lies the difference between the counterfeit and genuine chargers? The researchers say it is in the design of the devices’ isolation transformers.
“The internal components are vastly different when compared with a genuine UL Listed Apple adapter. Post testing analysis of the tested samples revealed a complete lack of triple isolation wire used for the secondary windings; neither the primary or secondary windings were separated properly, which is the major reason for the dramatic failure rate on the electric strength test,” states UL.
Users of iPhones should remain vigilant with the high failure rate of the charger counterfeits. This, while checking the authenticity of the original Apple power products.
Apple has carried out their own study and figured that about 90% of the iPhone chargers described as “genuine” on Amazon are proven to be counterfeit.
For this, Apple tells its users that genuine iPhone chargers are always white in color including its packaging. There are also no spelling or grammatical errors in the original ones. Furthermore, the price is the greatest indicator: the counterfeits are sold at significantly less than US$19.
The next time you have are obliged to buy a new iPhone charger, it would be best that you buy the original one because the alternative might not just be worth it.
