Against all expectations, it seems that wireless charging of the iPhone 12 is slightly faster since the update to iOS 17.4. More precisely, it is no longer necessary to have a MagSafe charger to benefit from the best performance. We’ll explain to you what happened.
In 2020, Apple inaugurated wireless charging on iPhone with MagSafe, available on iPhone 12. At the time, the technology was intended to compete with the Qi standard by offering better performance. But quickly, two problems arise. First, you must have a MagSafe charger, or failing that a third-party model that has obtained Made for MagSafe (MFM) certification, to benefit from 15W charging, the fastest.
Otherwise, non-approved third-party chargers will be automatically limited to 7.5 W. Another problem, the Qi standard has been updated since the launch of MagSafe to Qi2, now as efficient as its rival. Moreover, with the iPhone, Apple opened its charging protocol to Qi2, which made it possible to do without a MagSafe charger and still benefit from 15 W charging. But older iPhones have been left behind.
No more need for MagSafe to quickly charge your iPhone 12 wirelessly
Till today. Indeed, without warning anyone, Apple opened the iPhone to 15W wireless charging with its iOS 17.4 update. This is what tests carried out by our colleagues at Macworld reveal, who tried to charge the iPhone 12 with a non-MFM wireless charger. Result: the iPhone 12 Pro Max was 30% faster with an Anker Qi2 MagGi Wireless Charger (33 minutes) than with the Magsafe charger (38 minutes).
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It is still interesting to note that these results are much less impressive on the standard iPhone 12, since both chargers took around 20 minutes to reach 30% battery life. This is actually quite surprising, since the Qi2 charger should normally have obtained better results. However, these tests are proof that Apple has finally resigned itself to opening up to the Qi2 standard on its old models. No one will complain about it.