We asked, you told us: Samsung will copy Apple by ditching in-box chargers

Smartphones that ship with bundled chargers may soon be a luxury rather than a given. With Apple now stripping essential accessories from its iPhone 12 packaging and asking users to purchase a charger separately, it wouldn’t be difficult to imagine other OEMs doing the same.

Although Samsung mocked the Cupertino firm’s charger-less iPhones soon after they were announced, the firm could well choke on its chuckles. Rumors in July suggest that from 2021, Samsung could also rid its smartphones of in-box chargers. Could this begin as soon as the Galaxy S30?

To better read the room, we asked readers if they believe Samsung would follow suit and also drop the in-box charger from its future phones. Here’s what you told us.

Will Samsung drop the in-box charger from future phones?

Results

Readers don’t have much faith in Samsung’s commitment to the in-box charger. Of the nearly 1,200 votes cast, 69.1% of readers believe that the Korean firm would also drop it from its future devices.

That sentiment isn’t misplaced. The company has previously backtracked on the headphone jack after it taunted Apple’s decision to remove it from the iPhone 7. A number of Android OEMs followed suit, and now it has become an annoying standard across the smartphone world bar a few exceptions.

Samsung also set a precedent for asking users to purchase additional chargers for their $1,000 smartphones. To activate the Galaxy S20 Ultra‘s 45W charging abilities, users had to fork out an additional $50 on an aftermarket charger. Granted, a 25W brick was included with the phone, but will this be the case with its next round of flagships?

Interestingly, a sizeable portion of voters wouldn’t care less. Just under 31% of readers would be totally fine if Samsung no longer includes an in-box charger. This comes despite an earlier poll we ran lamenting the then rumored plans of Apple’s charger exclusion. More than 77% of users on that poll said they’d resent the Cupertino firm if the charger was dropped.

Here’s what you told us

• sachouba: It makes sense that Samsung mocked them [about the headphone jack] and then did the same thing a few years later. Just like one could have mocked MacBook Pros a few years ago for only having USB-C ports while in a few years, that’s probably what most laptops will have. Apple’s move was just waaaay too early to even be justified (apart from selling their own Beats/AirPods).
• Low Budget Tech Guy: Charging tech in Android phones changes far too often (read: every generation) to drop the chargers – otherwise they can’t market the “newest, fastest charging on the planet” with every phone release.
• D C: Surely it’s just a way to squeeze extra money out of customers by not reducing the price of the phone then charge you extra for the charger. As for Apple you have to buy loads of leads over the lifetime of the phone because they always fail at either end or both ends of the lead to start with.

That’s it for this poll. Thanks to everyone who contributed with votes and comments. If you have any additional thoughts about Samsung or Apple’s moves, or regarding the results of the poll itself, be sure to drop a comment down below.

Next: What Android could learn from Apple’s iPhone 12