Apple Is No Longer Selling the MagSafe Battery Pack and MagSafe Duo Folding Charger

Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

Although these accessories are technically obsoleted by today’s announcements, you can still buy them on sites like Amazon (MagSafe Battery Pack and the MagSafe Duo Charger) while supplies last, if so desired.

It’s unclear if Apple plans to introduce USB-C versions of these accessories in the future, or if these products have reached their natural end-of-life anyway. It’s never quite clear how popular Apple’s iPhone accessories are, after all.

The Duo Charger was a good concept, especially for traveling, but modern iPhones are too big for it, and it didn’t support the new higher-speed charging for recent Apple Watches.

But the MagSafe Battery Pack is a flat-out great product I’m sad to see disappear, and might still be something you’d want to buy while supplies last. Travel with one, and you can charge a new iPhone 15 using either a USB-C cable (plugged into the phone) or a Lightning cable (plugged into the battery pack). Either way, the other device will get charged via the two-way MagSafe connection.

Before the MagSafe Battery Pack, Apple sold a series of battery cases for some older iPhone generations. You remember them — they looked a bit weird, because the battery part was like a pregnant hump. Apple never once released a battery case at the same time the corresponding iPhones were announced. They’d announce the iPhones in September, then release the battery packs like two months later, without fanfare. I’ve always suspected this was deliberate — that Apple did not want to announce an external battery pack or case at the same time as new iPhones to avoid the possibility of even some of the news coverage for the new iPhones suggesting that they need an external battery pack because the built-in battery is insufficient.

So, maybe Apple is simply done selling the MagSafe Battery Pack. But, even if they have a new USB-C version in the works, I’m not at all surprised that it wasn’t released last week. Let’s wait for November. I hope they do release one, because Apple’s MagSafe Battery Pack is far better than the third-party ones I’ve tried (including two decent ones from Anker). Apple’s isn’t the biggest, but it’s the best because it’s the smartest. It negotiates intelligently with the iPhone when connected and doesn’t waste energy charging the iPhone past 80 percent or so. You can feel the difference in efficiency by heat alone. Third-party inductive battery packs get quite warm; Apple’s doesn’t. Also, the third-party ones seem to all be “magnetic”, not officially “MagSafe” — Apple’s sticks better too.

★ Saturday, 16 September 2023