Apple One-Ups 15W Qi2 Charging With 25W MagSafe Charging in iPhone 16 lineup

Third-party accessory makers just started releasing next-generation 15W Qi2 charging devices in the last few months, but Apple raised the wireless charging speed bar again with the iPhone 16 models.

new magsafe charger
With Apple's newly updated MagSafe charger and a 30W power adapter, the ‌iPhone 16‌ models can charge at up to 25W wirelessly over MagSafe, which is 10W faster than Qi2.

Qi2 is great because it's an open standard that doesn't require accessory makers to pay Apple to license its technology, but companies that want to offer the fastest wireless charging speeds for the new ‌iPhone 16‌ models will once again need to turn to ‌MagSafe‌.

When ‌MagSafe‌ was first introduced in the iPhone 12, it was a proprietary Apple charging standard that accessory makers could license. It was able to charge iPhones at up to 15W. The alternative was Qi charging, which was limited to 7.5W, but it didn't require using Apple technology.

Qi2 brought 15W charging speeds that were on par with ‌MagSafe‌, giving us charging speed parity for a short time. Accessory makers could design magnetic chargers that offered 15W charging without paying Apple a fee. That's over now, and we're back in the exact same situation we had when it was original ‌MagSafe‌ vs. original Qi.

Qi2 chargers will only charge ‌iPhone 16‌ models at up to 15W, and 25W charging will be limited to ‌MagSafe‌. This time around, it's a wider difference because 25W charging is fast charging and can provide up to 50 percent power in 30 minutes.

Apple released a new version of the ‌MagSafe‌ Charger alongside the ‌iPhone 16‌ models, so it doesn't look like existing ‌MagSafe‌ chargers are going to provide 25W. Apple says the 25W charging requires a "new" ‌MagSafe‌ charger, which means accessory makers and customers alike will need new charging accessories to get the updated ‌MagSafe‌ speeds. Note that the new ‌MagSafe‌ charger still charges older iPhones at 15W.

While it's just the ‌iPhone 16‌ models that support 25W charging now, this is a new baseline that will be added to future iPhones, and 15W Qi2 charging will soon be antiquated.

Related Roundups: iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro

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Top Rated Comments

RichTF Avatar
26 weeks ago

More heat = more wasted energy... And Apple BS us with their "carbon neutral" products... So pathetic.
More efficiency is always great to have, but a little bit of context and perspective is useful here.

If a 30W power supply gives 25W of MagSafe charging, it’s reasonable to guess that there’s around 5W of wasted energy there. A full charge will take an hour, so that’s around 5 watt-hours of wasted energy per day, for most people.

So in 1 year it’ll waste around 2000 total watt-hours of electricity, which costs around 40p (at average UK energy prices).

Your iPhone really is an incredibly energy-efficient technical marvel, no matter how you charge it, and isn’t anywhere near the top of the list of climate-change problems.

(But yes, even more efficiency would still be great.)
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
UliBaer Avatar
26 weeks ago
Nice, now you can ruin the battery even faster! ??
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
GDF Avatar
26 weeks ago
I think it is so odd that other magsafe manufacturers were not ready for this. Seems like they usually know. So, all we have is Apple’s standard puck, which is a lame solution compared to all the cool 3/1 chargers that will also do nightstand mode, like Anker Cube, Belkin 3/1, etc….

Even if they had know heads-up, all they had to do was follow Macrumors and they would have known this was coming! Lol. ?
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
1BadManVan Avatar
26 weeks ago
I assume their new cooling solution helped enable this faster charging speed? Obviously creates more heat with that much wattage
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
orev Avatar
26 weeks ago

With these crazy high 200w charging for phones, do users really plug in and charge their phone for 8 minutes then immediately unplug and use. I'm thinking most people just keep a phone plugged in for some time and then eventually unplug from the charger. Speed becomes unnecessary if users mostly just stay connected
Fast charging is only important to a small group of users, like people who travel a lot, are constantly on the move for their jobs, or kids who play games non-stop all day and drain the battery multiple times a day.

For everyone else, this is completely unnecessary, and it seems more like a flexing contest between the companies so their marketing people can point to a number that goes up.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
rmiller065 Avatar
26 weeks ago
I ordered mine yesterday and it came today … also received my iPhone 16 Pro case
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)