Opinion: Power Brick Absence, It’s Not For The Environment
January 16, 2021This is the beginning of a new age. Despite giving Apple a hard time for omitting power bricks from the iPhone 12’s packaging, Android manufacturers seem to be following suit. Samsung, is one of the first from Team Google to break with tradition. This year’s S21 phone boxes will be a little thinner and lighter than its predecessors.
Sighting environmental benefits, Samsung has decided to take a page out of Apple’s playbook by not offering power bricks with their latest phones. The more cynical of us, wouldn’t believe this for a second. A power brick is an essential tool, and there is a solid case for this notion.
See, I own a Samsung Galaxy M31. It’s been my smartphone of choice for nearly a year. I love this phone to death because it ticks all the right boxes, especially in the battery department (6,000mAh). But this particular phone is equipped with a paltry 15W fast charger. Now, had I had a blessed 2020, which I didn’t, purchasing an S21 would be at the top of my list this year.
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Allow me to regale you for a moment with this alternate reality. Say that I did purchase an S21+, then burst out of a Samsung store, gleaming with pride over what I’d just bought. I get home and in an instant, mercilessly tear into the packaging. Out comes the S21+, charging cable and warranty booklet. That’s it – there’s no power brick.
But all I have left to charge it is my M31’s underwhelming 15W charger. Had I purchased the S20+, this wouldn’t have been an issue (25W brick included). But here in 2021, sacrifices have been made, for the sake of the “environment”. I’m so proud to have done my part. And as a result there will be one fewer power brick in landfills.
As I scoff at the insidious business practice masked as an environmental conscious move, I begin to notice something. In the corner of my home lies a bag filled with unused USB adapters and chargers. I don’t throw chargers away, regardless of age or usefulness. It’s a problem that I will attend to at some point in my life.
Rifling through this bag reveals what a pack rat I really am, and to a further extent, the magnitude of my problem. An off white charger for my Lenovo K6 Power lies at the top of the pile. Directly below are ones for my Huawei Mate 10, Sony Xperia Z1 Compact, Xperia XA1, Nokia N900, Nokia N73, N81, Samsung Galaxy A50, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Samsung Galaxy S3, LG G3 etc.
The list goes all the way back to the mid 2000s, a time when phones could do little more than play 90s arcade style games and store a handful of songs. The breath of chargers that I have kept shines a light on the immense problem that the tech industry faces. Many consumers aren’t like me. They dispose of these older chargers the moment they get a new phone.
the perception here is that the new phone’s charger is more recent, therefore it works better and charges faster. As such, the previous phone’s power brick is then tossed into the garbage can. This practice is responsible for a large portion of e-waste that ends up in landfills. This is the problem manufacturers say they want to address.
However, I refuse to believe for a second that their hearts are in the right place. This is about profit, nothing more. A significantly smaller and lighter phone box equates to an order of magnitude larger savings in terms of logistics charges. Shipping a batch of phones from one continent to another, would cost less in terms of fuel, cargo space and truck trips.
Putting this into perspective, courier companies like FedEx have a formula that they use to dictate the rates imposed on each shipment. It’s called Volumetric Weight and it’s a calculation that assumes the weight of cargo based on the amount of space that it takes up on a plane. The actual weight is only used if it is greater than that of the volumetric weight.
Volumetric Weight: (Length x height x width) / 5000 or 6000 – this depends on the forwarder.
Now, the figure that you get here, is used to refer to a rate card. This is where you find out the exact charges. But we aren’t done yet. These charges have to be added to a fuel surcharge (about 11%-12% of shipping charges) and insurance charges (1% of invoice value).
Total shipping cost: Shipping charges + Fuel Surcharge + 1% Invoice Value
Mind, we are only considering the weight of a single box. But in reality, hundreds of boxes are shipped at any one time. The savings in shipping costs are significant. Manufacturers could take these savings, or ship more phones for the same logistics charges as before.
This isn’t about the environment, but is purely for profit. As a proponent of capitalism, I have no qualms about this. Profitability determines a company’s resilience toward various storms that include economic impact from the fallout of COVID-19. I can learn to expect these business practices. However it isn’t right to mask them behind a veil of environmental activism.
Fast chargers and wireless chargers are a godsend. They allow our phones to spend less time tethered to a wire and provide us with an enviable level of convenience. The same is true of Bluetooth headphones, because they have eliminated the need to untangle wires each time you want to listen to music or worry about your phone falling out with a sudden turn of your head.
If I do choose to buy an S21+, it would be prudent to purchase a wireless charger as well. In the long run, it would provide great savings because I wouldn’t need a new wireless charger for another 3 or 4 years. This will probably equate to at least 2 phone cycles, which means, there would be two fewer power bricks that will eventually end up in a landfill.
