New phone charging

[Phil40]

My wife has just upgraded to a new IPhone 12 Mini. She has received a usbC cable for charging but it doesn’t fit anything we have for it to plug in to. Advice and help please as not very technological. Thanks in advance

[Furzzul]

If you had a lphone previously just use the cable from that, as long as it has a lightning connection on the phone end. 

[BenMcr · Accepted solution]

You have a few options.

You can get a USB C to USB A adapter which will allow the cable to be used with older chargers and sockets.

Or you can buy a new wall charger which has a USB C socket on it. For iPhone devices you'd need to look for 'USB C Power Delivery' chargers as these types usually offer the highest charging speeds. These are usually somewhere around 18 watts or higher.

Or as mentioned any older iPhone lightning cable will work with the iPhone 12.

[Phil40]

Thanks for your answer. Why do they not send a “Normal” usb if people are gonna need to use old cables or get adapters?  

thanks for the advice. Will look in to the adaptor thing 🤓👍🏻

[BenMcr]

The tech industry is settling on USB C and most new devices including newer iPads use it. You can also charge laptops over USB C with a powerful enough charger and a quality cable.

For instance, my new car only has USB C sockets in it, and the wall charger I got with my iPad last year was USB C.

However last year as part of combination of environmental reasons and cost savings, Apple stopped putting chargers in everything, so you now need to source them from elsewhere.

Once Apple did it, others started doing it too. My Samsung Galaxy S21+ also only came with a cable and not a wall charger.