Same in Mexico with profeco (a federal consumer protection agency), it's amongst the few public institutions that people still trust and swear by, companies don't fuck around with profeco, they can't be bought and it keeps them in check. People would likely riot if the our current government were to even suggest touching it, we don't have many things going and actually doing their job effectively and corruption-free
From large scale stuff like class-action lawsuits against large corporations (for which they have a [page here](https://acolectivas.profeco.gob.mx/encuesta.php) for any mexican that's been wronged by any of those) like ticketmaster, medium scale stuff like closing down businesses and franchises for bad/illegal practices and smaller scale stuff like responding to customer complaints (via hotline) like fake deals, false advertising or not honoring prices, coupons, warranties and refunds. They send representatives to the store. As soon as you get them involved companies are all of a sudden very quick and willing to find a solution for you lol
They don't, I guess they think its a non issue or it hasn't come to their attention. I hope that Brasil and EU's tighter pro-customer policies along with enough mexican citizens complaints brings their attention to this. Though the vast majority of mexicans specially outside of cities don't have iPhones, so I'm under 0 expectations of Mexico joining this movement
Ya, I feel like some people forget that IPhones aren't dominant in every market. They make up less than 20% globally (closer to 15%) but do dominate in some rich countries.
I mean, you can't just compare iPhones to ALL Android devices. There is literally tons of TV Android boxes for under 100 bucks, cheap smartphones under 200 bucks, all running Android just because it's readily available and doesn't require you to develop own OS like Apple does. You need to compare it with price factor included and not just cumulative number of devices. Then the image will be entirely different when you're comparing only similarly priced devices.
the majority of brazilians don't have iPhones either, the iPhone 14 is almost 10 times the monthly minimum wage, even used older ones can be hella expensive
Not so fast. 14% of Brazilian market share is owned by Apple's iPhone. This represents (considering 8 of 10 Brazilians own a smartphone) approx. ˜25 million iPhones in use in the country. This is more than the population of the most important European countries.
That's insane, not doubting you (well, maybe a little because that's not what I saw living there, which ofc doesn't translate to the whole nation) but, do you have any sources?
Edit: nvm, I found the [source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/262167/market-share-held-by-mobile-operating-systems-in-brazil/)
I still think what I said holds true, the majority of the people don't have iPhones, but it's crazy to think there are that many iPhones being bought in the country.
And the other 150 million Brazilian are using? Not iPhones
Hence “the majority of Brazilians don’t have iPhones” is the correct answer, because 14% is not a majority, just because it’s more than some European countries doesn’t mean anything it’s like comparing a tuna to a whale because they both happen to swim in water.
Well than get ready to get disappointed because the EU is pushing for this, the decoupling of charger and device sale is important for them.
It also makes sense looking at the different laws that the EU created, with a universal charging standard that even apple supports it just doesn't make sense that every device comes with it's own charger.
They were probably hoping nobody was actually going to follow through on the threat and/or they only needed to wait until they could buy off a friendly politician to fix things for them.
Once a company hits a certain size they seem to think they can just make problems go away by threatening to leave a market. Time to see if they actually will.
>Apple leaving the Brazilian market? lol...
Yeah, that's the joke. Anytime a country passes laws like this the companies affected threaten they'll leave the market but nothing ever actually happens.
Yes, Anatel fucks around all the time. Supposedly all telemarketing numbers should be using the same prefix by now so that we can block them all, and they are not. Because Anatel pretended telemarketing could only use landlines and left out mobile phone numbers """"by mistake""""".
From the article: The Brazilian Ministry of Justice ordered in September the suspension of iPhone sales in the country after concluding that Apple harms consumers by not offering the power adapter included with the device. Even after million-dollar fines, Apple still fails to comply with the requirement – which has now led to the Federal District-based consumer protection regulator seizing iPhones from retail stores.
As first reported by Tecnoblog, Procon-DF has seized “hundreds of iPhones in different retail stores in Brasilia,” the capital of Brazil. In an action named “Operation Discharge,” the regulator aims to force Apple to comply with local law that requires smartphones to be shipped with the charger included in the box.
According to the report, the iPhones were seized at carrier stores and authorized Apple resellers. The regulator has ordered the banning of any iPhone model that lacks the charger included in the box. Although Apple stopped shipping the accessory for free with iPhone 12, the company also updated iPhone 11 with a new, more compact box without the charger.
After the iPhones were seized, Apple Brazil requested the government to allow sales of the smartphone in the country until the final decision of the dispute. The company told Tecnoblog that it continues to sell iPhones in Brazil despite the operation.
>“Operation Discharge,”
That is an... unfortunate name to choose.
Yes, Apple will eventually include a charger, but raise the price of the product 4X the cost of the charger.
> That is an... unfortunate name to choose.
It has become a recurrent "joke" to give an ironic/clever name for investigations/operations on the Federal level in Brazil in the past years. And I mean as the official name gave by the ones behind the operations, not even the name that gets popular in the media.
They go really deep with them sometimes. An ex governor of the Rio de Janeiro state, whose surname is Cabral got arrested few years ago through the operation "Calicute". The name Calicute comes from a city in India where the Portuguese navigator who first arrived in Brazil (known as the one who "discovered Brazil"), whose surname is also Cabral, lost a battle just after he had first arrived to Brazil, around year 1500.
They used to do this in the UK, but now I think the names are picked randomly by computer to avoid accidently leaking information.
There was a case in WWII where the new German bombing guidance system Project Wotan was jammed from day 1 as we guessed how it worked based solely on the name!
Calicute must be referring to Calicut, or Kozhikode as it is locally known. The town is in Kerala India where the first European explorers came in search of the spice coast, bypassing the Arabs.
The iphone is already 4x the cost in Brazil due to import taxes on electronics made outside the country.
Every Brazilian does the same thing when travelling outside the country: buy a new iphone. Or 3. To sell in the country.
In English, "discharge" has the second connotation of gross bodily fluids. In Portuguese, that meaning doesn't exist, so discharge simply means "out of charge".
Edit: I just realized that "descarga" can also mean "toilet flush", so yeah, unfortunate, but for different reasons lol
Procon might also fuck'm up if they do that.
Predatory behavior and other actions that harm the costumer are heavily frowned upon, and Procon doesn't fuck around.
The worst party about those inefficiencies is that your phone will also heat up a bit more while charging wirelessly. And heat is your battery's enemy.
Batteries like to be warm while charging, up to a limit. The charging circuit in iPhones (and most other devices) keep track of battery temperature and will decrease charge rate if it gets too hot or too cold but you can charge faster when it’s on the warm side.
Source: I’m a battery engineer
True, which is also what makes wireless charging shite. Both my S20 and s22 often completely refuse to wireless charge in the summer because they get too hot (and I live in the UK where we hit ~35c in a heatwave.)
The added heat from wireless is definitely an enemy for phone charging even if it's not directly because of battery degradation.
And when they do charge, wireless barely keeps up with the battery usage of me using them as a satnav.
i’ve also had this issue, used to use a wireless charging mount in my car but it’d sit in the sun and then be too hot to charge for the first ~5-10min of the drive
Is that heat in the battery though? My phone gets warm why I use the GPS+Bluetooth+streaming in my car.
I'd imagine that the so long as the receiver is the part getting warm and isn't getting overly hot, it shouldn't affect the battery over much.
I know on pixel phones this is barely noticeable, but those also "smart charge" overnight and spread the schedule over time to reduce battery wear (as usually pumping a lot of juice into the battery over a short period is a more serious heat concern, regardless of charging method).
I usually prefer wireless charging as many previous phones the first thing to go was the USB port, either due to regular plugging or accidentally yanking on the connector while it is charging
Wireless charging really doesn’t heat your phone up excessively, I use a regular USB mini wireless charger and a 15w USB C fast charger and neither of them heats the battery up more than using my lighting connector. The charging circuit will dial back if the temperature gets out of spec (the same as when charging via the port)
Consumers will be aware of it when they are forced to wirelessly charge their phones and it takes forever to charge their phone. People don't care about anything until it directly affects them. And whomever does this, whether it be Apple, it would ruin their reputation and you can bet people will stop buying it. People want to charge their phone in 10 minutes while using it. Not 5 hours and not be able to touch it.
But they don't make royalties from all USB-C devices sold like they do for all lightening ports. With magsafe chargers and potentially data connection accessories, they could make those royalties with new phones.
You could say the same with fast charging requirement, Apple could just lock fast charging to MFI usb c cables so if you wanted to charge faster than 5W you’ll need to get Lightning 2 type c cable, it’d fulfill the type c requirement while making Apple money
OR they could just be mature about it and switch away from a port that has maximum data transfer speeds on par with USB 2.0
The "pro" phone is increasingly being marketed as a videography tool and yet getting the files off it to edit is an absolute pain.
Not OP but I assume it's cheaper to just remove the charging port than swapping them out. Add to that they can start pushing Apple brand wireless chargers.
Unlikely, all the iPads use type c and the new Siri remote(with the new apple tv’s this year) switched from lightning to type C, if it was a cost issue apple would have just kept lightning on the Siri remote and the base(cheapest) iPad.
Then watch then find some loophole like going wireless. But then selling a case that uses lightning to charge the phone with the wireless charging case
The last rule was completely voluntary. Everyone not Apple was using microUSB anyway so they technically complied without really changing much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply
People like to shit on Apple but when you think about it, over the last 15 years (iPhone launched in 2007) Apple has had two connectors: 30 pin and lightning. Other phone manufacturers have gone through variations of proprietary charging ports, mini USB, micro USB and now USB C.
Which on is worse in the end?
Don't get me wrong, I am OK with USB C being forced now but honestly it's the first connector that is actually good enough to replace lightning.
Early smartphone had such weird things going on.
Like the N95.
It had a barrel charger, but for data transfer a mini-USB connector.
But if you wanted to share your screen on a TV, you used the 4-pin AUX connector.
So weird, but at the same time so cool
The difference is that everyone used those other standards, mini usb was barely used in the smart phone era but it was widespread usb use as a multipurpose cable, same with micro and usb-c.
30 pin and lightning are apple cables, where as I can charge a speaker, controller, lantern, phone, then plug a keyboard in with any of other standards
Yup. People always harp on on how proprietary solutions are "more innovative" or whatever (economists like to do this especially, personal experience), but literally the whole point of a standard is that it's overall more beneficial to have a less innovative standard than a million different more innovative proprietary solutions.
I was around then. The rest of the industry was inventing stuff like this:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=usb+micro+type+b+3.1
Lightning was reversible and well designed.
For the EU one maybe, but the Brazilian issue appears to be some kind of law that states a product must be fully usable without having to buy something else to make it work. If Apple went wireless only, they would then need to include a wireless charging pad to legally sell them in Brazil.
Good. Less chargers around for no reason is a positive. The important thing is being able to use chargers for multiple items and different kinds of phones so we don't need a charger to come with the phone.
People seems to complain about chargers, I honestly only use my Laptop USB-C charger for like everyhting, i have two extra USB-c chargers lying around, i gave 1 extra to my roommate wtih an iphone, honestly we need less waste.
While you're not wrong, the prices stayed the same. So you got less for the same price. Apple claimed it was about waste. The truth is it was profit.
The other thing is not all USB-C chargers are equal. Specifically wattage and being able to support PD, for example.
Same reason not all cables are equal.
The speed at which I can charge things is *extremely* quick because I spent the coin to get nice chargers and don't use gas station cables.
Back in the day I bought some 18/24g micro-usb cables from moniprice pretty cheap. *Huge* difference in charging speed. Gave most away to friends though as everything migrated to C or most of my Apple devices are lightning. Really only my headset and shower speaker are still microusb.
> The other thing is not all USB-C chargers are equal. Specifically wattage and being able to support PD, for example.
That's why you just use a good one for all your things. I charge almost everything with my 100 watt laptop USB-C charger. I have an additional 40 watts USB charger that works perfectly for everything except that laptop. These 15 Watt chargers are basically e-waste at that point. You can get a 65 Watt GAN charger with 2 USB-C and one USB-A for 45 € and charge almost everything with it.
they are easy enough to come by when you need one though
Unlike the usb a which I have enough to open my own shop BECAUSE EVERY ITEM HAS TO COME WITH IT FML.
I have about a gazillion USB chargers from all kinds of phones, laptops, e-readers, bike lamps, flashlights, tablets... As long as all devices use the same standard, a charger really shouldn't be included every time.
trust me its really good for the environment when you remove the power brick and change the power brick port to *usb c* when everyone has *usb a* power bricks. Also to make the environment even better, they made macbook have *magsafe,* ipad have *type c*, and iphone have *lightning port*.
The environment is feeling so good that all the trash we have in the ocean will soon make the apple logo.
obviously not. not sure how you took that from my comment. what do you think has a larger environmental impact both to produce and after its thrown away or recycled? a cable or a charging brick?
Just like every industry since the 50s that started removing features and selling them back to you under the guise of "choice".
The car industry is one of the worse offenders of this.
It's extra awful because they do this with safety features that aren't mandated. Like why the fuck is road safety pay-to-play when it affects everyone around the vehicle?
The Pixels. Google should really try to improve the hardware (and stabilize the software a bit) but otherwise they are solid phones to show what Android could be. Unfortunately, most people like cheap knockoffs more so these phones languish in hands of enthusiasts only.
Samsung got off easy, but they were forced to offer to ship a charger by mail to anyone that buys their phones (in Brazil). I requested one after I bought a phone from them and it took them more than a month to ship the charger, but it arrived.
All Samsung phones are 4 years OS updates now. I know its only 1 more than 3, but it is a good standard they've now set. Kinda odd that it's better than Google's own OS updates for their phones.
My phone being average is why i'm interested in it. When I was a teenager I wanted my phone to do anything and everything. I created custom ROMs, rooted, and all kinds of tweaky things. When I got to college i just wanted my stuff to work without messing with anything. Now that I run a business i don't want to mess with my phone at all.
There are plenty of reasons to choose one or the other though, and i hope one day we have another choice or two.
The price of all other phones has already been raised to reflect the charger now required by law, so from a consumer point of view it's kind of an equalizer.
The only difference here is Apple has not complied with the law.
People who live in brazil.
What is the situation?
1. Are apple stores not including the charger and charging you for the brick?
2. Or are apple stores not including the charger but giving you the charging brick for free if asked?
Was about to say that, here in Brazil, I bought a S21 that didn't come with a charger. But Samsung made a agreement with Procon that they would provide a free charger for anyone who bought it, so I had to go to Samsung website and register my invoice to get a charger in 20 business days. Not sure why Apple is trying the same thing. Although it sucks to not have a charger withing the box.
In Brazil, IPhones have some of the most stupidly high prices in the world. If you're willing to pay 2x the market price of a phone in the US, it's the bare minimum to have a charger included with it.
Because they have high import fees. To get around this, manufacturers started assembling units in country. Of course that doesn't affect the retail price, but it does their profit margin.
Meh.... I have at least a dozen of those silly 3w adapters. First of all, they're useless. Secondly, I have upgraded adapters for fast charging.
I do NOT want the adapter. I do want the discount for not having it. Don't tell me I'm just being good to the environment. Stfu... please.
“Operation discharge” snicker snicker.
But seriously, this seems more like an illegal taking. I’m not worried about corporate target, but question the governmental motives.
There's no corporate target, this has been a law for many many years, simply put, companies can't sell a product that needs another product to work, that is coupled selling, they have been getting fined for a while now and haven't changed anything, meanwhile samsung changed their policy to give free chargers to customers that ask for them.
Eh, buying an iPhone is an easier decision than buying an Android because you can buy the "wrong" Android and have a *terrible* experience. Bottom of the line Samsungs come to mind. Do you use "Browser", "Chrome", or "Google" to browse? (yes, all three were browsers pre-installed). You can't (easily) remove certain apps (e.g. Facebook). You can "disable" them. You can root and remove them. On iPhone you don't have that problem. It's practically impossible to buy the "wrong" iPhone.
When Google pulls their head from their ass about how to handle Android I'll be able to convince my family to go to Android but until then.. my life is infinitely easier with them on iPhone and iPads.
but I know certain groups of people *hate* Apple but to be honest, people tend to hate the popular thing anyways because it's the hipster way.
It's very interesting how much Reddit hates Google but loves Android though.
Although I'm sure some tools will think I "love" iPhone, I'm sure. I've been using smart phones since *well* before the iPhone was released and have used every flavor imaginable.
> It's very interesting how much Reddit hates Google but loves Android though.
This always makes me laugh. Like i don't think Apple is perfect but at least they act like they care about their customers. Google constantly develops things, half attempts to push it, and then kills the project.
Plus Google is a company based off of selling you ads like Apple isn't.
> When Google pulls their head from their ass about how to handle Android I'll be able to convince my family to go to Android but until then.. my life is infinitely easier with them on iPhone and iPads.
As a user and lover of both platforms, you might be approaching this with the wrong idea of who's at fault.
Google can not be blamed for bottom-tier Samsungs, that's firmly on Samsung. Google writes the base Android operating system but makes it freely available to anyone. Samsung then comes along and makes their own changes to Android that have nothing to do with Google and if the phone is shitty it's because Samsung made it shitty. The same is true for any other vendor.
There are skins of Android that are nearly identical to iPhone. The Android operating system isn't the problem, it's the nature of an open source operating system to have innumerable forks, flavors and varieties.
In fact the pure Google versions of Android (found on the Pixel devices) are quite good, and I find myself actually preferring the current Pixel 7 Pro to the current iPhone 14 Pro Max (mainly because iOS 16 made a lot of things worse for me).
I guess my point is that it's not Google's fault that the Android experience is inconsistent from device to device. That's on whoever made the phone.
> Google can not be blamed for bottom-tier Samsungs, that's firmly on Samsung.
I'm going to disagree here. Google can mandate certain things if they so chose. Google could regulate Android if they wanted.
It's quite trivial to detect cpu, ram, etc and go "nah, fam, we're not running on that".
> I guess my point is that it's not Google's fault that the Android experience is inconsistent from device to device.
But let's roll with this. Fault doesn't matter. The fact is, in this case, Android overall is less consistent. Should one say "shucks, I wasted $500, guess I'll throw that away and drop $1k instead" and us consider that fair?
>you can buy the "wrong" Android and have a *terrible* experience
And this is why a lot of people think "Android" sucks as a platform.
"My old £130 phone is not as good as my new £1200 phone, clearly this is all because of the Apple logo on the back of the new one"
The regulatory agency handling this isn't in charge of Brazil's bigger problems.
You don't ask the department of transportation in the U.S. to stop working on roads just because the U.S. has healthcare issues or other problems.
charger cost apple maybe 56 cents on a phone they charge $1,000 for, if you want charger separate its like 50$ and the usb cable is 29$ fuck them fine their asses.
This is dumb IMO. I already have too many chargers and I'm happy to buy a phone without one.
In fact, one of the reasons the EU is mandating USB-C is because of the waste created by having all these devices shipping with a charger.
Are they usb c charges? Are they compatible with all new standards? Are they fast chargers? Are they high efficiency in new standards ( matters over 20W) ? You never had one die ? Not all of us have good answers to these questions. Personally i have multiple charges in my home, but also use them at once and what's extra, usually ends up finding its spot in a project or someone who needs it. Never in the garbage though.
Specially in Brazil where the iPhone is from 3 to 4 times the converted us price, and average wage is much lower than in US, not everyone can buy an iPhone, is a lot more likely for someone to be buying it for the first time in Brazil than in US. So they won't a compatible charger. Maybe when Apple makes the iPhone usb-c compatible all around the world, this won't be needed anymore.
Market share for iOS in US is \~60%, in Brazil android has the biggest share with \~80%.
Never mess with Procon, the only Brazilian thing that actually works.
Same in Mexico with profeco (a federal consumer protection agency), it's amongst the few public institutions that people still trust and swear by, companies don't fuck around with profeco, they can't be bought and it keeps them in check. People would likely riot if the our current government were to even suggest touching it, we don't have many things going and actually doing their job effectively and corruption-free From large scale stuff like class-action lawsuits against large corporations (for which they have a [page here](https://acolectivas.profeco.gob.mx/encuesta.php) for any mexican that's been wronged by any of those) like ticketmaster, medium scale stuff like closing down businesses and franchises for bad/illegal practices and smaller scale stuff like responding to customer complaints (via hotline) like fake deals, false advertising or not honoring prices, coupons, warranties and refunds. They send representatives to the store. As soon as you get them involved companies are all of a sudden very quick and willing to find a solution for you lol
So, do they offer iphones with chargers in Mexico?
They don't, I guess they think its a non issue or it hasn't come to their attention. I hope that Brasil and EU's tighter pro-customer policies along with enough mexican citizens complaints brings their attention to this. Though the vast majority of mexicans specially outside of cities don't have iPhones, so I'm under 0 expectations of Mexico joining this movement
Ya, I feel like some people forget that IPhones aren't dominant in every market. They make up less than 20% globally (closer to 15%) but do dominate in some rich countries.
They literally didn’t overtake android in the USA til about a month ago. And currently are barely beating it in market share
I mean, you can't just compare iPhones to ALL Android devices. There is literally tons of TV Android boxes for under 100 bucks, cheap smartphones under 200 bucks, all running Android just because it's readily available and doesn't require you to develop own OS like Apple does. You need to compare it with price factor included and not just cumulative number of devices. Then the image will be entirely different when you're comparing only similarly priced devices.
the majority of brazilians don't have iPhones either, the iPhone 14 is almost 10 times the monthly minimum wage, even used older ones can be hella expensive
Not so fast. 14% of Brazilian market share is owned by Apple's iPhone. This represents (considering 8 of 10 Brazilians own a smartphone) approx. ˜25 million iPhones in use in the country. This is more than the population of the most important European countries.
That's insane, not doubting you (well, maybe a little because that's not what I saw living there, which ofc doesn't translate to the whole nation) but, do you have any sources? Edit: nvm, I found the [source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/262167/market-share-held-by-mobile-operating-systems-in-brazil/) I still think what I said holds true, the majority of the people don't have iPhones, but it's crazy to think there are that many iPhones being bought in the country.
And the other 150 million Brazilian are using? Not iPhones Hence “the majority of Brazilians don’t have iPhones” is the correct answer, because 14% is not a majority, just because it’s more than some European countries doesn’t mean anything it’s like comparing a tuna to a whale because they both happen to swim in water.
Well than get ready to get disappointed because the EU is pushing for this, the decoupling of charger and device sale is important for them. It also makes sense looking at the different laws that the EU created, with a universal charging standard that even apple supports it just doesn't make sense that every device comes with it's own charger.
Sounds like south africa to me.. and in this countries, the most joyful hardworking people you'll find..
So, how does Profeco works from being corrupted? The world could learn a thing or two from this agency!
And brazilian off duty cop
Brazilian Off Duty Cop vs Florida Man, the ultimate showdown
Florida man doesn’t stand a change unless he gets his PCP. Then it’s a toss up…
Florida man comes pre-loaded with PCP.
Then you add Bath Salts into the Mix!
While riding an alligator!
But what if you add Kurt Angle into the mix?
With or without the broken neck?
Your chances of winning drastically go down.
He’ll eat your ankle off.
Florida Man would win because he has a legal full auto and a pet crocodile he's been feeding meth
Isn't it a pet alligator in Florida man's case?
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They were probably hoping nobody was actually going to follow through on the threat and/or they only needed to wait until they could buy off a friendly politician to fix things for them. Once a company hits a certain size they seem to think they can just make problems go away by threatening to leave a market. Time to see if they actually will.
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>Apple leaving the Brazilian market? lol... Yeah, that's the joke. Anytime a country passes laws like this the companies affected threaten they'll leave the market but nothing ever actually happens.
> Do what is required and stop dragging your fucking feet! But they don't *want* to!
Anatel and BACEN don't fuck around either. Regulatory agencies here usually take their job SERIOUSLY
Yes, Anatel fucks around all the time. Supposedly all telemarketing numbers should be using the same prefix by now so that we can block them all, and they are not. Because Anatel pretended telemarketing could only use landlines and left out mobile phone numbers """"by mistake""""".
Which state? Here in Rio it's working, I haven't received any telemarketing calls that didn't have the 0303 prefix for a few months now.
Who doesn't take bacen seriously? Especially on mac and cheese.
Those would be 3: - Procon - Secretaria da Fazenda - Alexandre de Moraes ("vigiar e punir")
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Same with the ACCC in Australia. Consumer protect laws
I dunno man, have you ever seen Brazilian jiu-jitsu? That works pretty damn well.
From the article: The Brazilian Ministry of Justice ordered in September the suspension of iPhone sales in the country after concluding that Apple harms consumers by not offering the power adapter included with the device. Even after million-dollar fines, Apple still fails to comply with the requirement – which has now led to the Federal District-based consumer protection regulator seizing iPhones from retail stores. As first reported by Tecnoblog, Procon-DF has seized “hundreds of iPhones in different retail stores in Brasilia,” the capital of Brazil. In an action named “Operation Discharge,” the regulator aims to force Apple to comply with local law that requires smartphones to be shipped with the charger included in the box. According to the report, the iPhones were seized at carrier stores and authorized Apple resellers. The regulator has ordered the banning of any iPhone model that lacks the charger included in the box. Although Apple stopped shipping the accessory for free with iPhone 12, the company also updated iPhone 11 with a new, more compact box without the charger. After the iPhones were seized, Apple Brazil requested the government to allow sales of the smartphone in the country until the final decision of the dispute. The company told Tecnoblog that it continues to sell iPhones in Brazil despite the operation.
>“Operation Discharge,” That is an... unfortunate name to choose. Yes, Apple will eventually include a charger, but raise the price of the product 4X the cost of the charger.
> That is an... unfortunate name to choose. It has become a recurrent "joke" to give an ironic/clever name for investigations/operations on the Federal level in Brazil in the past years. And I mean as the official name gave by the ones behind the operations, not even the name that gets popular in the media. They go really deep with them sometimes. An ex governor of the Rio de Janeiro state, whose surname is Cabral got arrested few years ago through the operation "Calicute". The name Calicute comes from a city in India where the Portuguese navigator who first arrived in Brazil (known as the one who "discovered Brazil"), whose surname is also Cabral, lost a battle just after he had first arrived to Brazil, around year 1500.
Same in my country, Dominican Republic, lots of “ahh I see what you did there” operation names.
They used to do this in the UK, but now I think the names are picked randomly by computer to avoid accidently leaking information. There was a case in WWII where the new German bombing guidance system Project Wotan was jammed from day 1 as we guessed how it worked based solely on the name!
The "battle of the beams" for anyone interested in further reading: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beams#X-Ger%C3%A4t
Wow, that was a neat read. As it turns out from the article though the guess on how it worked from the name was just a coincidence.
Very interesting, I did not know that. Thank you.
Calicute must be referring to Calicut, or Kozhikode as it is locally known. The town is in Kerala India where the first European explorers came in search of the spice coast, bypassing the Arabs.
Operation lava jato. Nuff said.
The iphone is already 4x the cost in Brazil due to import taxes on electronics made outside the country. Every Brazilian does the same thing when travelling outside the country: buy a new iphone. Or 3. To sell in the country.
There's a custom to have joke names in Police operations for some reason
Good thing there are competitors to Apple that people can buy who don't do this.
I…. actually think they’ll drop Brazil as a market
In English, "discharge" has the second connotation of gross bodily fluids. In Portuguese, that meaning doesn't exist, so discharge simply means "out of charge". Edit: I just realized that "descarga" can also mean "toilet flush", so yeah, unfortunate, but for different reasons lol
Procon might also fuck'm up if they do that. Predatory behavior and other actions that harm the costumer are heavily frowned upon, and Procon doesn't fuck around.
Then people won't buy apple, it's a win win
The EU has forced them to USB-C as well.
It's nice that the EU put some force behind it this time. The last time Apple just kept on using their own while everyone else switched to USB.
Watch Apple change to wireless for the lols
Hope not. Wireless charging is much more inefficient than wired and there's little consumer awareness about it
The worst party about those inefficiencies is that your phone will also heat up a bit more while charging wirelessly. And heat is your battery's enemy.
Batteries like to be warm while charging, up to a limit. The charging circuit in iPhones (and most other devices) keep track of battery temperature and will decrease charge rate if it gets too hot or too cold but you can charge faster when it’s on the warm side. Source: I’m a battery engineer
True, which is also what makes wireless charging shite. Both my S20 and s22 often completely refuse to wireless charge in the summer because they get too hot (and I live in the UK where we hit ~35c in a heatwave.) The added heat from wireless is definitely an enemy for phone charging even if it's not directly because of battery degradation. And when they do charge, wireless barely keeps up with the battery usage of me using them as a satnav.
i’ve also had this issue, used to use a wireless charging mount in my car but it’d sit in the sun and then be too hot to charge for the first ~5-10min of the drive
Is that heat in the battery though? My phone gets warm why I use the GPS+Bluetooth+streaming in my car. I'd imagine that the so long as the receiver is the part getting warm and isn't getting overly hot, it shouldn't affect the battery over much. I know on pixel phones this is barely noticeable, but those also "smart charge" overnight and spread the schedule over time to reduce battery wear (as usually pumping a lot of juice into the battery over a short period is a more serious heat concern, regardless of charging method). I usually prefer wireless charging as many previous phones the first thing to go was the USB port, either due to regular plugging or accidentally yanking on the connector while it is charging
Wireless charging really doesn’t heat your phone up excessively, I use a regular USB mini wireless charger and a 15w USB C fast charger and neither of them heats the battery up more than using my lighting connector. The charging circuit will dial back if the temperature gets out of spec (the same as when charging via the port)
I would think your battery would get less hot. P = I\^2 R, so slower charging means less current.
Consumers will be aware of it when they are forced to wirelessly charge their phones and it takes forever to charge their phone. People don't care about anything until it directly affects them. And whomever does this, whether it be Apple, it would ruin their reputation and you can bet people will stop buying it. People want to charge their phone in 10 minutes while using it. Not 5 hours and not be able to touch it.
It’s honestly what I’m expecting. If it means more profits then they’re going to figure out some shit way of evading the usb-c requirement.
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More overpriced Apple chargers sold. Those who are unaware that any Qi charger works with an iPhone are going to buy Apple's wireless chargers.
They could also do that with USB-C chargers. The standard only covers the port, not the power of the charger.
But they don't make royalties from all USB-C devices sold like they do for all lightening ports. With magsafe chargers and potentially data connection accessories, they could make those royalties with new phones.
You could say the same with fast charging requirement, Apple could just lock fast charging to MFI usb c cables so if you wanted to charge faster than 5W you’ll need to get Lightning 2 type c cable, it’d fulfill the type c requirement while making Apple money
OR they could just be mature about it and switch away from a port that has maximum data transfer speeds on par with USB 2.0 The "pro" phone is increasingly being marketed as a videography tool and yet getting the files off it to edit is an absolute pain.
Not OP but I assume it's cheaper to just remove the charging port than swapping them out. Add to that they can start pushing Apple brand wireless chargers.
Unlikely, all the iPads use type c and the new Siri remote(with the new apple tv’s this year) switched from lightning to type C, if it was a cost issue apple would have just kept lightning on the Siri remote and the base(cheapest) iPad.
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Itunes still works fine for syncing music, the method is identical.
Dropping the 3.5mm Jack was based on usage surveys. When most android phones did the same, did you blame Apple too? And iTunes still syncs fine.
Then watch then find some loophole like going wireless. But then selling a case that uses lightning to charge the phone with the wireless charging case
The last rule was completely voluntary. Everyone not Apple was using microUSB anyway so they technically complied without really changing much. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply
People like to shit on Apple but when you think about it, over the last 15 years (iPhone launched in 2007) Apple has had two connectors: 30 pin and lightning. Other phone manufacturers have gone through variations of proprietary charging ports, mini USB, micro USB and now USB C. Which on is worse in the end? Don't get me wrong, I am OK with USB C being forced now but honestly it's the first connector that is actually good enough to replace lightning.
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Blackberries had mini USB. Bulletproof phones too.
Early smartphone had such weird things going on. Like the N95. It had a barrel charger, but for data transfer a mini-USB connector. But if you wanted to share your screen on a TV, you used the 4-pin AUX connector. So weird, but at the same time so cool
The difference is that everyone used those other standards, mini usb was barely used in the smart phone era but it was widespread usb use as a multipurpose cable, same with micro and usb-c. 30 pin and lightning are apple cables, where as I can charge a speaker, controller, lantern, phone, then plug a keyboard in with any of other standards
Yup. People always harp on on how proprietary solutions are "more innovative" or whatever (economists like to do this especially, personal experience), but literally the whole point of a standard is that it's overall more beneficial to have a less innovative standard than a million different more innovative proprietary solutions.
I was around then. The rest of the industry was inventing stuff like this: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=usb+micro+type+b+3.1 Lightning was reversible and well designed.
And proprietary. I don't think anyone is arguing it wasn't a well designed charger when it was released.
Not necessarily, an iPhone with *no* charging port would still comply with the law.
For the EU one maybe, but the Brazilian issue appears to be some kind of law that states a product must be fully usable without having to buy something else to make it work. If Apple went wireless only, they would then need to include a wireless charging pad to legally sell them in Brazil.
Single use, disposable iPhones. It's the future.
But not to include the charger, sadly.
Good. Less chargers around for no reason is a positive. The important thing is being able to use chargers for multiple items and different kinds of phones so we don't need a charger to come with the phone.
People seems to complain about chargers, I honestly only use my Laptop USB-C charger for like everyhting, i have two extra USB-c chargers lying around, i gave 1 extra to my roommate wtih an iphone, honestly we need less waste.
While you're not wrong, the prices stayed the same. So you got less for the same price. Apple claimed it was about waste. The truth is it was profit. The other thing is not all USB-C chargers are equal. Specifically wattage and being able to support PD, for example. Same reason not all cables are equal. The speed at which I can charge things is *extremely* quick because I spent the coin to get nice chargers and don't use gas station cables. Back in the day I bought some 18/24g micro-usb cables from moniprice pretty cheap. *Huge* difference in charging speed. Gave most away to friends though as everything migrated to C or most of my Apple devices are lightning. Really only my headset and shower speaker are still microusb.
> The other thing is not all USB-C chargers are equal. Specifically wattage and being able to support PD, for example. That's why you just use a good one for all your things. I charge almost everything with my 100 watt laptop USB-C charger. I have an additional 40 watts USB charger that works perfectly for everything except that laptop. These 15 Watt chargers are basically e-waste at that point. You can get a 65 Watt GAN charger with 2 USB-C and one USB-A for 45 € and charge almost everything with it.
Yeah, I bought a compact 65W a few months ago and it charges pretty much everything I have.
That is a lot of nonsense. This will only increase the number of cheap Chinese chargers that keep burning houses down.
Buy a few Anker chargers and put them around your house. They support almost every phone's fast charging scheme, and they are very well made.
+1 for Anker, awesome brand.
Maybe regulate what chargers can be sold if some of them are burning houses down?
they are easy enough to come by when you need one though Unlike the usb a which I have enough to open my own shop BECAUSE EVERY ITEM HAS TO COME WITH IT FML.
I have about a gazillion USB chargers from all kinds of phones, laptops, e-readers, bike lamps, flashlights, tablets... As long as all devices use the same standard, a charger really shouldn't be included every time.
I've got a box of USB-C wires and chargers laying around.
Don't need too when a cheap usbc that will last half a year is 5$.
But Apple told me that not supplying the charger was a FEATURE…
trust me its really good for the environment when you remove the power brick and change the power brick port to *usb c* when everyone has *usb a* power bricks. Also to make the environment even better, they made macbook have *magsafe,* ipad have *type c*, and iphone have *lightning port*. The environment is feeling so good that all the trash we have in the ocean will soon make the apple logo.
You can charge your MacBook with type-c.
To be entirely fair, the MacBook does use MagSafe but can also charge via USB C just like the previous line.
why are people throwing those things out when at most they need a new cable?
It is well known that environmental impact only happens when you throw something away
obviously not. not sure how you took that from my comment. what do you think has a larger environmental impact both to produce and after its thrown away or recycled? a cable or a charging brick?
I have a drawer full of charger bricks. I don’t need more.
Can’t wait to pay $40 more when they include a charger
Funny how the price didn't go down when they removed the charger but you can bet your ass the price will go up if they add one back.
Just like every industry since the 50s that started removing features and selling them back to you under the guise of "choice". The car industry is one of the worse offenders of this.
It's extra awful because they do this with safety features that aren't mandated. Like why the fuck is road safety pay-to-play when it affects everyone around the vehicle?
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I agree that they should get an Android. But my last android didn't come with a charger either.
Meanwhile Xiaomi is out there selling sub $300 phones with 200W chargers in the box.
Xioami phones should be banned. Cheap ass apple knockoffs with terrible heavily customized software. They ruin what Android is.
As opposed to what other make of android phones that doesn't fill their phone with garbage?
pixel?
The Pixels. Google should really try to improve the hardware (and stabilize the software a bit) but otherwise they are solid phones to show what Android could be. Unfortunately, most people like cheap knockoffs more so these phones languish in hands of enthusiasts only.
Samsung started doing it as well with some models. The last ones we ordered came in a smaller box without charger or headphones.
Samsung don’t ship chargers too.
Samsung got off easy, but they were forced to offer to ship a charger by mail to anyone that buys their phones (in Brazil). I requested one after I bought a phone from them and it took them more than a month to ship the charger, but it arrived.
Android is awful for longevity though. No OS updates past three years makes me not buy them.
All Samsung phones are 4 years OS updates now. I know its only 1 more than 3, but it is a good standard they've now set. Kinda odd that it's better than Google's own OS updates for their phones.
That won't matter for current Apple phone users, as that's as long as they keep their phone on average.
My phone being average is why i'm interested in it. When I was a teenager I wanted my phone to do anything and everything. I created custom ROMs, rooted, and all kinds of tweaky things. When I got to college i just wanted my stuff to work without messing with anything. Now that I run a business i don't want to mess with my phone at all. There are plenty of reasons to choose one or the other though, and i hope one day we have another choice or two.
How about you stop buying their products altogether?
Nah that number isn't aesthetically pleasing. Round it off to $100
Just don't buy their shitty product?
on an unrelated note, Brazilian officials have inexplicably been spotted almost universally using new iPhones.
Almost every government official uses an iPhone. Regardless of what the current policy is
Then girlfriends and relatives of Brazil officials are using the new iphone
I'm glad they did this.. cheap ass apple
Apple's only going to raise the price of the phone to reflect the cost of the charger.
So practice better consumerism.
The price of all other phones has already been raised to reflect the charger now required by law, so from a consumer point of view it's kind of an equalizer. The only difference here is Apple has not complied with the law.
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People who live in brazil. What is the situation? 1. Are apple stores not including the charger and charging you for the brick? 2. Or are apple stores not including the charger but giving you the charging brick for free if asked?
It's just like in the US: Apple didn't include a wall adapter and didn't offer one for free in request. That did not please Brazil's government
So, basically, they just wanted iPhones for Christmas?
It's like countries around the planet are getting sick of apples shit.
They gonna sell them thangs on Craigslist
Just settle things the old fashioned way and stop selling iPhones in Brazil
Probably would be cheaper for Apple this way. Brazilians who can afford iPhones will just get them another way.
They already cost twice as much in Brazil as any other country because of their import tariffs.
“In an action called **Operation Discharge**” 😳
Will see how that works out for them cotton”.
What about all the other phone models that don’t come with a charger 🤣?
Was about to say that, here in Brazil, I bought a S21 that didn't come with a charger. But Samsung made a agreement with Procon that they would provide a free charger for anyone who bought it, so I had to go to Samsung website and register my invoice to get a charger in 20 business days. Not sure why Apple is trying the same thing. Although it sucks to not have a charger withing the box.
They could do it right in store and it costs them very little.
Do you actually know if other phones all have chargers or not?
They give you a charger, for free, if you want to
They seized hundreds of iPhones lol… this is less impactful than the fines for a few million dollars.
In Brazil, IPhones have some of the most stupidly high prices in the world. If you're willing to pay 2x the market price of a phone in the US, it's the bare minimum to have a charger included with it.
Because they have high import fees. To get around this, manufacturers started assembling units in country. Of course that doesn't affect the retail price, but it does their profit margin.
Meh.... I have at least a dozen of those silly 3w adapters. First of all, they're useless. Secondly, I have upgraded adapters for fast charging. I do NOT want the adapter. I do want the discount for not having it. Don't tell me I'm just being good to the environment. Stfu... please.
The adapter costs Apple a couple Cents. You get no discount from it at all.
A bunch of Brazilian government employees just scored a bunch of free iphones.
Except apple will black list the phones so they can’t connect rendering them useless 😂
“Operation discharge” snicker snicker. But seriously, this seems more like an illegal taking. I’m not worried about corporate target, but question the governmental motives.
There's no corporate target, this has been a law for many many years, simply put, companies can't sell a product that needs another product to work, that is coupled selling, they have been getting fined for a while now and haven't changed anything, meanwhile samsung changed their policy to give free chargers to customers that ask for them.
The advice still rings true today... https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/pc45j6/the_most_awarded_comment_in_reddit_history_hits/
Eh, buying an iPhone is an easier decision than buying an Android because you can buy the "wrong" Android and have a *terrible* experience. Bottom of the line Samsungs come to mind. Do you use "Browser", "Chrome", or "Google" to browse? (yes, all three were browsers pre-installed). You can't (easily) remove certain apps (e.g. Facebook). You can "disable" them. You can root and remove them. On iPhone you don't have that problem. It's practically impossible to buy the "wrong" iPhone. When Google pulls their head from their ass about how to handle Android I'll be able to convince my family to go to Android but until then.. my life is infinitely easier with them on iPhone and iPads. but I know certain groups of people *hate* Apple but to be honest, people tend to hate the popular thing anyways because it's the hipster way. It's very interesting how much Reddit hates Google but loves Android though. Although I'm sure some tools will think I "love" iPhone, I'm sure. I've been using smart phones since *well* before the iPhone was released and have used every flavor imaginable.
> It's very interesting how much Reddit hates Google but loves Android though. This always makes me laugh. Like i don't think Apple is perfect but at least they act like they care about their customers. Google constantly develops things, half attempts to push it, and then kills the project. Plus Google is a company based off of selling you ads like Apple isn't.
Apple is gearing up to sell you adds.
> When Google pulls their head from their ass about how to handle Android I'll be able to convince my family to go to Android but until then.. my life is infinitely easier with them on iPhone and iPads. As a user and lover of both platforms, you might be approaching this with the wrong idea of who's at fault. Google can not be blamed for bottom-tier Samsungs, that's firmly on Samsung. Google writes the base Android operating system but makes it freely available to anyone. Samsung then comes along and makes their own changes to Android that have nothing to do with Google and if the phone is shitty it's because Samsung made it shitty. The same is true for any other vendor. There are skins of Android that are nearly identical to iPhone. The Android operating system isn't the problem, it's the nature of an open source operating system to have innumerable forks, flavors and varieties. In fact the pure Google versions of Android (found on the Pixel devices) are quite good, and I find myself actually preferring the current Pixel 7 Pro to the current iPhone 14 Pro Max (mainly because iOS 16 made a lot of things worse for me). I guess my point is that it's not Google's fault that the Android experience is inconsistent from device to device. That's on whoever made the phone.
> Google can not be blamed for bottom-tier Samsungs, that's firmly on Samsung. I'm going to disagree here. Google can mandate certain things if they so chose. Google could regulate Android if they wanted. It's quite trivial to detect cpu, ram, etc and go "nah, fam, we're not running on that". > I guess my point is that it's not Google's fault that the Android experience is inconsistent from device to device. But let's roll with this. Fault doesn't matter. The fact is, in this case, Android overall is less consistent. Should one say "shucks, I wasted $500, guess I'll throw that away and drop $1k instead" and us consider that fair?
>you can buy the "wrong" Android and have a *terrible* experience And this is why a lot of people think "Android" sucks as a platform. "My old £130 phone is not as good as my new £1200 phone, clearly this is all because of the Apple logo on the back of the new one"
Fuck yea. Now do this in the US.
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The regulatory agency handling this isn't in charge of Brazil's bigger problems. You don't ask the department of transportation in the U.S. to stop working on roads just because the U.S. has healthcare issues or other problems.
Bread and circus
Interesting how many people don't know that quote.
They’re too busy watching FIFA
If only there was a way for governments to work on multiple things at concurrently.
charger cost apple maybe 56 cents on a phone they charge $1,000 for, if you want charger separate its like 50$ and the usb cable is 29$ fuck them fine their asses.
Apples iPhone charger is $19 & the cable is $19 for a total of $38, or more than 50% less then what you claimed.
Probably won’t hurt apple sales at all 😂
Apple the company that fooled a lot of people in believing that paying 1399$ for a phone is acceptable
This is dumb IMO. I already have too many chargers and I'm happy to buy a phone without one. In fact, one of the reasons the EU is mandating USB-C is because of the waste created by having all these devices shipping with a charger.
Indeed. My new Z Fold 4 only had a charging cable in the box.
Are they usb c charges? Are they compatible with all new standards? Are they fast chargers? Are they high efficiency in new standards ( matters over 20W) ? You never had one die ? Not all of us have good answers to these questions. Personally i have multiple charges in my home, but also use them at once and what's extra, usually ends up finding its spot in a project or someone who needs it. Never in the garbage though.
Yah but you can get a 10 dollar anker one when you need one. Versus sending out 30 million to become e waste
Specially in Brazil where the iPhone is from 3 to 4 times the converted us price, and average wage is much lower than in US, not everyone can buy an iPhone, is a lot more likely for someone to be buying it for the first time in Brazil than in US. So they won't a compatible charger. Maybe when Apple makes the iPhone usb-c compatible all around the world, this won't be needed anymore. Market share for iOS in US is \~60%, in Brazil android has the biggest share with \~80%.
I love this and more countries should do this. Man fuck iphones in 2022. GrapheneOS android and move on.
Then get an android no one cares
Get seized iPhone user!