FP StaffSep 02, 2022 13:55:02 IST
Oppo will be joining the likes of Apple and Samsung and a number of other smartphone makers who do not provide a charging brick or a charger with their smartphones.
When Apple started off with this trend of not providing charging bricks with their phones, they cited environmental reasons for their decision. Manufacturers like Samsung and Xiaomi took digs at the Cupertino-based giant for a year when they too finally decided to stop shipping chargers with their phones.
As much as most tech companies will have us believe their greenwashing strategies to be altruistic, the real motive behind such a move has been money – by selling an item separately that has always been included in a package, companies can make big money. Apple, for instance, made about $6.5 Billion, by just removing chargers from the iPhone boxes.
Oppo however stood opposed to that move, and for a long time, still included a super fast charging brick with its phones. That is now set to change. This also means, Oppo’s sub-brands, including OnePlus, will also ditch providing fast chargers with the box.
Oppo has confirmed its plans to stop including a charging brick with its smartphones. Several products will start to ship without chargers according to Oppo’s Vice President, Billy Zhang.
“We will take the charger out of the box in the next year for several products. We have a plan. It’s not that easy for consumers to get access to SuperVOOC chargers, so we have to keep them in the box. However, as we are expanding our business operations, we are looking to take chargers out of the box and put them in the store so that our users are able to buy the chargers and continue using them even when they upgrade their devices,” he said in a statement.
Oppo and OnePlus have had some of the fastest charging mobile devices for years now. Most of these chargers use proprietary standards to charge compatible smartphones significantly faster than devices from other manufacturers.
The Oppo Reno8, for example, charges at 80W, while the OnePlus 10T uses the same technology to hit speeds of up to 150W. Faster charging speeds also tend to require a new charging brick, which means that customers would need to separately purchase a charger to get the full speed their new phone is capable of.
Oppo’s smartphones still support USB-C Power Delivery, a universal fast charging method, but they won’t be nearly as fast as SuperVOOC chargers. Moreover, users will have to buy Type-C based chargers, which tend to be more expensive than Type-A chargers.
