Drop MagSafe from the iPhone? No, Apple’s smarter than that

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In summary:

Macworld analyzes rumors that Apple may remove MagSafe from future iPhones due to design constraints affecting phone thickness and weight.
MagSafe’s transformative wireless charging convenience and Apple’s significant accessory revenue make removal from standard models highly unlikely.
While budget models like iPhone 16e previously lacked MagSafe, the feature returned in iPhone 17e, demonstrating its importance to users.

Apple has made some dubious design decisions over the past 15 years, from FineWoven to the AirPods Max Smart Case. We hope that trend is about to change, under the company’s new perfectionist CEO, but even the current management is too smart to drop MagSafe from the iPhone line, as claimed by a new report.

The Weibo leaker Instant Digital, who posts a lot but doesn’t have an especially strong track record of accurate predictions, claimed earlier this week that Apple has been debating whether to maintain MagSafe as a standard feature on the iPhone. “When MagSafe was first introduced, the internal stance was very aggressive,” the leaker adds. “There were even plans to include it as a standard feature on iPads, which I mentioned before, but ultimately didn’t happen. Now they’re starting to waver.”

The rationale behind this debate, Instant Digital claims, is the “sacrifice” involved in building MagSafe into each device. And it’s undoubtedly the case that MagSafe imposes a burden on phone designers: it requires the inclusion of a ring of magnets as well as the necessary inductive charging coils. Apple could make its iPhone thinner and lighter if it were able to drop MagSafe, and early prototypes suggest that the foldable iPhone Ultra may not get the feature. It’s notable, however, that the super-thin iPhone Air did get MagSafe, so it’s not like this is an insurmountable problem.

The iPhone 17e gained MagSafe this year.

David Price / Foundry

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