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Do Yourself a Favor and Buy That Longer Charging Cable
Just make sure it won’t burn your house down first
I’m sitting at my local coffee shop, about 10 feet away from where my power adapter is plugged into the wall. Snaking from it is a long, gold nylon cable attached to my phone; a portion of the cord is coiled in a small pile. If I wanted — if I wasn’t afraid of pissing off every customer and, more importantly, the baristas — I could plug it in across the room, up to 16 feet away.
The long cable, while not necessarily appropriate in all circumstances, makes me feel powerful. My iPhone and I are a stronger team because it’s now much easier to juice it up during emergencies. Apple’s standard charging cable is only three feet long, though the company also offers a six-foot option. In my opinion, that’s not good enough.
A super-long cable is a simple, basic, very straightforward change to make in one’s life, and yet the stubby Apple cable is ubiquitous. There’s a reason beyond convenience: Many cheap, off-brand chargers and cables are a potential disaster for your phone. That’s because high-quality charger cables regulate the power sent to your phone, protecting it from surges that could damage the battery. These cables also can detect when your battery is almost full and stop sending it power, ensuring that your phone doesn’t keep getting potentially harmful extra juice.
But not every third-party cable comes with such risks. The brand I bought, Zikko, was $24.99, which amounts to $1.56 per durable golden foot. The longer Apple cable, on the other hand, is $35 for six feet, amounting to $5.80 per tacky white foot.
The winner, I believe, is clear.
While I had long suffered under the tragic illusion that I must remain loyal to Apple’s first-party accessories, others have spent years liberated from this expensive mental prison. On the r/Apple subreddit — brimming with some of the biggest Apple superfans on the internet — Redditors wax poetic about their off-brand charger cables. Anker, started by former Google engineer Steven Yang, appears to be the favorite accessories brand for otherwise Apple diehards.
