Apple has removed the MagSafe Battery Pack and the MagSafe Duo from its online store, reports 9to5Mac, following today’s iPhone 15 event. The pricey accessories have their quirks, but despite the valid criticisms, both devices have some devoted fans, even here at The Verge.
You could plug the MagSafe Battery Pack in to check its charge with the pinprick, color-changing LED indicator, but it wasn’t helpful: green and you have a full charge, orange and you have, well, less than a full charge. To get a better idea, you have to put it on your phone for an animation that, in my experience, may not actually trigger. (If it didn’t, you could check the battery widget, but that’s so many steps!) It also couldn’t give you a full charge.
But it doubles as a 15W fast wireless charger, like Apple’s own MagSafe puck, when plugged into a 20W power adapter. And it makes a charming clicking lock sound when you put it on your phone that I’ve always been sure was something physical happening inside of it.
The $129 MagSafe Duo, according to my colleague Jay Peters, is a perfect travel charger — it folds up compactly and uses the same lightning port as your phone to deliver power. And the MagSafe puck inside it charges an iPhone almost as fast, at 14 watts, as the standalone version of the puck. It has its problems, though, not the least of which is the fact that you can pick up very similar products for a fraction of the cost.
Who knows why Apple discontinued them — one explanation is their Lightning ports, as 9to5Mac suggests, since the iPhone 15 line uses USB-C. It’s possible that the Qi2 standard could commoditize this segment of the market enough that Apple sees no reason to continue selling them, or maybe they simply didn’t sell well enough — we’ll see if USB-C-equipped sequels follow anytime soon.
