Apple’s Rivals Mocked the iPhone for This (and Now They’re Doing the Same Thing)

As much as Apple’s rivals hate to admit it, there’s little doubt that where the iPhone maker goes, others often follow, and sometimes this leads to outright hypocrisy on the part of other smartphone makers, and nowhere is this more apparent than in Apple’s recent decision to remove accessories from its iPhone packaging.

Even in the midst of early rumours of Apple’s plans, there were reports that Samsung could follow suit with its own smartphones, however when the iPhone 12 appeared without a charger or EarPods in the box, it took the rival smartphone maker only a day to come up with posts on Twitter and Facebook mocking Apple, featuring a photo of a charger with the tagline “Included with your Galaxy.”

Few were surprised, however, when Samsung quietly removed the ad last week, seemingly confirming reports that the upcoming Galaxy S21 will also be ditching the charger.

In fact, at this point Samsung’s behaviour has become somewhat predictable, since it did the exact same thing three years ago, removing the headphone jack from the S10 after years of ridiculing Apple for the lack of a headphone jack on the iPhone — and of course in a sweeping act of revisionist history, it also deleted those ads too.

Although Samsung is Apple’s most prominent rival, that doesn’t mean others don’t join the fray as well; Xiaomi got into the game this year when it unveiled its Mi 10T Pro in October, adding that it “didn’t leave anything out of the box” alongside a video conspicuously showing the charger inside.

To be fair to Xiaomi, however, they don’t appear to be attempting to whitewash the past by deleting their old ads, even though CEO Lei Jun has just announced on Weibo that the Mi 11 will also exclude the charger.

‘Courage’

When Apple removed the headphone jack from the iPhone 7 four years ago, it came right out and said that it was a move that took “courage”. While Apple’s rivals weren’t the only one to deride Apple for making this move, it’s far from the first time Apple has cancelled a technology, and in almost all cases history has proven them to be on the right side.

While it took other smartphone makers a bit longer to get on board with the idea of removing the 3.5mm headphone jack, the reality is that wired headphones were already well on the way out even back in 2016. Plus — until recently — Apple still included compatible EarPods in the box for those who really wanted a wired connection.

On the other hand, removing the charging brick is an even more obvious move — and there are even more good reasons to do this — but it seems clear that Apple was the only company that had the courage to actually take the first step. By breaking new ground, Apple essentially gave others permission to follow suit.

So at the end of the day, we can’t blame Samsung, Xiaomi, and others for following in Apple’s footsteps here. Not only is removing the charger ultimately good for the environment, but it’s also better for everyone’s bottom line, but at the same time it’s ridiculously disingenuous of them to mock Apple for doing what they didn’t have the courage to do themselves, only to then meekly follow suit a few weeks later.