Tried charging your new iPhone 15 from a power bank but came back to a dead iPhone? You’re not alone! Here’s what’s going on.
Apple added a USB-C port to the iPhone 15 lineup this year, allowing it to work with USB-C cables, USB-C power banks, and more. It turns out that some USB-C battery packs are not working properly with Apple’s iPhone 15, resulting in charging issues.
The Issue:
As highlighted on Reddit , not all existing USB-C power banks can be used with the iPhone 15 models, perhaps due to the iPhone’s reverse charging feature. In some cases, the iPhone 15 will fail to charge, or the iPhone 15 will charge the power bank.
A range of different power banks are affected, and because of the wide number of them on the market, it is impossible to list the models that are non-functional. One version that fails to work is the Anker PowerCore Slim 10K PD, and a customer who contacted Anker was told that the only way to get the power bank to charge the iPhone is to use the USB-A port.
How can this possibly happen?
The iPhone 15 series of smartphones come with the ability to reverse charge other smaller Apple devices, such as the Apple Watch, Apple AirPods, or another iPhone when using the USB-C charging cable.
That’s how it should work, but something is triggering this unexpected behavior. There’s also a report of an iPhone trying to charge an iPad Pro connected via USB-C cable. Swapping the cable around allowed the iPad Pro to charge the iPhone.
What could be causing it?
Possibly due to reverse wired charging instead of powering the phone from power bank, Possibly iPhone is trying to charge power bank and yes power banks can take in higher voltages this can be one cause of the issue It’s easy to point the finger at Apple here, but the reason for the mess is much more subtle. You may think that USB-C is a standard, and that the standard is clear and followed by all manufacturers.
The connectors on the ends of the cables might fit into the ports. But beyond that, USB-C, as seen in the consumer space, is a hellstew of old and new standards. It is made up of a whole bunch of cables, chargers, power banks, and other accessories that “work” with USB-C but whose compliance with the standards is, shall we say, erratic.
What’s the solution here?
Apple either needs to improve the way the iPhone 15 detects items to charge or add a software toggle that controls which direction charge flows.
I expect Apple to patch this issue soon.
