Using a charger from another country

[Veer_213]

Hello. I'm not sure if this belongs here but I'm planning to buy an iPhone and it would be cheaper for me to buy it from the US compared to NZ but US has a 110v system I believe whereas NZ has the same as my country's (220-240v). I am curious as to the effects on my phone or the charger if I use a charger meant for a 110v system on 240v system. Can someone please help me? Thanks.

[Levent]

if you use 110v charger in a 220-240v country you will burn that out. If you use 220v charger in a 110v country it will work at half the amperage.  Make sure whatever thing you are going to plug in to wall has a rating that within that countries voltage output. Some chargers are rated to work at 110v and 220v.

[dizmo]

Most chargers are rated 100 - 240 iirc. So there's no difference. Just the pins might be different, in which case you'd have to use an adapter.

[Kisai]

25 minutes ago, Veer_213 said:

Hello. I'm not sure if this belongs here but I'm planning to buy an iPhone and it would be cheaper for me to buy it from the US compared to NZ but US has a 110v system I believe whereas NZ has the same as my country's (220-240v). I am curious as to the effects on my phone or the charger if I use a charger meant for a 110v system on 240v system. Can someone please help me? Thanks.

The charger doesn't matter. It's just a USB "charger" , you can get aftermarket or official Apple chargers domestically. It will have no bearing on the phone.

 

Take a close look:

 

https://www.apple.com/nz/shop/product/MR2A2X/A/30w-usb-c-power-adapter?fnode=97

 

 

See that cut-out? You can pull that off the US charger and swap in a NZ one.

[Stormseeker9]

@Kisai lol, that’s the charger you get in the US?

 

here in Europe we just get this tiny thing as a plug (And no, you can’t change the prongs)

[Euchre]

The adapters will tell you right on them the voltage range they are rated for, albeit in very tiny print. Many are 'global' and will work 100-220v AC. Those marked as such will just need a physical adapter to plug in to your local socket.

 

Of course, the part of the charger that plugs into the wall, in (at least) the case of an iPhone with a factory charger, is completely moot - because it is a separate 'brick' and cord. The cord is just a USB A to Lightning cord, so you can just use a local power compatible brick from wall socket power to USB A, since USB A will be a standard voltage globally. Be sure the amperage/wattage rating is at least as much as the factory charger. One shows amps vs the other showing watts? Here:

 

https://www.rapidtables.com/calc/electric/Amp_to_Watt_Calculator.html

https://www.rapidtables.com/calc/electric/Watt_to_Amp_Calculator.html

 

I did say 'at least' BTW, because many if not most cell phones come with such 2 piece chargers. Reason for this is the 'brick' is the only item that needs to be different in phones packaged for any given location in the world.

[Kisai]

54 minutes ago, Stormseeker9 said:

@Kisai lol, that’s the charger you get in the US?

 

here in Europe we just get this tiny thing as a plug (And no, you can’t change the prongs)

 

Actually that's the charger that I got with my iPad (though the model I linked is the NZ model), basically you can just pop the end off and it's a standard IEC 60320 C1 or C7 connector.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60320

 

 

 

So you can quite literately put anything with that end on it, there's likely a dozen different electronics that might already have one.

 

Like on that page, actually shows that same adapter (middle):

 

If you buy a newer iPad, you get the USB-C one, you actually get a smaller cube style with the non-folding prongs for US.

 

Incidentally, anything with a USB-C to mains ends up looking the same. If you look at the compatiblity list, it will show the the iPhone 8 and later, yet none of these come with lightning to usb-c cables (pay 25$ more for that).

 

The ones the iPhone actually come with are these 5 Watt ones:

 

 

I believe that once Apple moves everything to USB-C, (probably won't happen with the Macbook Pro's since USB-c tops out at 90 watts and a 15" laptop with any dedicated GPU requires at least 130w) they may just sell one two models, one for iPhone/iPad and one PD model for laptops.

[Stormseeker9]

@Kisai

 

The one we get here in Europe