Apple’s decision to leave out the charging adapter from the iPhone 12 retail box has been met with a lot of flack from across the industry including a whole bunch of memes and getting trolled by the likes of Samsung and Xiaomi.
Apple’s point is that people already have enough charging adapters for the company to not ship one more – and to be honest, that’s not entirely wrong.
However, people, and other smartphone manufacturers, don’t seem to agree and have joked about how Apple will ship an empty retail box by 2030 because people already have enough smartphones.
But what Apple does today, many companies do tomorrow (like dropping the 3.5mm headphone jack, another controversial decision). And in a start of sorts, away from the jokes and trolling, Xiaomi has committed to reducing the use of plastic in its packaging by up to 60% starting with Europe.
The company has kicked off their plans with the Xiaomi Mi 10T Lite and the retail box for this smartphone contains less plastic than what it did a couple of years ago. The main reason behind this is the fact that Xiaomi is looking to rescue the cost of production with an eye on the environment.
The move might be aimed at “conserving the planet”, however, the in-box accessories like the charger, the USB-C cable and the TPU case are still there. The Mi 10 Lite was launched in Europe earlier this year with all the accessories in tow.
So this isn’t a big step towards environmental conservation as compared to what Apple is doing. Also, the retail boxes are mostly made of paper and considerably useless once you have unboxed the contents. This clearly just looks like Xiaomi trying to make most of the controversy.
