Chinese smartphone maker, Xiaomi announced some special news about its next big mobile launch. Mi 11, the upcoming model of the company will be shipped without a charger in the box. This decision by the company has been making news as the company followed the path of Apple who also announced to ditch chargers in the iPhone 12 box.
Earlier when Apple announced their decision on ditching the charger, Xiaomi mocked Apple through a tweet, “Don’t worry, we didn’t leave anything out of the box with the #Mi10TPro”.
Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun in a post on popular Chinese social platform Weibo confirmed this move of the company about the charger. “Xiaomi Mi 11 is officially unveiled with brand new packaging, so light and thin. Behind the thinness, we made an important decision: in response to the call of technology and environmental protection, Xiaomi 11 canceled the included charger,” he wrote on Weibo.
“Today everyone has a lot of idle chargers, which is both your trouble and the burden of the environment. We are well aware that this decision may not be understood or even complained about. Is there a better solution between industry practice and environmental protection?” he added further.
Samsung, in one of its ads after Apple’s announcement, reminded its customers that the charger is included in its Galaxy box. However, later the ad was deleted as rumors continued to build that Samsung in their Galaxy S21 phones.
Chargers are owned by almost every mobile phone user. The percentage of users owning a charger is very high as a new charger is offered with every mobile phone till now. Large swathes of the population have chargers inside their family. Thus these accessories are big contributors to e-waste.
Though Apple is excluding chargers in its box, the price hasn’t seen any big change. The base price of the iPhone 11 was $699 however, the new charger-free iPhone 12 is priced up to $799. The price increase is also seen in the Xiaomi though it is discontinuing the charger, compared to Mi10 the new Mi 11 costs $100 more.
This situation reflects Apple’s leadership role in the tech space. When the company announced the killing of the headphone jack on its mobile devices brought it huge criticism. During the same time, other smartphone makers used their headphone jacks as the selling point. Later these same companies avoided headphone jacks in their later mobiles.
Xiaomi Mi 11 launching today.
Xiaomi Mi 11 series is ready to launch in India through the main program being hosted in China. Some reports suggest that as of now the phone will go on pre-booking just after the launch while the device will be available in physical stores in Jan 2021.
In China, the price of the mobile has leaked a few days back, the price according to these reports is CNY4,500 or $687/565. However, the Indian price of the mobile is not clear yet but experts suggest that it can be around Rs 50,000.