iPhone 13 needs to steal this OnePlus 9 Pro feature. Seriously

Commentary: The next version of MagSafe needs to be much faster.

One of the more persistent rumors about the next iPhone (some call it the iPhone 13) is that Apple will be removing the Lightning port altogether. And with the launch of MagSafe charging on the iPhone 12 series last year, it's not hard to imagine a future where we just rely on wireless charging to power our phone's battery. An iPhone 12 with a MagSafe charger can go from 0 to 50% battery charge in an hour. It's not a replacement for the much faster charging you get with a Lightning cable and a wall charger.

The new OnePlus 9 Pro might have an answer to the iPhone without a port conundrum. For weeks, OnePlus has been touting the phone's cameras, designed in partnership with Hasselblad, the legendary Scandinavian camera company. You'd think cameras would be the best feature, but they're not. Instead, it's the OnePlus 9 Pro's ability to wirelessly charge at 50 watts that really stands out.

This means you can go from a dead battery to a full battery in about 45 minutes without plugging in the phone. What's more impressive is that this level of fast wireless charging comes in a phone that costs $ 969 (£ 829, which turns out to be around AU $ 1,490). To give you some perspective, the $ 999 iPhone 12 Pro and a MagSafe charger peak at 15 watts. Imagine being able to charge your iPhone wirelessly with a MagSafe charger at 50 watts instead of 15.

The OnePlus 9 Pro, like last year's Asus ROG Phone 5 and OnePlus 8T, uses a two-cell battery that charges both cells simultaneously. To achieve this optimized wireless charging, you need the OnePlus Warp Charge 50 wireless charger for $ 70, which has two coils to charge each battery to 25 watts. The charging stand lets you charge the 9 Pro vertically or horizontally and has a built-in fan to keep things from getting too hot.

If Apple were to remove the iPhone's Lightning port altogether, I realize there would be more to it than batteries and charging. What would come in the actual box to charge the phone? A low-power MagSafe charger? How much would an Apple 50-watt wireless charger cost? If OnePlus charges $ 70, it's easy to see that Apple is charging $ 99 or $ 129. Would this feature only be available on the “Pro” versions of the iPhone 13 or would it be on the other end of the line? Plus, what replaces the data exchange provided by the Lightning port?

If Apple's future is a portless iPhone with only a MagSafe charge, then the OnePlus 9 Pro and its 50-watt wireless charger are proof of concept of how it works. This solves perhaps the biggest concern many of us would have, besides how much we would have to spend to change our existing chargers. And if Apple keeps the Lightning port, the OnePlus 9 Pro shows that we should expect a lot more from the next version of MagSafe charging.