Apple Watch to come without a charging plug in the box, Apple says – and iPhone 12 likely to do the same

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The Apple Watch will come without its charging plug, Apple has said – and the iPhone 12 is likely to do the same.

The company will continue to ship the wire and small puck that sits on the back of the Watch while it is charging. But it will no longer sell the small brick that plugs into a wall socket and allows that USB wire to be plugged in for charging.

Apple said it had made the decision for environmental reasons. Given that so many people already have the chargers from previous phones, watches and other devices, it does not feel the need to increase its environmental footprint by including the plug within the box, it said.

Lisa Jackson, Apple's head of sustainability, said that it had made the decision because it's "not what we make, but what we don't make that counts". He said that the change would be the equivalent of having 50,000 fewer cars on the roads.

Excluding the charging plug also presumably cuts down the cost of making the Watch, as well as allowing for a reduction in the size of the box needed to ship it.

Rumours have already suggested that Apple will make the same move with the upcoming iPhone 12. The decision to remove it from the Apple Watch could indicate those rumours are true, and all of the arguments apply equally to removing the plug from the box of the iPhone too.

Apple says its 18-watt power adapter through its store, for £29 each.

In addition to coming without the brick, rumours suggest that the iPhone 12 – or the four phones likely to come under that name – will include an entirely new design, a LiDAR sensor for mapping 3D environments, as well as other improvements.