Apple’s MagSafe Battery Pack Is no one-trick pony

The headline says it all.

Joe Rossignol reports this week for MacRumors the iPhone Air’s MagSafe Battery Pack is capable of charging other, smaller devices. Specifically, Rossignol writes Apple has given the USB-C port on its $99 accessory the nifty (and nerdy) capability to “charge an AirPods case, Apple Watch, or another small device that supports USB Power Delivery at up to 4.5W.” The information comes from Apple’s description of the Battery Pack’s specifications on its product page. Indeed, the company does state the reincarnated MagSafe Battery Pack can be used by users to “charge smaller accessories via USB-C.”

“So long as the iPhone Air MagSafe Battery has a sufficient charge, connecting a USB-C cable from the battery pack to the small accessory will initiate charging of the accessory—it could even be something like a small USB-powered fan,” Rossignol said.

He adds the Lightning MagSafe Battery Pack could not charge smaller devices.

Perhaps Apple has a MagSafe Battery Pack in its design lab that supports the iPhone 17 and 17 Pro, but it isn’t out right now. Even through testing/upgrading to iPhone Air with the Battery Pack, I will keep using my two Lightning Battery Packs until the day they die or are otherwise rendered obsolete by software. I wrote about it about a year ago, and what I said last September remains just as true this September. The deep integration with iOS is awesome, as is the accessible way to get it on and of my iPhone using the magnets. Perhaps no device captures the essence of the importance of hardware accessibility more than the MagSafe Battery Pack—of either generation. Short of a USB-C version coming at some point, I strongly recommend scouring eBay for the Lightning-equipped model while it still lingers about the secondary marketplace.