Lightning Cable Teardown Reveals Chip Details

[Maura]

9to5 Mac reports that Chipworks has performed an in-depth teardown of Apple’s new Lightning cable (I love that even Apple’s cables are interesting enough to warrant teardowns!), revealing that the cable contains a TI chip, “BQ2025” (as well as several others, of course!), which is a bit of a mystery, as it is not listed on TI’s website. Looking at four other similar chips that are listed on TI’s website, Chipworks surmises that the BQ2025 could have “some security implementation”. 9to5 Mac says that it is also possible that the chip is used by the Lightning connector as a way of conserving electricity, perhaps by only drawing the required amount of electricity to fully charge the device, and then stopping at that point. This could be why the iPhone 5 has been found to cost just 41 cents per year for a daily charge. Chipworks goes on to say that the Lightning cable is the first secure cable that it has seen with such a security device built in.

Source: TI chip in Lightning cable could allow iOS devices to save electricity when charging | 9to5Mac

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[Horsehaulin]

Interesting, I like the $0.41 per year to charge. Luckily most of my charging takes place in the company truck.