Are all lightning cables the same or is there a different wattage between the IPhone 5 and IPad mini cable

I know this sounds really weird, but there are differences. I'm not sure how it happens but it seems that lightning cables had some power rating check mechanism applied to them.

I currently have an iPhone 6 and a 2.5-years old iPad 4. The iPad cable is obviously older and I can differentiate it easily from the new lightning cable coming from my iPhone. They both resides on my drawer so I used to interchange them when charging both the iPhone and iPad. I also had a brand new original lightning cable as a spare, never being used.

However, while charging the iPad with a Xiaomi 16000mAh and checking with Charger Doctor, I couldn't understand why it was just stuck at 1A, whereas some review easily shows the iPad pulling 2A. I am pretty sure that my Xiaomi power bank is an original one, too. So at some point I decided to plug the Charger Doctor with the same lightning cable to the iPad wall charger. And I was shocked that it's pulling 1A, from the original iPad wall charger! I swear I saw the iPad pulling 2A from the wall charger before, while testing my Charger Doctor.

So I took the other lightning cable, which is the one coming from the iPad, and plug it to the wall charger. Voila! The iPad was pulling 2A! Out of curiousity, I plug it back to my Xiaomi power bank, and now it shows the same dreaded 2 amps! I can't believe it myself hence I tried it multiple times, both with the power bank and iPad charger, and the amperage values were consistently the same!

This is what the amperage value says when charging the iPad with the iPhone cable:

And this is how it looks when using its own iPad cable:

Now it really explains why sometimes I think my iPad wall charger is charging faster, but slower the other times. I was plugging the iPhone lightning cable when it was charging it slower!

Then I took the spare lightning cable and check, and I was amazed that instead of 1A or 2A, the power draw from my spare cable was 1.7A 😢

Obviously it's more complicated than I thought, hence why I think there is some power rating check mechanism applied to the cables. Which mean you should check their performance with Charger Doctor when buying a lightning cable 😎

I had this question too because I saw that Belkin is selling a lightning cable specifically for the iPad which says: "2.1 amp cable supports iPad as well as iPhone charging." Now, when I look at Apple's lightning cable description, it doesn't state amps, just that its USB 2.0 (which I assume the Belkin is, but Belkin doesn't say, in the Apple store nor on its website from what I can see.)

Is the Belkin lightning cable a 2.0 USB (Will Apple go to 3.0 or whatever is next for USB with the new iPad this fall?)

And more importantly: What amps does the current lightning cable from Apple support? Anyone know?

Thanks!

I'm not really sure but it seems that I can't get my iPhone 6 to pull more than 1.2-1.3A continously with any of my chargers, even with 16-20% remaining charge. I'm still running 8.1.3 as I liked it more than 8.3 running on my iPad, if that makes sense. But even with that 1.2A-ish current, the phone quickly charges up.

- iPad charger, 1.2A. Waited for at least 30 seconds before taking the current sample.

- ORICO 2A port charger, 1.23A. Noticed a spike at 1.4A just for a second, but always goes back to 1.2A-ish.

- Xiaomi 16000mAh power bank, even worse at 1.1A. Goes stable there, though.

Allright so time for more test results! This time I've defined better scenario involving the iPad 4 in 22% charge state, brightness of 25%, being idle with no background app refresh, with the wifi connected. I've added some dots with permanent markers to prevent myself confusing which lightning cable is which.

1) iPad 4 charger test. Apparently the "1A-rated" cable wasn't as bad as it was, now consistently showing 1.2A-ish current while charging the iPad. Maybe the initial test had something to do with the remaining charge left in the iPad at that time. The cable with three dots does shows the blazing fast 2.4A-ish current.

2) Xiaomi 16000mAh power bank test. Different current draw on the 2 other cables, but consistently showing another being better than the other. At this point I guess Xiaomi 16000mAh doesn't replicate the iPad charger behaviour pretty well.

3) Xiaomi slim 5000mAh power bank test. Nothing interesting here other than showing that the power bank doesn't delivers its advertised 2.1A output. However, now I know why I could never get more than 1A current with the power bank to charge my iPhone 6.

4) Cheap 3rd party short lightning cables with pretty good lightning connector. Seems that I was underrating those cables, especially on the Remax ones, as it yields very good results.

5) Also being curious of the performance of my microUSB-to-lightning adapter, I decided to to pull some test with some random USB to microUSB cables. The first one is the dumb cable with data pins being shorted. It's the best cable to charge the Xiaomi 16000mAh allowing 2.2A current draw from Samsung charger. However, it seems that the iPad detects and decided 1A is the max. The second cable is a fancy microUSB splitter cable, with one end being dumb cable and the other being regular data cable. The dumb cable end shows consistent 1A draw, while the data end allows charging with full speed.

6) The last test is the fanciest of all setup, with a USB-to-miniUSB cable from my Sansa Clip+, connected to a miniUSB to microUSB cable, and finally ends with microUSB-to-lightning adapter. I think at this point it supposed to allow full 2.4A charging, but probably some detectable resistance due to the connections messed up to some degree here.

I actually had a microUSB-to-miniUSB adapter, and wonder what would USB-to-miniUSB -> miniUSB-to-microUSB -> microUSB-to-miniUSB -> miniUSB-to-microUSB -> microUSB-to-lightning would result like. However at that point running those tests already took 30 minutes, so probably later!

Well, one of our gauges may be off, but below 20% mine shows 1.5 A into an iPhone 6 using an iPad 12 W adapter, and 1.0 using the Apple cube. And it shows 1.0 charging a 4S (which is correct). It shows 2.1 amps into an iPad.

There's been some discussion of Lightning cables. The Apple cables are all the same; if you go an Apple store you can only buy a Lightning cable, but you have a choice of 1 meter or 2 meters. There is no difference between the cables sold for iPads and those sold for iPhones. Note also that there are THREE microcircuits in the Lightning end of the cable, but they have nothing to do with charging. They provide verification that the cable is certified, they make it possible to put the cable in with either side up by dynamically reassigning pins, and they provide digital to analog services.

See: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD818AM/A/lightning-to-usb-cable?fnode=8d43b25 760ca28f8c3e5fe82aaa95b4f7033d39526b026b…

I had this same question myself and googled around and found this page. The answers most people provided -- at the time -- were inadequate by answering in theories. I contacted a buddy of mine who is studying electrical physics the University of California Berkeley, and asked what lead to this phenomenon between the two Apples lightening cords. I shipped him the two cords and granted permission to dissect them.

While my buddy doesnt hold a doctorate in his field just yet; he is only 16 and an extraordinarily intelligent person.

His Conclusions:

• The wire gauge was different between the two -- the iPad cord being of a larger gauge.
• iPhone wire gauge: 24 (0.511mm)
• iPad wire gauge: 22 (0.644mm)
• The iPads charging cord used a silver alloy for its charging leads, instead of an aluminum alloy, like the iPhones cord.

I cannot find an Apple specifications page to answer your question. But, Apple only sells one type of lightening cable, and right on the store they list it as compatible with the iPhone 5, iPad 4th gen., iPad mini, iPod nano 7th gen and the iPod Touch 5th gen., so yes, it appears that all lightening cables from Apple are one and the same for all devices.

Thanks a lot for the information. I looked all over for info about the the rates of these cables and found this thread.

What you found is really odd and raises more questions than answers.

I recently purchased a Nillkin 2A charger for my iPhone 6 so I could charge it faster. I assumed that the cable, seemingly identical to the iPad's cable (as implied from its product page) will support the faster current. Though it's still early for me to tell whether there is a difference I think I will order a matching 2A rated Nillkin Lightning cable for the charger and maybe in the meantime someone can shed a little more light of this topic, I can use a spare cable anyway.

I wouldn't really bother trying to charge the iPhone 6 faster. iPads are different story as they had really huge batteries.

I just did a quick test to charge my iPhone 6 with the mighty iPad 4 lightning cable with the following results:

- iPad 4 charger = 1.2 amps

- Orico 2A super charger port = 1.3 amps

At the end, power draw is decided by the device, so I don't think iPhone 6 will pull more than 1.3 amps at any circumstances. Anyway 1.3 amps or even 1 amps are pretty quick for charging the tiny 1800mAh iPhone 6's battery.

What you need is a Xiaomi slim power bank and short lightning cable (bracelet or magnetic clip ones) for charging your iPhone on the go. I've only managed 1 amp with the power bank and short lightning cable setup, but it was fast enough and those stuff are always in my pocket anyway 🙂

Well, that stinks 😀. I wanted a faster way to charge my iPhone because I'm enlisting the army and there the battery dies fast and there is little time to charge it.

I actually do have a Xiaomi 10400mAh power bank and it really is a bang for the buck! As for a cable, I probably should get a more robust one as the flimsy Apple made one is infamous for breaking at the wrong place and time.

There's another artifact to consider: the charging rate varies depending on the current state of charge. If you start at zero and have a power source capable of higher currents it will charge at 1.5 amps until it reaches about 60%, then it will taper off gradually to about 0.5 amps at full charge.

That's a good info as well. Are you sure about the 60% number, as that seems quite extreme. I haven't tried plugging the Charger Doctor through the entire charging process, but it would be interesting to findout.

EDIT: Yes, I think you're right, when I tried charging iPhone 6 for the above values, it was at around 80% charge. I do vaguely remembered having it pulling 1.5A sometimes earlier.

watch_mania wrote:

I know this sounds really weird, but there are differences. I'm not sure how it happens but it seems that lightning cables had some power rating check mechanism applied to them.

I'm not convinced about this. Is it possible one of the cables you tested was damaged? We've got dozens of iPads and iPhones here, and everyone's using the cables that came with them interchangeably, and no one's noticed any difference in charging speed.

It might just be that they don't pay any attention to it, but it's hard to believe Apple would go to the trouble of selling a more powerful charger with the iPad, then allow people to accidentally use their iPhone cable with it and reduce the charging speed to that of an iPhone charger.

Spryfly wrote:

I had this question too because I saw that Belkin is selling a lightning cable specifically for the iPad which says: "2.1 amp cable supports iPad as well as iPhone charging." Now, when I look at Apple's lightning cable description, it doesn't state amps, just that its USB 2.0 (which I assume the Belkin is, but Belkin doesn't say, in the Apple store nor on its website from what I can see.)

Is the Belkin lightning cable a 2.0 USB (Will Apple go to 3.0 or whatever is next for USB with the new iPad this fall?)

And more importantly: What amps does the current lightning cable from Apple support? Anyone know?

Thanks!

By stating that the cable supports 2.1 amp charging they might just mean it's as good as a standard Apple Lightning cable. Some of the cheaper cables use very thin wires, and they might not support the full 2.1A.

I'm not convinced about this. Is it possible one of the cables you tested was damaged? We've got dozens of iPads and iPhones here, and everyone's using the cables that came with them interchangeably, and no one's noticed any difference in charging speed.

Broken as in physically damaged? I can assure you no, I took great care of the cables -- especially lightning cables as they are overpriced for sure -- never bend them, never wrap them. Both had been used for at least 2 months. Never had any warning or loose connection while charging with both the "1A-rated" and "2A-rated" ones, as well.

The "1A-rated" ones now stays in the car, while I've been used the "2A-rated" for iPad and my spare "1.7-A rated" occasionally for the iPhone.

I don't think anyone will notice any perceivable difference when charging an iPhone. But charging an iPad with 1A while using it -- which is the original reason why I fired the tests on an iPad with 20% charge left -- is definitely a torture. I thought my Xiaomi 16000mAh was a dud, but the tests shows otherwise.

I believe the reason why the cable had a built-in power rating mechanism is for safety reasons, especially on future devices. You wouldn't know if future iPads would be able to do 3A or even 4A charging, and this mechanism will prevent older or lower-rated cable from overheating by supplying more current than it is physically safe to.

I'll redo the iPad charging test using the iPad wall charger with all those 3 cables, just to make sure. It had just been fully charged though, so it might be a while before the next charge 😝