Can I charge my Apple Watch with an iPhone charger?
You’ve lost your Apple Watch charger or just wondering if you can only bring your iPhone charger with you? Let’s check if it’s possible
You can use the power adapter of your iPhone charger to charge your Apple Watch, but you can’t use the lightning cable.
To be able to answer the question, I first need to get into technical details about electricity and power, then the dimensions of the iPhone charger. I also made tests to verify the information in this blog post.
Amps and Voltage requires to charge an Apple Watch
Apple Watches can only accept 5 volts to charge the battery, and up to 1 amp of current for the latest Apple Watch Ultra, for fast charging. Depending on your Apple Watch model, the current needed to charge can change, but the voltage won’t change, it’s always 5 volts max.
According to the test realized here, an Apple Watch Serie 8 can also charge using 5 W of power, as the Apple Watch Ultra.
So, to charge an Apple Watch, you need a charger that delivers a voltage of 5 volts, and 1 amp of current could be great if you want to fast charge your Watch. Any Apple charger, even an old iPhone charger, can deliver the power needed to charge an Apple Watch.
Can you use the iPhone charger to charge your Apple Watch?
An iPhone charger does have enough power to charge an Apple Watch, but as iPhones still have a lightning charging port, can you use an iPhone charging cable to charge an Apple Watch?
Unfortunately, you can’t use a lightning cable to charge an Apple Watch yet. The only way to charge an Apple Watch is to use the appropriate MagSafe charger.
Therefore, you can use the power adapter of your iPhone to charge your Apple Watch, as far as you have the Watch MagSafe cable to plug it into the power adapter.
There here is a hidden port on the Apple Watch, if it can be used to charge the Watch, it requires more tools and can damage the Watch.
Can you use an iPhone MagSafe charger to charge an Apple Watch?
An iPhone MagSafe charger has a circular magnet built-in, which is the part used to wireless charge the iPhone. This MagSafe circular magnet has an outside diameter of 2.13 inches/54.1 mm and an inside diameter of 1.8 inches/46 mm.
See Lightning chargers vs MagSafe chargers.
Each Apple Watch model also has a circular magnet built-in, because that’s how MagSafe is made. However, the diameter of the circular magnet is different on the Apple Watch than on the iPhone.
The built-in circular magnet in the Apple Watch is too short to be used with a MagSafe iPhone charger. As the Apple Watch is thinner than the inner diameter of a MagSafe charger, it won’t be possible to use the same charger.
However, some charging stations can be used to charge several Apple devices at the same time, such as this awesome cube from Anker that I bring with me everywhere I’m going now.
Anker 3-in-1 Cube with MagSafe
$119.99
Can you charge an Apple Watch using an iPhone?
Each time a new iPhone or Apple Watch is about to be released by Apple, the same rumor is appearing again and again.
Unfortunately, it’s not possible to charge an Apple Watch on the back of the iPhone, there is no other circular magnet built into the iPhone other than the MagSafe one.
Several Android phones allow this, but this is not the case yet for Apple. I will keep this post updated if Apple decides to add this feature to their iPhones.
Author
Maxime Levesque is a technical engineer with more than 5 years of professional experience. He is an expert in computer and phones, mostly on Apple products. Maxime is also the founder of TechBrowser.
Post your comment