A new listing for the forthcoming Redmi Note 11 SE suggests that Xiaomi’s popular budget line could be next up to ditch the bundled charger.
MySmartPrice has noticed that the official product page for the forthcoming Indian launch of the Redmi Note 11SE is missing something. Scroll down to the Package Contents section of the Specs tab, and you’ll note there’s no mention of a wall charger.
Xiaomi’s budget brand has traditionally been strong on its bundled chargers. The Redmi Note 11 Pro Plus 5G included a whopping 120W charger, which is way faster than most phones worth three or four times the price. Even the Redmi Note 10S, upon which the Redmi Note 11SE appears to be heavily based, gave customers a respectable 33W charger.
The controversial trend of omitting a charging brick from smartphone packaging kicked off with Apple back in 2019. Its reasoning for not including a power brick with the iPhone 12 – and in every iPhone ever since – was on environmental grounds.
That trend has quickly spread throughout a number of flagship phone manufacturers, including Samsung and Sony. More recently, we’ve started seeing the move in more affordable phones, such as the Samsung Galaxy A series.
It’s undoubtedly true that there is a worthy environmental reason for removing power charges from boxes. Most smartphone users will have at least one charger lying around from previous phones, meaning they tend to represent so much wasted plastic.
What’s also true is that this is a profit-boosting win for manufacturers in terms of reduced material and packaging costs. Note that smartphone prices have remained conspicuously the same following the move to simpler box configurations.