In my previous post, I talked about how some counterfeit cables have identical looking lightning connectors. This is part 2 of the previous post.
Since I last posted, I have gotten my hands on those identical-looking cables and we shall compare them today.
A couple of my friends told me they found original cables (or so they think) on Carousell. I have since tested them with my tester, and they are all counterfeit. I am not sure how many sellers on Carousell are selling fake cables as original, but since the cost price is much more for the true MFi ones, I would guess that the majority of those being sold on Carousell are counterfeits.
It frustrates me when I see those sellers get so many positive reviews profiting away from selling fake cables, while I can't be as competitive as them selling cables with original lightning heads due to the higher cost. It sure was very tempting to follow the footsteps of other sellers and sell the counterfeit cables, but I don't think I can bring myself to tell people that the cable is original when it actually is not.
I chanced upon a post by a Japanese website (use Google Translate) which shows a similar phenomenon whereby the majority of lightning cables in the market are fakes. While I feel some sellers might know that they are knowingly deceiving their customers, I am also inclined to believe that most sellers are unaware whether the cables they have are fakes. As a seller, I believe that it is important to know what you are selling. It seems that if people are buying their cable and they are making money, there is no incentive for the sellers to educate themselves on what they are selling. As such, I hope I can spread awareness about this to the consumers so more people can make informed decisions when buying lightning cables.
TLDR
Below are key points to take note if you find the post too lengthy.
- Lightning cable that comes in the Apple Retail box does not guarantee it is authentic.
- Apple's website on differentiating between counterfeit and original lightning cables is outdated (discussed in a previous post)
- Fake lightning cables also have serial printed on them (discussed in a previous post)
- Current fake cables have identical looking connectors as the original and there is no way to tell unless you use a lightning tester like mine, or take it apart and scrutinise the chips, as:
- Some non-orignal/counterfeit/fake cables have identical looking internal layouts as the original, so you need to look at the chip markings to tell if it is original.
- Counterfeit lighting cables lack overvoltage protection
- Using a lightning tester like the YG-616 is a good and quick way to tell if your lightning cable is original, but there are fake testers out there that will show a counterfeit cable as original.
You might think that if the packaging does not feature any blue stickers, it is probably original. You might also have seen (or at least I remember seeing) articles talking about differentiating between the real and the fake using the presence of the orange arrow on the rear pull tab. Those methods are now obsolete.
I managed to get my hands on the packaging. No, not used packaging, but NEW packaging that I can use to put counterfeit cables in.
These packagings seem to look identical to what you find in the Apple Stores.
Therefore, the presence of packaging cannot be used to determine if the cable is authentic / MFi Certified.
Packaging
To start off, I highly recommend reading my previous post if you have not done so.
In the previous post, the counterfeit cable featured a blue sticker on the corner with Chinese characters that mean 'original'.
You might think that if the packaging does not feature any blue stickers, it is probably original. You might also have seen (or at least I remember seeing) articles talking about differentiating between the real and the fake using the presence of the orange arrow on the rear pull tab. Those methods are now obsolete.
I managed to get my hands on the packaging. No, not used packaging, but NEW packaging that I can use to put counterfeit cables in.
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| Brand NEW Packaging |
These packagings seem to look identical to what you find in the Apple Stores.
Therefore, the presence of packaging cannot be used to determine if the cable is authentic / MFi Certified.
Lightning Head / Chipset
In the previous post, I found a picture showing those with internals looking nearly identical to the original ones when you compare the pictures with other teardowns. |
| Picture from previous post, look at 8颗料 vs 美版 |
As mentioned above, I now have gotten my hands on multiple lightning cables that feature the 8 颗料 internals. I have torn the one I have apart and the layout indeed seems like the one in that picture that I found previously.
Before I go any further, let me explain what I know about the layouts and the chipsets. If you cannot read Chinese, the words in the picture above are not immediately clear. The top right one is apparently the 'American Version', which would mean the original chipset. The other 3 should be counterfeits. 8颗料means 8 components, as there are 8 components on the lightning head, and 5 颗料 represents 5 components respectively. The bottom left one is referred to as 蜘蛛脚 which means spider legs, as the ICs on that lightning head has pins that look like the legs of a spider.
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| Can you tell which one is counterfeit? |
Before I go any further, let me explain what I know about the layouts and the chipsets. If you cannot read Chinese, the words in the picture above are not immediately clear. The top right one is apparently the 'American Version', which would mean the original chipset. The other 3 should be counterfeits. 8颗料means 8 components, as there are 8 components on the lightning head, and 5 颗料 represents 5 components respectively. The bottom left one is referred to as 蜘蛛脚 which means spider legs, as the ICs on that lightning head has pins that look like the legs of a spider.
Now onto the type of chipsets. They go by C48, E75 etc. Found a post online that goes through them which I find clear even though I had to use google translate as the site was in Japanese.
Now, I will go through the main categories of cables available currently, which I will also call as chipset. There seem to be 4 main types of chipsets.
The first type, the type also showed in the previous post, is what I would reference as Copycat as shown on my tester. Copycat cables can range from the cheapest looking internals such as those $1 lightning cables to those having an identical internal layout as the original cable.
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| Some Copycat cables can have scores of above 90 |
The second type would be the Taiwan chipset. I still don't know how different it is from the copycat chipset, but if my understanding is right, most of them on the market have an identical internal layout to the original (8 components / 8 颗料), but I also found some on the market that apparently have 5 components (5 颗料), which could be either of the ones in the bottom row as shown in the picture above.
From the prices of Taiwan cables on the market, I would infer that they are generally higher quality, whereas for copycat chipsets they could range from high quality to utter garbage.
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| So far all Taiwan Chipsets I've seen have a score of above 80. |
The third one would, of course, be the original chipset, where my tester would show original.
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| True original chipset |
I thought that was all until I recently found so-called original "后贴/后组" chipsets, which brings us to the 4th type. The Chinese words translate to 'back pasted/assembled' chipsets. I will call them half original chipsets in this post. I have yet to take one apart, but I managed to buy 1. From what I understand, these seem to have most of the original parts of an original lightning head, just that the largest square looking component is not original. I do not know the source of such chipsets, but I would guess they could be from faulty original cables or some factory rejects.
When plugged into my tester, it shows up as original but beeps 3 times. The tester beeps 3 times whenever it detects a counterfeit cable or an original one with anomalies. I have contacted the seller of this tester and was told that this 4th type of cable is not considered original. Later in this post, we will compare the overvoltage protection capabilities.
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| Half original cable. Notice the yellow coloured letter A on the bottom right corner? |
Now, back to the teardown.
If you haven't noticed, the picture above includes 3 lightning heads, but 1 of them had its head broken off. These lightning heads are very fragile and would almost certainly break unless you are very skilled in taking them apart. I have taken apart a handful by now, but I still tend to break almost every single one I take apart. This is especially when taking off the metal bracket, the step after removing the main outer white plastic.
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| Removing this metal bracket usually results in connector part breaking away from the board |
Once you successfully remove the metal bracket, you are greeted with a bunch of components on one side, and 4 solder pads on the other side. The side with the components is what we would like to focus on. However, there is a layer of resin/epoxy over the components, hampering the view of the components. I discovered a trick to remove it, which is to simply heat the resin/epoxy using a soldering iron and using a tweezer on your other hand to scrape it away. The difference becomes more apparent when that layer is removed.
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| Notice the layer of resin on the 3 broken board vs the one with still the lightning connector attached? |
If you are sharp-eyed, you might have noticed in the above picture that the internals of 1 of them is not like the other 2. That one with the wire attached is the counterfeit one. The main difference I have noticed is the largest square chip. On the authentic one, it seems to be shiny and reflective on the top (after scraping away the layer of resin) while the one on the counterfeit is black.
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| Counterfeit one on the left, original on the right |
I have marked out the chip in white boxes. So far, I have yet to see counterfeit cables with the shiny big chip. Therefore, I feel that if you do not have the tester, tearing down and looking at this chip is a good way to tell if the lightning cable is authentic. There is a possibility that counterfeit lightning cables in the future would have the same looking big chip as the authentic, but until then, this seems to be a cost-efficient way of checking your cable, although you are almost guaranteed to have a non-working cable after the teardown.
Other than that big square chip, the only other difference that I seem to find is the colour of the PCB. The counterfeit one seems slightly lighter in green than the original, but I doubt it will be easy to tell if you do not have an original one on hand to compare side by side.
The last thing to note is that some original lightning heads only have 2 shiny components.
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| Boxed in white, non-shiny component |
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| Boxed in white, shiny component |
Therefore, other components are not a very reliable way of differentiating between fake and real. The counterfeit one also has 2 shiny components. Below is a picture of 3 original lightning heads for your reference if you decide to tear yours down.
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| Assortment of Original Lightning heads for comparison |
Therefore, if you are looking at a teardown of the lightning cable, don't just look at the layout of the components, but look out especially for the big square chip before you believe it is original. I am not sure if the half original cable can be differentiated using this method, I will update this post if I tear it down in the future.
From what I understand, the big square chip is responsible for overvoltage protection amongst a bunch of other functions. I decided to test the overvoltage protection, so read on to find out how the counterfeit or half original cable compares to the original.
So, what's the difference since they look almost identical even on the inside?
I recently bought a S$50 USB tester from YZXStudio from TaoBao. Those who have searched on USB testers might find this familiar and looks like USB Testers from Power-Z. Apparently, I found out that Power-Z are actually counterfeit versions of the YZXStudio ones and the guy behind YZXStudio is actually the developer. If you can read Chinese I recommend you check out this link where the YZXStudio seller exposes other brands like Power-Z. The listing seems convincing and it seems that Power-Z testers are inferior to that of YZXStudio, so if you're looking to get one you should probably get one from YZXStudio. You might want to read my other blog on how to buy items on Taobao. (not sponsored btw, just thought the original developer deserved some credit.) Anyways, I digress.
There's a function in it that can test lightning cables.
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| AppleOldMFi Function |
It checks whether a lightning cable is original or MFi Certified by checking its current draw across 2 voltages. This would only work for older E75 and C48 chipsets that do not support fast charging, as the newer C91 chipset that supports fast charging would allow higher voltage to pass through so this test would not work.
The tests are accurate and mirror the results of my other lightning tester (YG-616).
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| Cable that came in iPhone box, original E75 |
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| MFi Certified Adapter |
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| Taiwan E75 chipset |
All MFi Certified and original lightning chipsets draw a current of around 0.41mA when not connected to any device, while non-original and counterfeit ones draw either no current or a lower current. The Taiwan E75 chipset draws 0.23mA, while the 'Copycat' and half original ones do not draw any or very little current (0.01mA).
If the current is at 5v is around 0.41mA, the USB Tester slowly increases the voltage to check if the current drops at around 6.4v. I realise that for counterfeit chipsets, the device does not increase the voltage to check for a drop of current at higher voltages. Therefore, I wanted to see how the counterfeit chipsets respond to a high voltage.
This USB tester has a trigger function for QC3.0 so I can manually select a voltage of around 6.4v to check current draw. Results are shown below. Their respective chipsets are shown on the lightning tester.
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| Original E75 Chipset |
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| Taiwan Chipset |
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| Copycat Chipset |
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| Half Original Chipset |
I did not include pictures for current draw at 5v to reduce the clutter, so I compiled them in the table below:
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
From the results above, it almost seems like the Copycat and the half original chipset have overvoltage protection as they do not draw any current. However, we do not know if the voltage gets passed through to the lightning connector. To test this, we need to use a lightning device. I happen to have a pair of cheap clone AirPods Pro on hand, so it shall be the test subject for this experiment.
We can see that the original lighting chipsets do not pass any voltage through when the input is at 6.4v, but the copycat, Taiwan and half original ones pass power through. The half original one seems to pass more power through than the copycat and Taiwan ones. I'm not sure if that means it is more dangerous than the Taiwan or Copycat ones, but it for sure lacks overvoltage protection.
An article talking about Tristar (Charging IC) replacement goes over how such counterfeit cables can damage your charging IC. Apparently, the phone's onboard overvoltage protection gets disabled when it detects an original cable since the big square chip in the original lightning head is responsible for overvoltage protection. When using a counterfeit cable, it disguises itself as an original, so the phone turns off its overvoltage protection anyways, leaving you with no overvoltage protection at all.
My little experiment above shows that while higher quality knockoff cables can last long, they ALL lack overvoltage protection, and should be avoided whenever possible. If you experience a power surge when using a counterfeit cable, it would likely fry the charging IC on your iPhone or whatever iDevice you are charging.
Recommendations/Opinions on Choice of Cables
Given a choice, I strongly recommend using an original lightning cable, even though some higher quality counterfeits can last very long, seemingly as long as the original ones due to the lack of overvoltage protection in ALL counterfeit cables I have tested.
If there isn't a choice, I would say you could still use a high-quality counterfeit cable, but only if I am sure the charger I am using is of high quality. If you happen to be in such a scenario, I suggest you only use a counterfeit cable only if you have the original Apple wall charger. I have gone through in a previous post on how to differentiate between counterfeit and original for UK type plugs, hopefully that method of differentiating still applies. If in doubt just use the one that came in your iPhone retail box if you bought your iPhone new and sealed from a reliable source.
If using a car charger, you should definitely refrain from using a counterfeit cable, as there is a high risk of 12v being sent to your device if the charger malfunctions. In this case, I would use a powerbank, or route the power through a reliable powerbank (Xiaomi ones seems good) if using a counterfeit cable. Not sure if doing it this way would provide more protection, but I think it does. Do correct me if I am wrong.
I would recommend using a high-quality counterfeit cable only for those using an old iPhone that does not cost much and does not have important data.
You can ensure that the cables are authentic by purchasing from a reliable retailer or purchase a cable from me and get to use my device to test your cables. If you live in Singapore, you can find me at https://sg.carousell.com/gekjunxu. I currently sell the MicroUSB to Lightning Adapter (MFi Certified), original lightning cables and the taiwan chipset cables.
Fake Lightning Testers
There are also fake lightning testers out there, made for sellers of fake cables. Those devices will show the fake lightning cables as original, and cost about half as my device does.
I feel that the tester that I use, the YG-616 is one of the more accurate testers out in the market. The developer of my device releases firmware updates regularly, which ensures that the device is less likely to detect any counterfeits as the original. I personally have doubts about the accuracy of other testers on the market, such as the ATS-618 ones as they don't seem to have a way for firmware upgrades.
There are counterfeits of the device I use (YG-616). To ensure you are looking at an original device, ensure that there is a watermark on the bottom right corner of the device.
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| Fake vs Real YG-616 Tester |
Conclusion
This marks the end of the comparison for Apple Lightning Cables for now. If time and budget permits, I will take apart more lightning cables such as the 'half original' ones in the future for additional comparison.
