Tips for charging an iPhone overseas
A couple of years ago we went on a trip to Italy and knew we wanted to take our US iPhones with us. We also knew that power voltage in Europe was 240 volt. Without doing much research we bought a power converter to take with us to charge the phones and computers. The power converter was noisy when plugged into the outlet and would often times fall out of the outlet on its own, and with 2 iPhones, a video camera, and 2 computers it was difficult to keep everything charged up with just one power converter.
We made a mistake buying the somewhat pricey power converter. All we really needed was a European style plug adapter that we could plug our US iPhone plug into that would then plug into a European wall outlet.
To see our YouTube video on Tips for charging an iPhone overseas, please click here.
After doing a little research this year for our stay in England, I found that the same is true here for charging an iPhone. All we need is a plug adapter.
If you look on the US plug that comes with your iPhone that the USB portion of the cable plugs into, you will see that (the writing is really small) the US plug states a power input of: 110-240V – 50-60Hz and the US plug outputs power at 5V. This simply means that whatever your power source, whether it is US or European, the US plug will deliver the correct voltage for charging your iPhone. Since you can’t plug the US plug into a European outlet you need a plug adapter.
Our current home base is in Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk County in England, and if you look at the plug adapters on the left you can see that they are a 3 blade type adapter. The blade part of the plug adapter is what inserts into the British outlet, and then all we have to do is insert the US plug of the iPhone into the back of the plug adapter.
Click on any of the images for an enlarged view.
On a recent trip to Finland to get our son situated for school there, we took along a bunch of the European style plug adapters that you see on the left (2 prong type) to charge our iPhones and computers. Computers from Apple work on the same principle as the iPhones, they will charge the same way.
Plus the plug adapters are much cheaper than the power converters. The power converter we took to Italy a couple of years ago cost around $50, although I see on Amazon they are much cheaper now, but the plug adapters are only a few dollars each. We bought 6-packs of the adapters for under $10.
So if you’re taking a trip to Europe or the UK and you want to charge your iPhones and Apple computers, simply buy a few plug adapters before your trip.
