Official–And Unofficial–Third-Party Lightning Cables Coming Soon

We’ve been tracking third-party Lightning cables pretty closely, because millions of people are receiving new iDevices and want a second charger.  We’ve seen the “authentication” chip cracked, and we saw a third-party cable that lights up, but none of them have beaten’s Apple’s $20 asking price for a Lightning cable. Until now. iPhone5Mod, the same people behind that light-up dock we covered earlier, have released more boring, straightforward Lightning cables–plus they’re significantly less expensive than Apple’s version. The bad news? They’re still $10.

Many cables using the cracked Chinese chips are not officially licensed Apple cables, and therefore they’re in a legal grey area. If you only want officially licensed-Apple goods plugging into your phone, iLuv has produced an entire line of Lightning-compatible accessories and cables. The bad news there is that they won’t be available until 2013, meaning they miss the all-important Christmas shopping season. Sometimes being bad does pay off.

Photo courtesy of iPhone5Mod.

Kif Leswing
Categories: Apple
Tags: iPad mini, iPhone 5, lightning