Edit: see comments for clarifications.
I am probably late on this one, but god damn this is one nasty trick by Philips.
Context; I recently decided to upgrade my shaver, from a Philips One Blade to Philips an all-in-one-trimmer-7000. As you can see on the pictures below, they changed the charger for the adapter by maybe 1–2 millimetres, just so the old charger could not be used by the old charger. Now, this normally isn’t a big deal, but with the new trimmer, the charger is USB-A only. Where’s the previous one had the plug on it instead. To me this is mildly infuriating as I know need to get an extra adapter just to charge my shaver in the bathroom. They had the exact same design for the chargers, yet changed it just slightly so they wouldn’t be able to be reused? Why… Philips… why?
Edit: many good points in the comments! I don’t know how to manually check the voltage, but seems like folks figured it out in the comments too. Should have just been USB-C!
Coincidentally, I just got a knock-off Soda Stream from Phillips. It’s over $150 cheaper and works 2x-3x times better. I wanted to build something similar for a homemade soda bar concept, and discovered how truly cheap it can be to make soda and carbonated water at home. I was shocked at what a simple concept it is, and how much of a profit these sodas water companies make. Phillips even charging $50 for their system is a total rip-off.
Truthfully, I think the increase in quality in the Phillips machine is due to fewer parts is an “exception that proves the rule” as these in-bottle carbonators seem to work better with fewer parts. It’s just a pressure hose connected to a co2 tank. Literally, all of $6 if you were to build one yourself from parts on Amazon (or $3 if you got he Alibaba route)
I truly believe that the fewer parts the better in any DIY or commercial product due to the less chance of a failure in a part if there are fewer parts. This works fantastically for the “lower quality” producing companies, like Phillips.
My inventive and engineering entrepreneur friends and I call this “fewer parts the better” concept, a “Murphy’s law compensator” as the fewer parts there are, the fewer parts that can statistically “go wrong”