Cheap phone extras, and what the numbers in the titles are promising

These three are not alternatives to each other. They are three of the smallest things you can add to a phone, from the same shelf, and each one has a number or a word in its title that promises more than it delivers.

That is not a complaint about the sellers. It is how a marketplace title works: every specification that could possibly apply gets typed in, and the buyer sorts it out. Here is how to sort it out.

What actually matters in a cheap accessory

Ask two questions before anything else.

Does it carry power? If it does, the number in the title is a rating and not a promise, and the weakest part of the chain sets the speed. If it does not, the title is mostly describing plastic.

Is it holding the phone up? Anything that takes the weight of a phone, whether that is a strap, a mount or a stick-on patch, is one failure away from a cracked screen. That is the category to be fussy in.

Everything else on this shelf is cheap enough that a poor one is a small annoyance rather than a problem.

Cables: what a watt figure is promising

A cable rated at 60W is telling you what it can carry, not what it will deliver. Three things have to agree before anything fast happens: the charger, the cable and the phone. The lowest of the three wins, every time.

A modern phone does not draw 60W. The figure is headroom, which is genuinely useful, because a cable running well inside its rating stays cool and lasts longer. It is just not a speed.

Two details worth knowing:

• USB Power Delivery, the standard that gets you the higher figures, is negotiated between two Type-C ends. A cable with a rectangular USB-A plug on one end is not doing PD, whatever number is in the title. Plenty of these listings offer both, and the option list is where you choose.
• Charging and data are separate questions. Almost every cheap charging cable is USB 2.0 inside, which is fine for power and slow for moving video off a phone. Where a listing quotes no transfer speed, assume the slow one.

Braiding is worth having, with one caveat: cables fail at the neck where the cable meets the plug, and braiding does nothing for that. A moulded strain relief is what helps there, and it is visible in a close-up photograph.

Lens protectors: what you gain and what you give up

A phone camera lens sits proud of the body on almost every recent model, so it is the first thing to touch a table and the first thing to meet a paving slab. Sapphire or tempered glass over the top is a sensible bit of insurance and costs very little.

The trade is optical. You are adding two more air to glass surfaces in front of the lens, and glass reflects. In daylight you will not see it. At night, with a bright light in frame or the flash on, you can get a ghost or a haze that was not there before. Whether that matters depends on whether you photograph in the dark.

Two practical things:

Fit is per model, not per family. A title that lists half a dozen phones is listing what the seller stocks, and the camera arrays on those phones are different shapes. Choose your exact model at the option, then check it again.

The adhesive goes on the metal ring, not across the glass. Fitting one means lining it up once, because lifting it to try again usually means the ring no longer sticks. Clean the lens first with something lint free, in a room with no dust in the air, and expect to look at whatever you sealed in there for as long as you own the phone.

Straps and tethers: what is actually holding the phone

A retractable tether with a carabiner is a good idea badly served by most listings, because the interesting part is the anchor and the photographs are usually of the cord.

There are three common anchors. A patch, which is an adhesive pad that goes under the case with a tab poking out. A loop of cord threaded through a lanyard hole. And a plate that clips into something on the case.

The patch is the most common and the one to think about hardest. It is adhesive, it is holding a phone, and adhesive gets weaker with heat, cold and time. Sat under a case it is protected from most of that, which is why it works at all, but it is not a permanent fixing and it should not be treated as one.

What a tether is genuinely good for: stopping a phone hitting the floor when it slips out of a hand, and making it harder to snatch. What it is not good for is dangling the phone off a wrist for hours, which is the exact use the product photographs tend to show.

What to avoid

Anything mains powered from the cheapest end of this shelf. A cable and a piece of glass that turn out to be poor are a wasted afternoon. A plug is a different category of risk, and this is not the shelf to take it on.

A lens protector for “iPhone 15 14 13 12 11” with no option list. One of those statements is wrong. Camera arrays changed between those models.

Cables sold entirely on a watt number, with no photograph of the ends. The connector is the product. If you cannot see both plugs clearly, you do not know what you are buying.

A tether whose only photograph is of a phone dangling from a wrist. That is a rendering, and the anchor is the bit they did not show you.

Delivery to the UK

Two to three weeks is normal for small accessories, and they arrive in a padded envelope rather than a box, which is fine for cable and cord and worth checking carefully for anything made of glass.

Check the glass against the phone before peeling any backing film. A lens protector is one of the few things here where a wrong model becomes obvious in two seconds and unfixable a moment later.

What I would actually do

• Buying one thing: the cable. It is the accessory you will use every day, and a spare in a bag is never wasted.
• Buying for a phone that gets put down on rough surfaces: lens glass, and fit it the day it arrives rather than after the first scratch.
• Buying for someone who has dropped a phone twice: the tether, with a patch anchor, and set the expectation that the patch is a consumable.
• Skip: anything on this shelf that plugs into a wall.

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This is a buying guide built from what the listings publish and from prices I read and date myself. I have not used any of the accessories listed. When I buy and use one, this page becomes a hands-on review with my own photographs and it will say so at the top.