A recent report suggests Samsung will follow in Apple's footsteps by choosing not to include a power adapter or earbuds in its next flagship phone's packaging. 

The news was first reported by Brazilian site, Tecnoblog, which uncovered a report at Anatel (Brazil's equivalent to FCC), which states (roughly translated) that "the cell phone will not be sold with a power supply" and also "the cell phone will not be sold with headphones".

Whether or not this will be a global approach is yet to be seen. A rumour recently suggested the opposite was true and that Samsung will be including a charger and earbuds in its packaging.

It's unclear which is true, or whether this could be a case of having one approach in the South American market, and another approach elsewhere. We'll likely only find out for sure when Samsung releases the Galaxy S21 series to market. 

There has been increasing pressure on big tech giants who ship millions of phones each month to reduce their negative impact on the planet.

Part of that is reducing its carbon footprint through making shipping more efficient, but also reducing unecessary electronic waste. 

Apple moved to reduce electonic waste in its products with the iPhone 12 series phones, and - in doing so - was able to reduce the size of its phone retail boxes, thus enabling the company to fit more of them into same-sized shipments. 

It was also touted as a move to stop additional chargers and earphones from making their way to landfill, completely unused. 

For Samsung, it would make sense to be seen as one of the early leaders in the move to make products more environmentally friendly. However that looks.