If you’ve been waiting for Apple to finally introduce an iPhone with a USB-C port, we have bad news: it won’t arrive this year. But the intrigue continues as to the future that awaits the only porting of the iPhone in the coming months.
Let’s start with the iPhone 14. According to iDropNewsApple “working on speeds [USB] 3.0 for the iPhone 14 Pro connector. The current Lightning port is USB 2.0, which has a much slower transfer rate of 480 Mbps.
USB 3.0 offers a transfer rate of about 5 Gbps, which is about 10 times faster than the current Lightning port. LeaksApplePro reports that the feature will likely be exclusive to the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max.
Apple actually used a faster Lightning port on the original 12.9-inch iPad Pro before switching to USB-C in 2018. It required a special adapter to unlock the faster speeds, which were limited to the 12-inch iPad Pro. and 2nd generation) and the iPad Pro 10.5″.
When the iPad moved to USB-C, it increased the transfer speed to 10Gbps and pushed it even higher with the iPad Pro with M1, which supports 40Gbps Thunderbolt speeds.
While including a faster Lightning port on the iPhone 14 would be another point of differentiation between the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro, things could get even more interesting with the iPhone 15.
Members of the European Parliament last week announced their support for “a common charger for portable electronic devices” by an overwhelming vote of 43 to 2. The new rules, which are expected to become official in May, would require all phones, tabletsHeadphones and headsets that support wired charging have a USB-C port.
The regulations would affect many devices, including the AirPods charging case, but none are larger than the iPhone. If this goes ahead, Apple might be forced to switch to USB-C with the iPhone 15 or ditch the port altogether and rely entirely on MagSafe and wireless charging.
Although the rules would only apply to phones sold in the European Union, Apple is highly unlikely to sell iPhones with USB-C ports overseas and Lightning ports in the United States.
Either way, the change would be significant for obvious reasons. The iPhone has had a Lightning port for 10 years, since the iPhone 5 in September 2012, so switching to USB-C would be a monumental change that would affect countless accessories and cables.
And if Apple removed the port entirely, it would raise questions about charging speed and CarPlay, among other features.
So don’t lose sight of the annoying iPhone charging port. Things are about to get very exciting.
Original article published on igamesnews.com.
