If you thought the 40 Gbps speeds that the Thunderbolt 4 port on modern Macs are capable of delivering were already amazing, brace yourself. The USB Promoter Group recently released specifications for the USB4 version 2.0 standard, which will transmit data at 80 Gbps through USB-C ports.
More data, more pixels and a chance for iPhones to move forward
I don’t understand why they called this standard USB4 version 2.0 and not directly USB5 (the USB BOM thing has been completely out of whack for years and it already sounds like a joke), but one can think of the effects that the arrival will be of this new standard in Apple products.
Current Macs and iPad Pros use Thunderbolt 4 in their USB-C ports thanks to the M1 and M2 chip families, and shouldn’t have too much trouble adopting this USB 4 version 2.0. That means higher data transmission or even being able to use screens with more pixelssince USB4 version 2.0 prepares for the latest specifications of DisplayPort ports.
These speeds can also be a very good argument for future iPhone models (probably starting with the iPhone 15) to adopt the USB-C standard, although I doubt these speeds will be achieved due to the lower voltage that the device and its battery would have. . But for local backups it would be a godsend: nowadays iPhones still use USB 2.0 speeds to transfer information via its cable. Any improvement in this regard will be welcome, no matter how small.
Apple will surely integrate these speeds with the arrival of Thunderbolt 5, whose specifications we have known for a long time and which correspond to the speeds of this USB4 port version 2.0. It won’t be anything in the short term, we may see it over the next year and when Apple has integrated these bandwidths into its chips.
