It's official: Apple is entirely free to make an iPhone without port if it wants. There is nothing in EU regulations to say that iPhones must present a USB-C load port, and a spokesperson for the body has confirmed in writing.
Journalists learn that if someone says it rains, and someone else says that it is not, your job is not to quote both sides. It's to look out the window. On Wednesday, Ben Lovejoy at 9TO5MAC looked out by the window by contacting the news agent of the European Commission Federica Miccoli to request whether a smartphone without port would be authorized under EU regulations.
“Yes,” replied Miccoli. “Since this radio equipment cannot be recharged via the wired load, it does not need to incorporate the harmonized load solution (wired).”
This goes against a theory bursting around the apple apple earlier in the week. We covered a report on Monday which said that the rumor of the iPhone 17 had at some point had been envisaged as a device without port, but that Apple had retired from this plan in large part because it feared that such a development to anger the regulators of the EU. The EU demands that all the smartphones sold in its jurisdiction have USB-C loading ports, which is why the iPhone 14 and the iPhone 3rd genetics had to be deleted from the sale earlier than expected.
But it turns out that they only have to have USB-C load ports If they offer a wired load. A lightning port port is not authorized. A load port of 30 pins, in addition to being crazy, would not be authorized. But no load port of everything is legally good.
The EU encourages standardized wireless load standards, and if Apple has continued its own technology on this front, it could encounter problems. But as the 9TO5MAC note, the company has actually “given” the Magsafe to the world, and the iphones of Magsafe are compatible with the Qi2 chargers manufactured by other companies. This would have no difficulty in this regard.
It remains to be seen if an iPhone without port would have succeeded, of course. I think it would be a reasonable development that would make future iPhone better models while catalyzing the improvements in wireless technology more generally, and said it in an opinion article … which turned out to be rather controversial. Customers may not yet be ready to abandon their ports. But when they are, we now know that the law will not present any obstacles either.
