Apple to replace future iPhone Lightning port with USB-C next year, this guy claims Apple may ditch its exclusive Lightning port in favor of the more widely used USB-C for future iPhone models. Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted the shift on Wednesday, pointing out that the move would beef up the devices' wired connectivity, and shake up supply chains. "My latest survey indicates that 2H23 new iPhone will …
I actually think it's a savvy move... As you say Apple will produce a single model, likely with USB3 if the EU legislation prevails. Thus we (and the rest of the world) will get the environmental benefits* without having to spend £millions on overpaid studies, long lunches and endless debate.
* Because there's nothing environmentally friendly about consumer electronics....
There are plenty of others out there who will be getting one.
Tim Apple does not care about what the likes of you, me and even the esteemed hacks that work on this site think. He works in millions of sales.
TBH, this move has been coming for a long time. It is not that startling although the likes of Kuo will milk it for a long time.
Considering that when they started talking about this a decade ago micro USB was the standard they wanted to force everyone to use, that's already happened.
We better hope USB-C is good enough to last the rest of our lives, because there's no way they'll ever update it for something newer regardless of what the proponents of the law say. Imagine if it had been done right away and micro USB was the standard. Would anyone have even TRIED to bring USB-C to market, knowing that it would be illegal as a primary connector in the whole EU, and therefore something no smartphone maker would consider using nor any laptop vendor be allowed to use for charging?
Even if USB-C did come to market as it did, given the 10 years and counting of dickering over this, how many years or decades of dickering would it have taken for them to update the standard even if every consumer wanted it? They claim to be doing this to eliminate all the Apple Lighting to USB-C cables that might someday end up in a landfill. Well imagine their reluctance to move off micro USB knowing that untold billions of micro USB cables and micro USB chargers would end up in landfills throughout the entire world as a result of updating the standard.
They would never do it, we would have been stuck on micro USB for the rest of our lives.
That's essential viewing for many commenters here. Wireless charging in its current form is clearly not a sensible solution.
FWIW Apple were probably going to switch their phones to USB C anyway, their iPads and laptops already use it and lightening is increasingly old hat. Meanwhile although the standard will evolve the form factor and backward compatibility of USB C will persevere for a long time. It's not even a discussion really, I don't understand why people seem to get so wound up about this stuff.
I also suspect that they may "invent" a new Wireless charging system that is completely different from anything else that is in use and does not work on normal smartphones.
Possibly, to save themselves from lawsuits, they may allow their devices to use normal charger, just VERY slowly.
>I personally believe Apple will go all in Magsafe wireless charging
I would hope that Apple would use its market position to push the magnetic USB-C and Magsafe connectors into the standard and thus avoid the costs of tooling up for a proprietary connector and a few years down to road having to change it to something invented elsewhere...
The installed base of Magsafe to USB cables is tiny. Today Lightning to USB cables are ubiquitous, you can always find one in a pinch if you don't have one with you. Same for USB-C cables. Used to be true for micro USB cables.
It would be like the initial days of the Lightning conversion when the only Lightning to USB cables were the ones shipped with new iPhones, and third parties hadn't started making them yet (and when they did they cost as much as Apple's for the first couple months until more were produced) which is what led to a few months of backlash from Apple owners because the new connector was a hassle and their investment in docking equipment using the old connector was lost.
They were willing to tolerate it for Lightning because it was better than the old connector in every way, as well as better than micro USB (USB-C was still a few years away) in every way. Switching to a magnetic charging adapter that may have a few advantages over USB-C (no connector to break, no worry about security issues - google 'badUSB') but isn't clearly better in every way like Lightning was would be a lot harder to do without customer backlash.
Is it not fair to say, that the Apple 2012 design for lightning is limited to somewhere in the region of 5-20W power charging?
With USB edging up to 50-100W, is it not likely that Apple would have to change anyway, as the other brands rollout 50-100W chargers?
It's probably for the best. We all know Apple just want a fancy connector so they can sell you a sweatshop-made $1 cable for $40 in New York, cutting out the local markets selling £5 cables on Amazon.
"I think we need new battery tech before that becomes reasonable."
You're correct, we need it not to kill batteries in no time. Unfortunately, we don't need new tech for it to sort of work, so it's being sold by many phone manufacturers right now. The selling point is that it can charge your phone in twenty minutes if you forgot to do so. That you have to buy a new battery (or phone) when doing that renders it unreliable is somewhere between not their problem and one of their goals.
Charging at such rates is stupid, it reduces the life of your battery. It is only good for a specs battle between Chinese Androids, it has no purpose in a smartphone you want to last longer than a couple years.
So long as your battery easily makes it through a day for you, it doesn't matter how long it takes to charge. I still use one of the old 5W chargers my older iPhones shipped with instead of the newer 15W charger. I don't see any benefit in charging faster since I'm sleeping anyway and figure the difference between 5W and 15W might get me a bit more battery life.
If Apple wanted to they could modify Lightning's specs to charge at a faster rate. It isn't like the connector itself has some sort of limit.
Indeed - it's had a decade of consistent support, which is more than you can say for most other phone charger "standard"s.
Even just a few years ago a phone cable was used for data, but that's less and less the case now - so at what point do we drop them entirely? Or are we close to the point where a phone can plug into a thunderbolt dock and be a useful productivity machine?
A phone that docks to be used as a desktop was done years ago, 2011 with Motorola Webtop.. Motorola Atrix as the first to do it, if I recall correctly.
Nobody was saying it worked particularly well, necessarily, but the concept has been floating around a bit since then, Samsung have also done it, among no doubt others.
Fact is though, only recently have I been happy enough with my corporate issue laptop to give up my desktop machine at work, swapping a Skylake 6700 with an 1165G7. If it took so many years to get a corporate thin-and-light I was happy with (without spending big money on a workstation), that kind of performance in a phone is probably some distance away.
Not to mention the fact that having a laptop with a large screen and integrated keyboard makes the thing usable when on the move, utterly unlike a smartphone, which then needs all kinds of accessories filling a bag to become vaguely usable to the same degree.
The point being that you don't need the accessories if it's all TB, those exist at the various locations you want to do stuff.. and the phone is still useful, even if you wouldn't choose to use it for a large spreadsheet on the train.
The other point being that I wonder if we're actually close to the point where it's a reasonable approach. Don't know if the M1 in a phone would work - might need a copper pad on the back for some extra cooling though.
I've been waiting for it for 15 years now, I suspect it will be a little way off for a while though
Well, I mean that you still need accessories to get any work done. If you're talking about simply docking it at a desk with keyboard and monitors, then yes, fair enough - but the idea of a mobile device is to be able to work on the move.
I couldn't get much done on a phone, which was my point - a laptop is a far more useful form factor for actually getting anything done, and it has a much larger space to play with, and thin-and-lights are only now fast enough for most purposes.
That's one option for how to use a portable device.
Note that I used the word portable rather than mobile.
My current machine sits plugged into an eGPU (for driving multiple monitors) basically all the time - it occasionally goes into an office with me (either in the UK or stateside), where it gets plugged into monitors etc. I can't recall the last time I needed to use it as a *mobile* computing device. I *do* use my phone to look stuff up on shared documents, I'm not going to write war and peace, but I can update a tracking spreadsheet etc...
Last time I worked on the bus/train/plane I grabbed an iPad mini and folding bluetooth keyboard. Worked an absolute treat (though the keyboard is a touch smaller than I'd like, but it's really compact when folded).
I've used the keyboard with the phone as well, though there's a less clear use case there (since you don't want to do huge amounts of stuff on the small screen).
Though there is always the option to have a thin and light with a battery in the keyboard (to weight it down) and a usbc port - that would then connect to any phone, and the next one, and potentially (though possibly with a dongle) to the back of servers etc.
tldr - multiple different needs, not everyone the same, bear's catholic, pope defecates in the woods.
@45RPM
First of all, I wouldn't normally make a comment on a comment like yours... but, as I still very often, play my 45 rpm (mainly Tamla and 60's 70's stuff) records your name struck a chord!
So you deserve a genuine question. I take it as given that U.S.B.C is good. No problem there. But I can't see how it is better that Lightning. Help please?
One other thing, (open to anyone) did the E.U. say that all connectors on chargers should be the same, or all connecting wires should be the same. There is a difference. Sorry about that last question, but I didn't get a shag last night so fuck it!
>But against USB-C? It’s tosh.
Only if you are a fan of tick lists. Lightning wins hands down on mechanical robustness and usability.
USB-C might be a common connector, but you have to read the small print to understand what protocol versions are supported by a specific system on a specific USB-C port, a individual cable supports and whether these are compatible with the peripheral you are trying to connect. Have spent too much time messing around with USB-HDMI/Displayport connectivity for HD, 4K etc. TV and cameras...
Aside: Had to recently replace my son's phone, it seems Android is going the same way, as you now have to ask whether it does/doesn't come with Google Play store access etc...
Was going to write along similar lines and ask if the EU will also mandate a single standard for USB-C cables. At the moment, I have an assortment around my desk and portable kit as some don't carry data, some are needed for higher power charging and others (to stretch the point) for Thunderbolt connections. At least with Lightning, I know what it's for (not that I often use it as my phone is normally charged on my overnight Qi pad or the Qi pad in my car.
When staying away, I need three cables anyway (from a single charger): one for my MacBook (USB-C to USB-C, one for my iPad (USB-A to USB-C) and one for my iPhone (USB-A to Lightning). A new phone with USB-C wouldn't let me carry fewer cables. That's me; YMMV but a lot of people assume everyone is the same as they are...
>When staying away, I need three cables anyway...
Missed out the airpod et al charging case.
Now multiply that across a household... The device number problem is why I have several 2.4A per port 5 port USB chargers and in-car charging adaptors.
Currently can't see wireless charging being any real help in the charging of multiple devices.
Especially by the analysts BS rationale about speeds and charging. This is Apple. Multiple inventor or adopter of "different" connectors and protocols.
If they put their mind to it they could easily invent or promote something better just like they did when they were about the only big company to promote Thunderbolt or SCSI or Firewire.
Now as a BOM reduction exercise from Tim the master beancounter - as mentioned further up the comments - that I could believe.
(as an aside USB-C PD charging on the newish Ipad Pro is as brilliant as the standard USB-C on it charging is poor.)
Apple seems to even make itself incompatible with itself!
I have an Apple TV subscription (courtesy of a free gift from my credit card company), an old Apple TV box and a couple of other devices with the Apple TV app. For no apparent reason this week the Apple TV box was the only thing that refused to connect to the Apple TV streaming service even though it could connect to everything else. Weird.
"o avoid the kerfuffle of having to potentially build two types of iPhones for different parts of the world, Apple could just start supporting USB-C"
If Apple had a strong internal reason to not use USB-C, it would first lobby the EU hard to not adopt the standard, and if that failed would sooner produce an EU-only USB-C phone than have the change imposed. It would only go universally for USB-C if they saw advantages(or at least no disadvantages) in functionality vs Lightning connector. Of course if they're on the fence, the EU issue could push them off
@Phil Kingston "...go portless earlier than planned"
I can't see the EU decision having any impact one way or the other. They will go portless when they believe they can sell it.
When their customers no longer have a need for a data port. When wireless charging rates can match wired charging rates.
Finally when there is sufficient wireless charging around so their customers are not required to carry a charging pad with them if they need to charge on the go. A cable is cheaper than a pad and is easy to keep one on you just slip it into a pocket.
I'm not sure if this is still the case, but IIRC going back a few years, when Lester Haines was still around (RIP), Apple had a policy of refusing to acknowledge any inquiry from El Reg, so a macro here would be a good idea.
This may of course be a Register Urban Legend...
Nikola Tesla thought he could charge anything anywhere by sending the electricity through the ionosphere or through the earth. He could have done it too but he was distracted by a good looking pigeon. I don't think Elon Musk should be able to name electric cars after Tesla until he can charge them remotely.
My dad left me his iPod but not his iPod charger. I have all his music on various devices anyway, he/I spent a year digitising his record collection via Audacity and a USB turntable. Never played any of it once, he couldn't remember the names.
Type your comment here — plain text only, no HTML "That means Apple fans who want to stop faffing around with extra proprietary Lightning charge cables should hold off purchasing the iPhone 14, which is slated to launch later this year. "
On the other hand if you want all your Apple devices with the same connector get them now.
The EU says it's aim is to simplify things. In reality it's doing the opposite:
Now: Apple+Lightning
Android+USB
In future: Apple+Lightning (while it lasts)
Apple+USB
Android+USB
Surely it would be better to standardise on the next generation with inductive charging and Bluetooth?
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