If the option is open, companies will use, and eventually "abuse" making a product that will indeed drain your battery quite rapidly.
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Apple to Begin Allowing Accessory Manufacturers to Include Lightning Ports Early Next Year
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If the option is open, companies will use, and eventually "abuse" making a product that will indeed drain your battery quite rapidly.
because it has to drive digital across a bus protocol like lightening using differential signaling with external drive capability getting level shifted along the way, plus the power required just to run the lightening protocol on both sides. Also one can safely assume anyone making an external amp and dac would give it more power otherwise why not use the analog out? is the assumption here that the phone analog out would not also be dac'ing and amp'ing as well at the same time? i doubt all the internal analog circuitry for the legacy output is fully shut down while running audio out the lightening port.
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i can, way more power hungry. there is a good chance the internal circuitry is optimized and SOC for lowest power draw while any external chipset would need to generate its own analog power rail for any sort of quality which means additional linear regulation.
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i do realize this, which is why it would almost certainly draw more power.
What do you do with your cables? I've been using a single connector since they came out to charge my two iPhones and iPads without any problems. One needs to learn how to properly treat delicate electronic equipment.
Oh, and by the way, you should always unplug your lightning cable from your iPhone 6+ before you put it in your back pocket and sit on it.
Maybe you're lucky. I take really great good care of my electronics, specially my iPhone, and I don't go around trying to bend he cable or treat it badly, yet it still breaks easily.
If I lay it on my desk while charging, and the iPhone is not placed very inwards on the desk, the cable will easily bend close to where the lightning port is, it deforms and eventually loosens the cables. This never happened with old connectors. I'm on my second lighting cable and have taken extra care and it still bends.
It's a known and proven issue.
Whenever there's a post involving Lightning, we invariably see dozens of comments whining about the crappy build quality of Apple's cables, followed by at least as many responses from people who don't have any issues and accuse those with frayed cables of being abusers. For anyone interested in looking at the fraying problem objectively, there are several points worth considering.
The most commonly cited issue with Apple's cables is the outer jacket tearing / breaking / fraying near the strain relief on the Lighting connector end of the cable.
This is not limited to Lightning cables; it frequently happens to MagSafe power adapters and was also an issue with certain versions of the 30-pin cable (although these were more likely to develop a bulge first rather than just break straight away).
It doesn't tend to happen in the middle or on the USB Type-A end of the cable, which means the skin transfer / chemical / UV light damage theories are a bit suspect.
The fact that MagSafe and 30-pin connectors experience the same type of jacket failures tends to erode the yanking by the cord theory.
However, all of the cables that experience similar fraying employ PVC-free jacketing and a very similar style of strain reliefa style that does not relieve strain caused by twisting.
If you use your device while plugged in, and move it around at all, you will very likely twist the cable. Because the strain relief is quite short and does not twist much, the potentially considerable force of that twisting motion will be placed entirely on a thin sheath of PVC-free jacketing material. As much as you might baby your Apple cables, if you use your devices while they're plugged in and not situated in such a way as to prevent cable twist, the jacketing is bound to tear eventually.
Basically Apple tried to do a solid for the environment by switching to a PVC-free jacketing material and ended up replacing literally millions of Lightning cables at their expense due to untimely failures. Not to mention that a lot of folks are now convinced that all Lightning cables or even all Apple cables are just crap. Maybe they can find a better jacketing material, or maybe they can convince their industrial design staff to not be quite so pathologically averse to anything but the bare minimum of strain relief, but you'd think that if they were going to make a change it would have happened already.
The bottom line is that Apple's cables tend to fail due to a very specific usage pattern. Unfortunately, that usage pattern is quite common and completely consistent with any reasonable expectations of how the end user might interact with their devices.
The most commonly cited issue with Apple's cables is the outer jacket tearing / breaking / fraying near the strain relief on the Lighting connector end of the cable.
This is not limited to Lightning cables; it frequently happens to MagSafe power adapters and was also an issue with certain versions of the 30-pin cable (although these were more likely to develop a bulge first rather than just break straight away).
It doesn't tend to happen in the middle or on the USB Type-A end of the cable, which means the skin transfer / chemical / UV light damage theories are a bit suspect.
The fact that MagSafe and 30-pin connectors experience the same type of jacket failures tends to erode the yanking by the cord theory.
However, all of the cables that experience similar fraying employ PVC-free jacketing and a very similar style of strain reliefa style that does not relieve strain caused by twisting.
If you use your device while plugged in, and move it around at all, you will very likely twist the cable. Because the strain relief is quite short and does not twist much, the potentially considerable force of that twisting motion will be placed entirely on a thin sheath of PVC-free jacketing material. As much as you might baby your Apple cables, if you use your devices while they're plugged in and not situated in such a way as to prevent cable twist, the jacketing is bound to tear eventually.
Basically Apple tried to do a solid for the environment by switching to a PVC-free jacketing material and ended up replacing literally millions of Lightning cables at their expense due to untimely failures. Not to mention that a lot of folks are now convinced that all Lightning cables or even all Apple cables are just crap. Maybe they can find a better jacketing material, or maybe they can convince their industrial design staff to not be quite so pathologically averse to anything but the bare minimum of strain relief, but you'd think that if they were going to make a change it would have happened already.
The bottom line is that Apple's cables tend to fail due to a very specific usage pattern. Unfortunately, that usage pattern is quite common and completely consistent with any reasonable expectations of how the end user might interact with their devices.
What are the chances of us seeing this finally happen now, just after iOS8 opens up to third party access.
and now this...
seems Apple stripping away their "closed security" we all come to know, one by one.
I guess it had to get there someday, even from Apple, but i sure would like to know why, giving access to the Lightning port etc., is all well and good for other non-Apple accessories, but is much to to it...
All of this comes after many years of being "closed" off
Anyone care to take a wack ?
and now this...
seems Apple stripping away their "closed security" we all come to know, one by one.
I guess it had to get there someday, even from Apple, but i sure would like to know why, giving access to the Lightning port etc., is all well and good for other non-Apple accessories, but is much to to it...
All of this comes after many years of being "closed" off
Anyone care to take a wack ?
You do realize that there needs to be a DAC and amplifier for the 3.5mm jack that uses power, right?
The failure location suggests that the cable was used with improper or sharp bend radius causing undue strain.
I have used 8 lightning cables since I got the iPhone 5 at launch, at home, at work and in the cars. None have them ever failed and they still are in use today.
I follow a thumb rule for taking care of my cables, minimum bend radius is 10xdiameter of the cable. In this instance, Apple cable is 3mm or 1/8" in diameter. I generously allow 1.5-2" of bend radius. The cable coming right out of the strain relief is always straight and never bent. But that's me.
There is no cable than survive unlimited fatigue cycles, my speculation is that the iPhone cable is not meant to be moved around more than necessary when tethered and moving around is not part normal use (that would be abuse). iPhone is a wireless device, it's not meant to be used as a wired/tethered device. If the need to use the device tethered is warranted, I would suggest investing in a better cable for the application or replace when Apple cable fractures.
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yes, actually i have designed embedded systems like this so i do realize what it takes and how externalizing it would increase the power requirements, especially when requiring the legacy interface to still function which is a given.
Cool. So are mine. But other people who don't take care of their thing break the port all the time. Not as common on lightning ports
This makes me wonder if the iPhone 7 will be so thin that Apple does away with the headphone jack and has new EarPods which hook in to your lightning port directly (and maybe sell lightning to audio adaptor while at it). I think Oppo has doe something like that (with caveats- the camera really sticks out like a sore thumb).
However, looking at how thin it is, I can see how Apple would be tempted to pull a similar stunt like this.
However, looking at how thin it is, I can see how Apple would be tempted to pull a similar stunt like this.
Apple's cables fray at exactly the same place, whether it's a Mag safe or lightning, and that's at the place where most cable connectors have that tapered "barrel" design. That may get in the way of Jony Ive's clean aesthetic but it gives the wire strength to tolerate normsl twisting/pulling. The 30 pin connector was wider and so people could easily grab onto the 30 pin plastic square, but the lightning cable doesn't really have that. Apple's cables nowadays are form over function.
