Gurman: Apple Considered Removing Lightning Connector on iPhone X

[Baymowe335]

Well, I use AirPods and love them, so removing the 3.5mm jack was a non-issue for me. But as someone who uses an iPhone for long FaceTime calls, and uses an iPhone on long flights (and I see a lot of other people doing the same), I think it'd be extremely inconvenient to have no wired charging port. I also see people every single day walking around with their phones plugged into battery packs.

So I don't have any "data" on it, just like you don't have any data on the opposite case, but if you can name practical advantages to removing a wired charging port I'm all ears, because I only see disadvantages. If the iPhones already have wireless charging, how does removing the wired charging port make them better and more convenient?

What if the battery life were doubled? The trouble with making prognostications of how you would hate something before it's reality is you don't know the other factors.

Clearly, Apple decided it was best to keep it...for now, but it won't always be the case that having a charging port is necessary with other improvements. Faster wireless charging, longer lasting batteries, other technology, etc.

 

[ignatius345]

I haven't plugged an Apple device into iTunes in years. Wireless backups work just fine.

But wireless restores are a serious bummer. If I do a full backup my phone to iTunes, it includes everything. I don't have to spend 4 hours re-downloading every app and its data.

 

[Baymowe335]

Sales are not a good barometer of whether or not it's a good decision.

Yes it is. It's called voting with your wallet.
[doublepost=1529598761][/doublepost]

Clearly you don't live in the city. When the wireless spectrum is congested any wireless protocol is utter crap.

I live in the middle of a top 3 city...lol.

 

[whooleytoo]

And how exactly am I supposed to charge and use my phone?

Great point. Unless someone comes up with a charger that you can attach to the phone while you use it - or use speakerphone if it's not a private conversation - I guess you don't!

 

[ignatius345]

I think the mute switch needs to go. We’ve lived this long without it on iPad

Sure, in that white void Jony Ive lives in, that's all wonderful to have millions of gestures for everything.

But a tactile, physical switch that unfailingly and unambiguously silences the device is extremely useful out in the real world.

 

[coolkid93]

Courage 2.0

 

[Princejb134]

That's great and all, but how are you going to charge the phone in your car? Or at the airport? This is a design edict disconnected from the real world. Time to leave the glass bubble, Jonny.

Some cars have wireless charging. Is a technology that's slowly going to be implented everywhere. Give it 10 years

 

[iapplelove]

Wirelessly like I have been doing for the last 4 years lol

You can back up wireless to iTunes ? I know you can sync over WiFi didn’t know you could back up that way too

 

[clystron]

For better or worse, Apple made a bold statement that expressed commitment to USB-C by eliminating all the data ports on the MacBook Pro and MacBook line and only included USB-C. If Apple leaves the Lightning port instead of replacing it with USB-C on the 2018 iPhone, it will clearly prove how inconsistent, clueless, mediocre, and useless Tim Cook is.

USB-C just replaced USB-A and since there are USB-C - Lightning cables everything is back to "normal". No need to change connectors on both ends of the cable.

 

[friednoodles]

What if the battery life were doubled? The trouble with making prognostications of how you would hate something before it's reality is you don't know the other factors.

Clearly, Apple decided it was best to keep it...for now, but it won't always be the case that having a charging port is necessary with other improvements. Faster wireless charging, longer lasting batteries, other technology, etc.

Absolutely! If they can quadruple the battery life, great, no complaints from me then! But the idea that Mark Gurman says they "considered" removing it for the iPhone X has to be the biggest load of nonsense I've seen. They would have to have been insane for that to have been a serious consideration with current device battery life.

 

[brianjlambert]

Regardless of removing the lightning cable or not, I'd love to see a "wireless lightning port" for CarPlay which turns a wired CarPlay wireless. This would be great to have current wired OEM systems wireless so that all you have to do is get in the car and go. Then you could wirelessly charge on a dock or something in the car.
CarPlay is my only hangup with regard to removing the ports on the phone. I don't want to lose that functionality.

 

[odoy]

YES! they could remove the iPhone itself and claim 1000$ for NEW iPhone. i stands for imagination

 

[Mousse]

How do you wireless unbrick an phone? With a port, even a bricked phone (practically every Samsung) can be brought back from the dead.

What happens if you enter the wrong pin 6 times and cannot access your phone anymore? This happens a lot with parents with curious toddlers. My 6 year old likes did this to my wife's iPhone numerous times. No way to connect to iTunes to wipe it and start over.

 

[Defthand]

A few years ago, it was reported that Apple's design chief Jony Ive's end goal is for the iPhone to resemble a "single sheet of glass," while Apple has repeatedly expressed its ambitions to "create a wireless future," so the eventual removal of the Lightning connector should perhaps come as no surprise.

What happened to Apple's wait-n-see approach to unestablished trends? Until lately, Apple would let others test the waters first, observe the adoption rate, identify unforeseen shortcomings, conceive improvements, and then join the fray. This approach always gave Apple an advantage. Historically, when Apple was the first to adopt a concept, it often created an inconvenience for customers.

 

[AxiomaticRubric]

Of course, there would be some friction with this transition, just like when Apple switched from its 30-pin dock connector to Lightning in 2012, and removed the headphone jack on the iPhone 7. In both of those cases, however, the controversy eventually died down as many users came to accept the new reality.

What choice did they have? Engineer and assemble their own smart phones with their copious amounts of free time?

 

[Khedron]

Wireless charging is slow..

Apple took so long with its AirPower it's outdated 6 months before it goes on sale.

USB-C fast charge lets 15-30 mins provide enough power for most of the day.

Wireless charging is based on not forgetting to leave your phone charging all night or else have mats everywhere you go.

And unlike a power bank with a cable, you can't use your phone while it's charging wirelessly.

 

[dannyyankou]

Given how many people I see with portable battery packs plugged into their phones while out and about, if you thought removing the 3.5mm audio jack was taken badly, you ain't seen nothing yet...

You have a very good point, but on a side note the Mophie charge force powerstation is very good.

But yeah it would’ve been disastrous if they removed it.

 

[CTHarrryH]

I have been and Apple phone guy from beginning and Apple person since the Apple II. This would be the end of at least Apple phones for me. The world has put cabled wiring ports everywhere - planes, cars, hotels, gyms, wall sockets etc. Maybe someday these places will all be equipped with wireless but I just don't see it for a while - if you have to carry even a small wireless charger then what is the point of wireless? Most people don't use headphones all the time but they do use connections to other devices and charging all the time.
You backup to iTunes because that backup has more backed up that iCloud backup.
Anyone who has been in technology for a while knows that wired is always better from an speed and reliability standpoint - wireless is very convenient but..
I really think that Apple often thinks more about how thin and light something can be rather than functionality. Form vs. function.

I really hope this rumor isn't true - it will be the end of Apple phones for a lot of people like me.

 

[albebaubles]

Given how many people I see with portable battery packs plugged into their phones while out and about, if you thought removing the 3.5mm audio jack was taken badly, you ain't seen nothing yet...

This is easily solvable with an inductive charging battery pack

 

[Bornee35]

For me the biggest reason I would not like this is that I still back my phone up on my Mac. And I’ve needed to restore a backup from time to time. Apple’s wireless sync is still very unreliable. And there is no wireless restore from backup. I don’t consider an iPhone or iOS reliable enough to not have a physical port.

They would have to implement a recovery mode similar to MacOS. Forced reset boots a recovery partition to handle the wireless restore if it bricks.

 

[0924487]

Peripherals are called peripherals because they are designed and invented around the main device that they service. When the host device evolves, those slave devices should be redesigned to fit the modern technology.

For data transfer, we can already go fully wireless with other iOS devices and modern macOS devices. Including iTunes sync, backup, file transfer, AirDrop, etc. The only thing they need to work on is restoring, which can be dealt with with a special wireless handshake with the bootloader, which can be flashed upon manufacturing. If the system fails, roll back to the bootloader kinda like macOS recovery.

 

[neliason]

I haven't plugged an Apple device into iTunes in years. Wireless backups work just fine.

Do you mean iCloud or wireless backups? With wireless backups they don’t work just fine for me. iTunes on my Mac often can’t find my devices and they go for a long time without backing up.

 

[albebaubles]

This is surely coming. They've finally offered induction, they've killed headphone port, iTunes supports wireless sync, Xcode allows development again a device wirelessly.....

 

[MrUNIMOG]

For better or worse, Apple made a bold statement that expressed commitment to USB-C by eliminating all the data ports on the MacBook Pro and MacBook line and only included USB-C. If Apple leaves the Lightning port instead of replacing it with USB-C on the 2018 iPhone, it will clearly prove how inconsistent, clueless, mediocre, and useless Tim Cook is.

Because this for sure is the kind of decision that's solely up to Tim Cook, right? Yeah...

 

[AZMecha]

I'm still upset about them removing the 3.5mm audio jack.

Quit making things difficult for the consumer!

I'm glad the change was done to remove the head jack. We needed the room and it forced Bose,Sony & SENNHEISER to make wireless noise canceling headphones. Apple forced the industry to grow.....