iPhone 15 Pro iPhone 15 pro - USB-C definitely NOT operating at USB 3.2 gen 1 speeds (10gbps) data transfer is still just as slow as USB 2.0 / lightning cable.

[MrRom92]

Just insane that Apple was able to never have to addresss this.
A whole bunch of advertising about a "pro" feature that doen't work in the most common scenarios
The tech jounalism / youtuber space is just a joke. Never once even tested this.

I agree, and many of the sycophants like to hand wave away the issue as “who cares” or “not everybody will use this feature” or “why do you need those speeds anyway?”
I am practically the only person who challenged Apple on this. It seems that you can call anything a feature these days regardless of whether or not you actually implement it. There is no excuse for data transfer to still be capped at exactly 480mbps when all the prerequisite conditions are met.

This is very much like Apple’s official specifications indicating their devices “support playback of FLAC music files”. But meanwhile they actively block you from adding those files to the device’s native music library. Another empty “feature”

 

[Nik]

Just insane that Apple was able to never have to addresss this.
A whole bunch of advertising about a "pro" feature that doen't work in the most common scenarios
The tech jounalism / youtuber space is just a joke. Never once even tested this.

They are afraid of criticizing Apple because they would lose access to new releases.

 

[TheByteSmasher]

Just tested again on my PC with a USBC-USBC cable, copying a 1GB video directly from iPhone 15 Pro Max to Windows 11 Desktop. Took 5.5 seconds, which is about 1.5Gb/s. So it can definitely go faster than USB 2.0 speeds, but not anything near 10Gb.

Running a backup probably isn't the best test of transfer speeds, because the phone is probably doing some additional compresssion/file sorting/computation and not just simply transferring a file from device to PC

Unfortunately, copying multiple small files that add up to 10Gb would be faster than copying a single 10Gb file. It’s the way things work.

 

[cs.pang]

Regarding the problem of transmission speed, both the 15 and 16Pro series have this problem on iOS 18, and I have reported it to Apple many times, but all of them fell on deaf ears. Some said it was a normal phenomenon, some said it might be a software limitation, and some did not follow up. I have reported it through many channels but it is useless. My test iPhone only supports 10Gbps when it is connected to an external storage device that supports 10Gbps. I used Apple's Thunderbolt 4 cable to connect the iPhone to a MacBook with the latest version of the M chip. The backup speed through Finder and Apple Configurator 2 did not exceed 150MB/s, and the copy speed through Image Capture did not exceed 500MB/s. This speed can be seen in the Activity Monitor.

 

[cs.pang]

Another thing is that mobile phones in China do not have eSIM, and AC+ does not support theft. Even if the iPhone has all the functions turned on and there are Apple devices nearby, the iOS18 iPhone is stolen, the SIM card is unplugged, and the phone is turned off (this state is normal when searching offline), and it is not unlocked after turning on (this state offline search is invalid)

 

[cynics]

iTunes backup is a fairly complex process backing up data from a live operating system. If any of it changes during the process the backup fails.

The process involves the iPhone making a snapshot of its storage to isolate changes from the backup. Then computing cryptographic hashes for individual backup data. Organizing everything into databases and individual files from app data. Encrypting some data, all of it if the option is turned on. Then transfers the data file by file. Then iTunes uses the hash to verify file integrity if that fails it request the file again. Once verified the file is renamed using the hash. It's then stored in a backup database. Finally the iPhone deletes the snapshot.

The first backup generally takes awhile depending on how much stuff is actually being backed up. Subsequent backups will only be backing up changes so they are much quicker. And this is generally done as a low priority task to avoid any performance degradation for foreground task.

 

[MrRom92]

iTunes backup is a fairly complex process backing up data from a live operating system. If any of it changes during the process the backup fails.

The process involves the iPhone making a snapshot of its storage to isolate changes from the backup. Then computing cryptographic hashes for individual backup data. Organizing everything into databases and individual files from app data. Encrypting some data, all of it if the option is turned on. Then transfers the data file by file. Then iTunes uses the hash to verify file integrity if that fails it request the file again. Once verified the file is renamed using the hash. It's then stored in a backup database. Finally the iPhone deletes the snapshot.

The first backup generally takes awhile depending on how much stuff is actually being backed up. Subsequent backups will only be backing up changes so they are much quicker. And this is generally done as a low priority task to avoid any performance degradation for foreground task.

They changed how it used to be that the device backups used to be incremental between device upgrades.
Now if you have a new iPhone it will only start a new backup instead of applying changes to the backup that was already restored to the device to begin with.
This means it takes forever backing up that device for the first time, when it wasn’t always this way, and all that data already exists in backup form as it’s how it got into the new device in the first place. It really should not behave this way.
Restoring that data to a device should be much less computationally expensive but it still takes forever as well.
The fact that both processes happen to be capped exactly at usb 2.0 speeds is not a coincidence, it is a failure on Apple’s part. This really should be one of the biggest QOL improvements to the iPhone and yet this fast new USB-C port isn’t utilized meaningfully at all, clearly due to oversight or laziness at Apple.

 

[cynics]

They changed how it used to be that the device backups used to be incremental between device upgrades.
Now if you have a new iPhone it will only start a new backup instead of applying changes to the backup that was already restored to the device to begin with.
This means it takes forever backing up that device for the first time, when it wasn’t always this way, and all that data already exists in backup form as it’s how it got into the new device in the first place. It really should not behave this way.
Restoring that data to a device should be much less computationally expensive but it still takes forever as well.
The fact that both processes happen to be capped exactly at usb 2.0 speeds is not a coincidence, it is a failure on Apple’s part. This really should be one of the biggest QOL improvements to the iPhone and yet this fast new USB-C port isn’t utilized meaningfully at all, clearly due to oversight or laziness at Apple.

Hmm my experience is different since I have all my individual device backups since the 4S to 11 Pro Max on my old Mac however I'm just now realizing you are on Windows though. Apologies for skimminng.

Apple seems to recommend the 'Apple Devices' app from the MS store for syncing, updating, and back ups from a PC. I'm only seeing iTunes referenced in the thread unless I missed it.

Back up and restore iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with your Windows device or iCloud

On your Windows device, back up your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to your Windows device or iCloud and restore your device if needed.

support.apple.com

Apple Devices - Free download and install on Windows | Microsoft Store

Manage Apple devices from your Windows PC using the Apple Devices app.

apps.microsoft.com

Judging by the reviews you maybe going from one problem to another though. I've done a bit of preemptive troubleshooting though and it seems to revolve around the same couple issues that people on reddit have figured out.

 

[pelirodri]

Just wanted to say that I noticed I get much faster speeds when using the Files app on my iPhone versus Finder on my Mac. I just add the Mac as an external server and I can copy files back and forth seamlessly. I think I’m getting up to around 5 Gbps, though, but still much better than what I get when using Finder (like 2 minutes and a half vs. 20 seconds or so for the file I just tested, for instance). In case it matters, I’m using a Thunderbolt 3 cable…