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Kuo: iPhone 15 to Switch From Lightning to USB-C in 2023

MiloCody said:
wireless charging is actually the most convenient.
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Not even remotely close. Most of the rooms in my house have USB-C chargers in. Here at work I have a couple of USB-C chargers. If I'm in any of my friends houses (most of which are probably on Android), they all have USB-C chargers. How many wireless chargers at home or on my desk at work? Zero. Nada. None at all. Especially proprietary magsafe ones.

And what if I'm doing a multi-day bicycle adventure with my phone screen always-on for mapping most days on the quad-lock mount on my bike? It'll be plugged in to efficiently be ran from a booster pack. USB-C or lightning: fine, but having to have some stupid wireless charging dock fitted to 3 different bicycles is stupid, inefficient use of the battery packs while out in the wild, and would mean expensive, bulkier docks on all those bikes.

A totally cable-free phone is just annoying. If you want to give it a higher IP rating then have wireless charging by all means, and put a rubber bung in the USB-C port. Then you have all the win and can charge wireless as much as you like, but can still have efficient charge-anywhere on any standard charger functionality, with far higher transfer speeds for all those massive ProRes videos on the newer iPhones.
 
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Bustycat said:
How can people think that wireless charging is more convenient? It still requires a charger and a cable for that wireless pad which is actually not wireless at all in this situation.
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Easy answer: Wireless is the future, always has been.
Short answer: Cables wear out and require replacement; charging pads don't.
Long answer: If we've learned anything about technology, why use a wire when it can be wireless? Bluetooth and WiFi (and soon UWB) have rid us of nearly all cables but one: power. Qi/MagSafe is merely a step in that direction, albeit a small one.

As for convenience alone, Qi/MagSafe requires only one hand to connect a charger whereas Lightning (and cables in general) require two hands for a cable (i.e., one hand to hold the phone, the other to insert or remove the cable).

Wires, and wired connections in general, truly are the "horse and buggy" of our time.
 
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Reckless1 said:
Easy answer: Wireless is the future, always has been.
Short answer: Cables wear out and require replacement; charging pads don't.
Long answer: If we've learned anything about technology, why use a wire when it can be wireless? Bluetooth and WiFi (and soon UWB) have rid us of nearly all cables but one: power. Qi/MagSafe is merely a step in that direction, albeit a small one.

As for convenience alone, Qi/MagSafe requires only one hand to connect a charger whereas Lightning (and cables in general) require two hands for a cable (i.e., one hand to hold the phone, the other to insert or remove the cable).

Wires, and wired connections in general, truly are the "horse and buggy" of our time.
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I won’t consider any of those as wireless until a wall plug can directly send electricity to all devices in the room.
 
Despite what people say now, I still think Apple has adopted USB Type C with Thunderbolt 3/USB 3.1 connectivity for the iPhone 14 Pro. Given that the A16 on the iPhone 14 Pro is an all-new SoC, you wonder if the A16 supports the USB Type C port I mentioned. The "regular" iPhone 14 will stay with Lightning, but may go with USB 3.0 connectivity.

(Note I did not say Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 connectivity. Licensing issues through Intel plus too much power consumption on Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 connections will (for now) preclude these faster connectivity on USB Type C ports on the iPhone 14 Pro.)
 
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Thank goodness and about time. Tired of searching for a lightening cable. Murphy's law says if I do have a lightening cable, it's a USB to lightening which won't plug into my laptop which is USBC only.
 
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surfzen21 said:
Since I have nothing that uses usb-c. Ill be forced to buy a bunch of new cords. Cool :(
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For years I had 4 cables in the kitchen. USB-C, Micro-USB, Lightning and 30-pin. Thankfully I'm down to 2. We keep our tech until it's utterly useless. That 30-pin was only retired last December when Youtube Kids stopped working on the iPad 2.

It'll be a decade before I'm USB-C only. ?‍♂️
 
gammamonk said:
For years I had 4 cables in the kitchen. USB-C, Micro-USB, Lightning and 30-pin. Thankfully I'm down to 2. We keep our tech until it's utterly useless. That 30-pin was only retired last December when Youtube Kids stopped working on the iPad 2.

It'll be a decade before I'm USB-C only. ?‍♂️
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I probably have 6-7 Lightning cables with two being usb-c to lightning for fast charging. Having to add an extra cable to my car for charging will be annoying. I do have one micro usb for my headset but that never leaves my desktop.

I wouldn't be surprised if in a decade its all very reliable wireless.
 
dantracht said:
Making me want to keep my 13pm for two years.
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I feel ya. I'm on a 12 Pro and was planning to upgrade this fall, but I'd only be buying the 15 Pro again in 2023. Not a great value strategy for me, so I have to think on what to do now (understanding that as yet USB-C on the 15 Pro is just conjecture for the moment).
 
ian87w said:
Oh expect heavy push on MagSafe accessories this year then, so by the time Apple had to do this, most consumers are already locked into giving money to Apple via Magsafe accessories.

And for some users who have been collecting various lightning based cables/accessories, might be good idea to just get the 14 before preparing to re-buy cables/accessories.
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Why? I already have far more USB-C/Thunderbolt 3/4 cables than I do Lightning. With the exception of one or two cables, all of my lightning connectors are adapters on USB-C cables, anyway. There's no downside for me to move to USB-C ASAP, no stocking of (slower and proprietary) Lightning cables necessary.
 
theluggage said:
The EU is only talking about charging - they're not going to force Apple to support anything faster than USB 2 as long as they use the USB-C connector for charging. Although a USB-C connector could support USB 3, USB 4 protocols or Thunderbolt it doesn't have to - the minimum requirement is USB 2 and I'm not sure even that is needed when it's used as a charging socket.

Lightning can support up to USB 3 - but Apple only ever implemented it on a few iPad Pro models, which have already switched to USB-C and do support USB 4/Thunderbolt - but then they're using M1 chips - which include Thunderbolt/USB4 controllers and fast storage that can actually use faster speeds. Apple are pushing the iPad as a laptop alternative.

As for why no USB 3 or better (I'm not sure Lightning can physically do "or better") support for the iPhone - Apple would very much like you to use its online services to save your photos and videos direct to the cloud, stream your media from Apple Music and download your Apps from the Apple Store. If you want to move photos from your DSLR to your iDevice, Apple would like you to buy an iPad Pro.

USB 3 or 4 would be a jolly good idea on the flagship iPhone - since it now seems to be a camera that can make phone calls at a pinch - but I wouldn't hold your breath.
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Same difference - if there's USB-C, it'll be at least 3 and because EU pushed for it for whatever specific reason.
 
Marie.D said:
Unfortunately I feel like it's part and parcel of Tim Cook's Apple. They used to be proud to put the latest technologies into the iPhone where it mattered, like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, they were on the forefront of the best display tech with Retina, even Lightning was an amazing connector when it came out & for the next few years. After 2012 well... It took a long time for iPhone to switch to OLED compared to it's competitors, now we hear the same song with USB-C, they still haven't put Wi-Fi 6E inside their flagship, the software quality isn't what it used to be... The difference is striking if you've been using Apple products for more than a decade.
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Well it's not easy to stretch upgrades to a fixed yearly cycle of the slightly different iPhones when all "important and groundbreaking" at this tech level has already been achieved in smartphones - to make it look new-ish but don't give away everything at once. But the USB 2 speed in '22 really hurts my tech feelings ;)
 
Klapper.cz said:
Same difference - if there's USB-C, it'll be at least 3 and because EU pushed for it for whatever specific reason.
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Why? A USB-C port with USB 2 only would satisfy the EUs requirement. Lightning has been able to support USB 3 speeds for years - but Apple only implemented it on the iPad Pro & even then only on the "digital camera adapter".

The new M1 iPads support USB 3/4/TB but the M1 has built-in USB4/TB controllers, and Apple are pushing it as a laptop alternative that can use external storage, card readers etc.

Evidence so far is that, if you have an iPhone, Apple want you to sync your stuff via iCloud.
 
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