Lightning transfer speed still USB2?!

[freddiecable]

Is this still true? How on earth can it be that Apple is not upgrading transfer speeds through the lightning cable?!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_(connector)

 

[chabig]

Lightning is a connection, not a data transfer protocol.

 

[freddiecable]

well - it is magically stupid that I get 5 MB/second when trying to send 11 GB film from my iPhone 7+ to my MBP 2017 USB-C with lightning - USB-C-cable.

 

[chabig]

That does seem slow. I think you should see 10-20 MB/s from USB2.

 

[upandown]

Yup. And what's worse is Apple touts the ipad pros to be USB3. Except none of the cables are USB3. Pretty hilarious

 

[chabig]

iPad tech specs don’t mention USB3 support at all.

https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/

 

[upandown]

iPad tech specs don’t mention USB3 support at all.

https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/

Original 12.9 in ipad, and the 2017 ipad pros were advertised as usb3. Plenty of threads of frustration on it. Apple advertised it on stage each time.

Not sure why it's not on the specs page. Hopefully because they realized they couldn't deliver.

 

[Outrigger]

well - it is magically stupid that I get 5 MB/second when trying to send 11 GB film from my iPhone 7+ to my MBP 2017 USB-C with lightning - USB-C-cable.

Lightning is USB 2 because the bottleneck is in the iphone/ipad's slow hard drive speed. With USB3, you're not going to see much of a difference so hence Apple is still using USB2.

 

[huschpuscheli]

Lightning is USB 2 because the bottleneck is in the iphone/ipad's slow hard drive speed. With USB3, you're not going to see much of a difference so hence Apple is still using USB2.

i don't think this is entirely correct. usb3 uses 9 pins while lightning provides only 8. the exception to this are the ipads (pro?) that support usb3 with this one dongle (not sure which one). those ipads are equipped with a lightning port that has 16 pins (8 on one side, 8 on the other). all iphones to date with lightning, including the latest 8 and 8 plus, only have 8 pins. and as mentioned above, none of the cables with lightning connector on one end have support for usb3 because they only contain 8 wires for those 8 pins.

here's a quote from changguangyu where you can see the difference in the number of pins in iphones (left pic; 8 pins) and usb3-ipads (right pic, 16 pins):

I went to the Apple store and find that iPhone 8 and 8 plus have same 8pin lightning port as iPhone7 ..

unless apple uses some fancy non-usb-compliant trickery to get usb3 out of 8 pins/8 wires even though the standard uses 9, or unless they equip all iphones and ipads with those 16 pin ports AND start producing appropriate 16 pin/16 wires cables, we are still stuck with usb2. i wonder if the iphone x will feature usb3.

 

[Outrigger]

i don't think this is entirely correct. usb3 uses 9 pins while lightning provides only 8. the exception to this are the ipads (pro?) that support usb3 with this one dongle (not sure which one). those ipads are equipped with a lightning port that has 16 pins (8 on one side, 8 on the other). all iphones to date with lightning, including the latest 8 and 8 plus, only have 8 pins. and as mentioned above, none of the cables with lightning connector on one end have support for usb3 because they only contain 8 wires for those 8 pins.

here's a quote from changguangyu where you can see the difference in the number of pins in iphones (left pic; 8 pins) and usb3-ipads (right pic, 16 pins):

unless apple uses some fancy non-usb-compliant trickery to get usb3 out of 8 pins/8 wires even though the standard uses 9, or unless they equip all iphones and ipads with those 16 pin ports AND start producing appropriate 16 pin/16 wires cables, we are still stuck with usb2. i wonder if the iphone x will feature usb3.

I'm not talking about the pins, but the transfer rate of the hard drives Apple uses in its phones and ipads. Just because its SSD doesn't mean its on par with the ones used in their laptops. Look at the speed of current run of the mill SD cards, they're really slow.

 

[huschpuscheli]

I'm not talking about the pins, but the transfer rate of the hard drives Apple uses in its phones and ipads. Just because its SSD doesn't mean its on par with the ones used in their laptops. Look at the speed of current run of the mill SD cards, they're really slow.

i don't think so. toshiba's current nand chips (emmc and ufs) are much faster than usb2's 40MB/s. so the bottleneck is after the iphone's nand memory (source i. e.: https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/us/product/memory/mlc-nand/emmc.html).

 

[freddiecable]

I can transfer 40MB/second over wifi/airdrop.

From my point of view it is more about - how can we still be having these slow transfer speeds with cable? In the year 2017 with 256GB HD-space in phones.

 

[huschpuscheli]

I can transfer 40MB/second over wifi/airdrop.

From my point of view it is more about - how can we still be having these slow transfer speeds with cable? In the year 2017 with 256GB HD-space in phones.

that's the point i was trying to make. it's not the memory's speed but the apparent lack of a speedy usb controller and an appropriate lightning port with enough pins to put usb3 through. oh, and the cables need to be updated. so how can it be that we still have just usb2? i guess the answer is that apple wants to save money.