Rumors are heating up that the iPhone is going to switch from Lightning to USB-C
When the iPhone debuted in 2007, it used the iPod’s 30-pin connector. Five years later Apple introduced the Lightning connector, and that’s what the iPhone has used for the last decade. And not just the iPhone, but several other Apple devices including the cases for AirPods and AirPods Pro, the Magic Mouse and Magic Keyboard, and even various Beats headphones. For the last several years, many people have been clamoring for Apple to switch from Lightning to the more universal USB-C connector. Apple does use USB-C on the Mac and iPad Pro. Rumors have been heating up over the last few weeks saying that Apple will indeed move to USB-C for the iPhone’s connector starting next year. Here’s supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, writing on Twitter:
My latest survey indicates that 2H23 new iPhone will abandon Lightning port and switch to USB-C port. USB-C could improve iPhone's transfer and charging speed in hardware designs, but the final spec details still depend on iOS support.
Why make the change? A few possible reasons, and it may be that some combination of all of these are leading Apple down this path. First of all, European regulatory agencies have been pushing more heavily for phone manufacturers to standardize around the USB-C connector. I oppose this kind of regulation. There’s certainly an argument to be made that it’s better for consumers if any consumer electronics device they buy uses the same connector. But bureaucrats aren’t technologists. USB-C is arguably the right connector to go with now if you’re going to mandate one, but that won’t always be the case (assuming it even is now), and over time it may be that new and different connectors and charging standards make sense for different devices. And without getting into the weeds, while the USB-C connector is universal, there’s a whole range of different power delivery and transfer specifications that use that connector. Try connecting your Nintendo Switch to your MacBook Pro’s power adapter, and you may fry your Switch. They use the same connector, but have different power delivery specs.
Then there’s file transfer speeds. For most of the last decade, Lightning has been fast enough. It matches the USB 2.0 specification of 480Mbps. But starting with the iPhone 13 Pro, you can now shoot video in Apple’s ProRes format. These files give professional video editors a much higher range of data to work with in Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere, but they’re vastly larger files than a typical iPhone 4K video. You can transfer those files to your Mac via a Lightning cable, but it’s going to be a very slow process, especially for someone who needs to get to work editing right away. An iPhone with a USB-C connector could transfer that same file at up to 40Gbps.
The biggest downside I can think of is that the USB-C connector is quite a bit larger than the Lightning connector, which presumably would somewhat limit the maximum potential thinness of an iPhone. The last couple of generations of iPhone have eschewed thinness as a primary design directive, so it may be that Apple doesn’t expect for phones to get significantly thinner in the next few years. I say, “next few years,” because it’s hard to imaging Apple making the switch from Lightning to USB-C if they don’t expect USB-C to be the main iPhone connector for at least the next five years.
Going beyond the iPhone, Ming-Chi Kuo expects USB-C to spread to other Apple devices:
Other Lightning port products (e.g., AirPods, Magic Keyboard/Trackpad/Mouse, MagSafe Battery) would also switch to USB-C in the foreseeable future.
This certainly makes sense. It would be weird if the iPhone moved away from Lightning, but these other devices retained it.
If this does happen, don’t expect it be completely uncontroversial. When Apple switched to Lightning a decade ago, there were a lot of people who were really upset about it. They didn’t see Apple reaching the physical and technical limitations of the old 30-pin connector, nor did they cheer for how much smaller the Lightning connector was. For this group of consumers, they only saw greedy Apple forcing them to buy new cables and charging bricks. I’d expect to hear similar complaints about a move from Lightning to USB-C.
And what about wireless charging? Up until fairly recently, the hot rumor was that Apple was going to transition the iPhone not to USB-C, but to a portless world of MagSafe wireless charging. Were those rumors legit and Apple made a course change, or were those rumors bogus to begin with? We may never know. I thought the portless iPhone made a lot of sense right up until iPhones started shooting ProRes video. That was when I began to doubt Apple would go in that direction. Ming-Chi Kuo would seem to agree:
Portless iPhone may cause more problems due to current limitations of wireless technologies & the immature MagSafe ecosystem.
If this reporting is correct, we won’t get confirmation until the Fall of 2023, so take this one with a grain of salt. Interesting food for thought and discussion though!