Opinion

By Yanai Levy, Oct 28th, 2023

The iPhone is getting De-ported!

Rumors circulating on the internet about the iPhone losing its last remaining port have been stirred once again, yet this time with somewhat more credibility than in previous years. The removal of the headphone jack in 2017 immediately spurred speculation on when the other port of the phone, the lightning port, would follow suit. Renders and clickbait articles have surfaced regularly ever since showing a sleek shape with no intrusions whatsoever.

How would you use the features currently handled by the lightning port then? Charging? Audio playback? File transfer? Truly, there are solutions in place for all those use cases bar file transferring already. Audio can be handled by increasing Bluetooth standards for quality and connection stability, charging can be done wirelessly using Qi (pronounced chi) charging, and in ever-increasing speeds. Chinese brand HONOR has achieved 100 watts of charging using just wireless tech. The current iPhones max out at 27 watts with a wire.

There are also already solutions for file transferring without a wire, such as AirDrop between Apple devices (surely a method Apple will endorse), as well as Bluetooth having the capability to do so. Bluetooth, however, only recently reached 2 megabits per second, making it painfully slow to transfer anything but very small files.

Apple has been under pressure for a long time to transfer away from the lightning port to something faster but has steadfastly resisted in their customary fashion. The lightning connector currently in use is actually based on USB 2.0 technology, released initially in the year 2000. This limits its maximum speed to 480 megabits per second, a turtle’s pace by modern standards. In addition, USB-C is open source, allowing manufacturers to do what they please with it. Both connectors are reversible, meaning they can be inserted either way up and still function. USB-C has been widely adopted in the last coupe of years, with its blazing fast charging and transfer speeds seeing mass adoption. The durable, reversible connector is just a bonus on top, making it the preeminent technology connector out there. It is on phones, laptops, cameras, you name it.

The European Union approved law “Directive 2014/53/EU” in early October, requiring mobile phones to accept charging by a USB-C connector by the end of 2024. This law will extend to laptops as well by 2026. This is important because if Apple would like to sell iPhones in Europe, and they would, they need to comply with this law. As manufacturing two types of phones for each product line with different characteristics would be very expensive, it is believed Apple will not go for that path, preferring to find one solution for its global markets.

At the Washington Journal’s “Tech Live” event, Greg Joswiak, Apple’s worldwide marketing chief said Apple will “have to comply” with the EU ruling. This statement is interesting because he did not say “Apple will add USB-C” to the iPhone, instead choosing his words very carefully to only mention compliance. My bet is that apple will take this opportunity to finally nix that last pesky port off the bottom of their phones, and transition entirely to a wireless phone using the aforementioned solutions.

In particular, Apple is likely to use their “Magsafe” charger, consisting of a magnetic disc that sticks to the back of iPhones to position itself above the wireless charging coil present in the back of iPhones. The wireless charging technology exists in every iPhone sold since the iPhone 8 in 2018, and the magnetic ring is in every phone released since 2020’s iPhone 12.

Magsafe has had somewhat of a lukewarm reception since it was launched, due to a few factors. The charging speeds have so far been limited to 15 watts, and the magnets inside have been criticized for being too weak and not holding on to chargers, phone mounts, and wallet cases adequately. If Apple is to pose it as the be-all end-all of its new phones as early as next year, it will have to go through puberty to become a genuine replacement. As it has shown in the past however, Apple certainly does not lack the “courage” nor the conviction to cause such a revolution to pass.