A report in the Wall Street Journal suggests that Apple is bringing USB-C to the iPhone. It’s surprising news, given Apple’s traditional reluctance to adopt standardised ports on its iPhone.
Before you get your hopes up, however, The Verge does add that the WSJ report’s wording is not very clear. The report could be interpreted to suggest that Apple is not dumping Lightning in favour of USB-C, but that it’s replacing the USB-A end of the connector with USB-C.
The latter assumption makes more sense because Apple very “courageously” dumped all USB-A ports on its current MacBook lineup and replaced them with USB-C, without taking the trouble to provide adapters.
If you buy a MacBook and an iPhone today, it’s impossible to connect the two without buying at least one adapter.
Another pointer for the latter assumption is that Apple has only recently released its Lightning EarPods and has licensed the ports to accessory makers for making Lightning-compatible headphones and accessories.
USB-C is a better standard than USB 3.0 because it supports a much higher bandwidth and, more importantly, can handle far more power.
Moving to USB-C will lend Apple users at least some peace of mind, as they won’t have to purchase adapters to hook up their iPhones to their MacBooks.
It’ll be certainly be a welcome change if Apple decides to dump Lightning for USB-C, but that’s likely a very remote possibility.