Does the iPhone 15 Support Thunderbolt?

The new iPhone 15 lineup has finally been announced during Apple’s September keynote.

And one of the biggest changes you’ll see on the outside of the iPhone—besides the new Action button on the iPhone 15 Pro—is the introduction of a USB-C port.

This port was something that a lot of iPhone fans were expecting, and it’s definitely a welcomed change that should’ve happened years ago.

However, is there more to the USB-C port? Did Apple go all out and also add Thunderbolt support?

Does the new iPhone 15 Support Thunderbolt?

The short answer is no. Unfortunately, Apple decided to skip Thunderbolt this year, and it’s only focusing on USB 3.

During the Apple keynote, the company made it very clear that only the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max support USB 3. This basically means that you’ll get transfer speeds up to 10 gigabits per second.

Additionally, you’ll also need to buy an extra cable to reach those speeds. It seems the current charging cable that comes with the iPhone Pro models won’t support USB 3.

This obviously is way faster than the Lightning port, but it’s still slower than Thunderbolt. For comparison, Thunderbolt 3 has transfer speeds of up to 40 gigabytes per second, which is more than double the current speeds on the iPhone 15 Pro.

Apple sells its own Thunderbolt 4 cables that are capable of data transfers up to 40 Gbps. For example, if you connect two MacBook Pros, you’ll be able to take advantage of the fully supported speeds. On the other hand, you’ll notice that iPhone 15 Pro models will only be able to support up to USB 3 transfer speed, which are 10 Gbps.

Not only that, but transfer speeds like that would make the iPhone an actual option for Pro users. It’s not that USB 3 is bad, but it definitely could be better.

And as you would expect, the regular iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus models don’t support Thunderbolt either. To make things a bit more awkward, since the Pro models will be the only ones with USB 3 support, the regular iPhone 15 models will only support USB 2.

USB 2 speeds are nothing to write home about. You should be able to get speeds of up to 480 megabytes per second. This not only is pretty slow, but it’s also the current speed you’ll find on the iPhone 14’s Lightning port.

If You Want Speed, Go for the Pro Models

While finally getting USB-C on the iPhone is great news, Apple could definitely have made them a bit faster, at least the Pro models.

Despite that, the iPhone 15 models all bring a lot to the table. For instance, you’ll get improved cameras, better performance, and some awesome new colors to choose from.

The iPhone 15 pre-orders begin on September 15, and sales in stores will start on September 22.