I have been asked this question since the day I reported in an exclusive article that Apple has more USB-C iPhone prototypes than usual and that this could mean the iPhone 14 Pro would have a USB-C connector instead of the outdated Lightning connector. Well, I have some bad news for you: Apple will continue to use the 10-year-old connector on its flagship iPhone.
The reason for this is clear. While some speculate that it might’ve something to do with Apple wanting to go portless in the near future, my sources claim that’s not the reason for using the Lightning connector. The real reason is money.
It’s simple; Apple can charge royalties to any manufacturer that wants to sell something with a Lightning port: cables, dongles, stands, etc. Apple makes a lot of money from these royalties, and it has no plans to end that revenue.
Apple plans to continue with this method until it moves to a portless iPhone that transfers data via MagSafe. So there will always be money to be made from royalties, no matter when the company decides to move to a portless ecosystem. But it’s not all bad news. I have a very interesting exclusive for you.
The Lightning connector normally operates at USB 2.0 speeds, but it’s not technically limited to that, and Apple engineers are working on 3.0 speeds for the iPhone 14 Pro connector. So that would solve the main problem creatives have now.
Some creators shoot their videos using the iPhone 13 Pro’s ProRes video feature because they’re much better quality and very easy to edit. However, these files are quite heavy, and it takes hours to transfer them to a computer via cable because USB 2.0’s speed isn’t enough. But Apple could easily solve this problem by enabling USB 3.0 speeds on the next iPhones.
As far as I know, Apple plans to implement this feature on the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. After a few conversations with people familiar with the matter, I can’t confirm whether or not this feature will be available on the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Max, and while it would make sense, I don’t want to give you false hope.
Apple won’t move to a portless iPhone until engineers can achieve decent transfer speeds over MagSafe. Last thing I heard, this won’t be a problem between an iPhone and a Mac or an iPad, but Apple needs to find a way to do it with other devices like Windows or Linux computers. The company is investing a lot of time and resources into this development, and while I don’t expect the iPhone 15 Pro to be portless, the iPhone 16 Pro has some chance of becoming the first portless iPhone. I’ll keep you posted on this topic if I hear anything new from my sources.
Let me know what you think about it in the comments below. I hope you found this article helpful. As always, have a fantastic day.