I recently had a revelation while testing the wired charging speed on my reliable iPhone 16 Plus. In six months of ownership it happened to me when I blew the dust out like an archaeologist who examined an old pot I had never Connected to a cable to my iPhone’s USB-C port. It seemed impossible, but it was true.
And it made me think. Do iPhone owners even need gates? When reports suggest that Apple is working on a smartphone without a port at all, all their minds lose. But if I can go half a year without using my iPhone’s USB-C port and not even noticing where is the problem? If Apple wants to ditch iPhone’s USB-C port, I say: Good.
The harbor at the bottom of an iPhone used to be absolutely fundamental to its well -being. Whether 30-pole, lightning or the latter USB-C, charging/data port was the head, often the only route in or out of the iPhone. Apart from charging, this gate was crucial in the early days to upload music and books on the device and get photos and videos from it. Sync and backup was also carried out via a cable connection. But one by one, these uses only changed from the cable, to the cable or wireless, to Magsafe, to who still uses a wire?
Most of us will have memories from times when the port connection became unreliable, and of how much of a pain this was. From that time, until you got a new phone, the cable had to be cradled in a certain way to get it to start charging, or the phone had to be put on your head or at a strange angle. “Don’t use that cable,” you would warn a friend. “It only plays nicely with the official Apple One.” Just another of the modern conveniences that makes life hell.
Magsafe is already a fantastic wireless option for (most) iPhones.
Shutterstock.com / Serhatctk
Of late, this particular set of annoyances has disappeared in the background, at least for me. I charge wireless overnight when the slower speed doesn’t matter. I get my music via streaming, not being 87 years old, and I transfer everything else wirelessly to and from the phone, this is not 2009. Literally, the only time I need the gate since I bought the phone is to test how effective the port is.
Okay, you say: bully for you, you don’t need the harbor. But what is the problem of keeping it as an option? Where is the damage? The damage, my Socratic friend, is that including a design element that the user does not need is a waste of resources and a cause of unnecessary compromises. As I explained when I defended the notch several years ago, apparently isolated design decisions have a knock-on effect in the rest of the product. And if Apple was able to ditch the USB-C port, it would be able to make the phone better in various other ways.
Most clearly, just having a physical opening on a phone that just asks for unwanted things to work inside. The dust I mentioned earlier; Water and wasted coffee. The iPhone 16 Plus has an excellent penetration protection assessment of IP68, but it took Apple more than a decade to reach this point because the gate made it so difficult to keep dust and water out of the device. Open your iPhone and you will see several design adjustments and compromises around the port module to waterproof the entire appliance; These could be ditched tomorrow if the harbor was not there and releases space within the chassis. It is on top of the room you would of course get by removing the port module.
If you have extra space inside the chassis, you can install a larger battery or move other components around in a more optimal configuration. Removal of the gate could enable Apple to have a speaker across the full width of the lower edge, and that would make access to the intervals of your phone for repairs of a simpler process.
It can even enable the company to make its iPhones thinner and exceed a restriction that is currently imposed by the port’s thickness. This year’s Oppo Find N5, which bulls to a specially designed USB-C port to shave every possible millimeter, is a good example of the way producers hit a wall in their search for still excellent phones. As long as customers insist on connecting cables to their phones, companies may not be able to get the size down further.
Foundry | Alex Walker Todd
Perhaps the biggest reason I want Apple to ditch the USB-C port, but it will force the industry and society to finally bite the ball and fully embrace wireless. Apple has massive weight as a strength for change. When iPhones bravely stopped with 3.5mm headphone jack, accessory manufacturers changed their focus from the cable to wireless (or in some cases for a while, lightning or USB-C) headphones, and such devices became cheaper, better and more widely available and understood. If some of wealthy iPhone owners suddenly lost their USB-C ports, Android manufacturers would probably follow and the same would happen to wireless chargers.
Cars would start to be sold by default with QI2 magnetic installations rather than or as well as cable ports that many currently offer. Wireless charging of Pucker would be common in homes and offices. And companies (including, I would expect Apple itself because it would be eager to reassure EU regulators) would shed their weight behind the development of faster, more efficient and longer distance wireless charging standards in a way that would be less appealing if wired was still an easy option.
I can’t imagine a moment that the USB-C port would disappear overnight. For example, if the iPhone 18 series turned out to be portless, there would still be an iPhone 17E with a port, not to name older generations still for sale at a lower price. For those who still want a port, the setting would remain – perhaps for many years if the slow death on the home button is something to pass by.
No one would be forced to participate in the revolution immediately. But the revolution comes, and the sooner we get started, the better.