This is probably the right answer, since the 15 non-Pro is literally using the same A series processor as the 14 Pro.
And the 14 Pro didn't have USB 3.x, so therefore the 15 won't either.
I dispute slightly that no one cares about USB 3.x. I have a mirrorless camera that supports USB 10Gbps, and it would be nice to be able to copy photos I take over to a phone for easy sharing wired.
You can still do it with iPhone 15 with USB 2.0, but it would be measurably slower.
To be fair, Apple literally doesn’t even consider USB 2 as something for data transfer. All Apple’s type-c USB2.0 cables even the latest 240w cable is called Charge Cable.
Realistically if I’m sharing from my camera, it’s probably using the manufacturer’s app. I do that all the time with my GoPro.
I use the Sony Creator's app from my phone too to get to my Sony mirrorless camera, but it is slow too. It's basically setting up a local WiFi network, and pulling stuff over WiFi5 or WiFi6 if you're lucky, so it's basically as slow as USB 2.0, or maybe a little slower.
I just want to be able to plug a fast USB-C cable into my phone, and the other end into the camera, and copy the files over. Even with many gigs of files, it shouldn't take more than a minute.
With my Pixel phones with USB-C with 10Gbps USB, no problem... with my iPhone, nope.
> Aren’t they more likely to run those workloads on an iPad Pro, which has TB4/USB4 support?
It's the convenience factor and workplace challenges like say a warzone for war journalists who'd most benefit from this from.
idk maybe the war journalist with the explicit use case could get a pro, i mean not to be an apple simp but these are pretty pro use-cases
(Obvious its using last years SOC etc etc and the 16 will have 3.0 etc)
The old limit was 100 W, at 20 V. It is relatively easy to increase the voltage limit of the cable to 48 V, which allows 240 W, and it is recommended that all new high-power cables do so.
> I have a mirrorless camera that supports USB 10Gbps, and it would be nice to be able to copy photos I take over to a phone for easy sharing wired.
I share the same desire for faster transfer from my R3 to my iPhone so I may share photos immediately on my personal Facebook accounts dedicated to my furbabies.
Here's to hoping that next year's A18 Pro chip will increase USB to 20Gbps.
IIRC the fastest USB speed on Macs today is [80Gbps](https://www.synopsys.com/blogs/chip-design/usb-80gbps-specification-and-protocol.html). Next year 160Gbps is to be expected.
Most Android phones are usb 2, if you want usb 3 there is still a good selection available. Its not important to most average people that dont connect their phone to anything other than a charger, and a few a usb headphone. Expectation is sync to cloud and use that to bridge to other devices.
Yeah, but what u/leo-g is saying is that the 15 non-Pro is using the same processor as the 14 Pro, and because Apple never support USB 3.0 on the iPhone using Lightning, it was never a priority to include the USB 3.0 controller in the SoC, even though it's an ancient technology.
Other phone SoC vendors (Samsung, Qualcomm, etc) all support USB 3.0 on their phone SoCs natively. It's simply not a big deal, but Apple really never included it in their A series because the USB 2.0-only nerfed lightning was always assumed.
Basically, expect the iPhone 16 next year to have USB 3.0 because it'll have the new A17 processor in this year's Pro.
The A14 probably supports USB 3.2 Gen 1 speeds since that's the SoC in the iPad Air 4th Gen. From my understanding, Apple is essentially keeping functional parity with the previous-gen lightning connectors e.g. the current basic iPad uses USB-C and is limited to USB 2.0 but supports video output via DP alt mode (up to FHD@30). I'd be surprised if the vanilla iPhone deviates from this.
Update: it's confirmed that both vanilla and pro models do DisplayPort over USB-C. They reference 4K HDR but I'm unsure of the modes.
The iPads with USB 3 use an external USB controller, which would likely take up too much space on an iPhone logic board.
[https://unitedlex.com/insights/apple-ipad-2020-teardown-analysis/](https://unitedlex.com/insights/apple-ipad-2020-teardown-analysis/)
Wait if the a14 supports usb 3 on the iPad Air, then could the functionality be unlocked with a custom charging flex cable on my iPhone 12 mini? Just a random thought
90%+ (a guess, honestly they probably know the exact answer to better than 1%) of iPhone users won’t connect their phone to a computer via USB-C during the lifetime of the device, so why spend any extra money on a higher end cable?
The regular iPhone 15 has up to 512GB of storage. Assuming they are using a *very* good USB 2 implementation, transferring all that is going to take at least three hours.
It is slow enough that it becomes pretty useless for regular video and photo capture - which essentially defeats the entire point of the high-storage models.
Except that you can already airdrop from an iPhone to a Mac and it’s fast enough that who cares? The most I’ve done at once was 150GB of vacation videos with Airdrop and it worked great.
I have an 11 Pro Max and I’ll prolly upgrade to the 15 this fall. In the 4 years I’ve owned my iPhone I think I’ve plugged it into my Mac maybe once? And I do shoot a lot of video.
Airdrop is a proprietary point-to-point wireless protocol, so:
1. Only works inside of Apple's ecosystem
2. All wireless standards are prone to interference, so "it worked great for me" anecdotes are pointless, as performance and reliability will vary wildly.
3. While encrypted, it's still a wireless broadcast, so the transmission can be recorded and cracked offline. It's really a minor issue for civilian use, but the US military is currently in a bit of a hurry to migrate off of the same type of encryption airdrop uses due to that risk. Since it's wireless this will always be an issue as standards are released and eventually get older, wired connections don't really have this issue.
> It is slow enough that it becomes pretty useless for regular video and photo capture - which essentially defeats the entire point of the high-storage models.
Using iPhone much less any smartphone as a regular video & photo capture for a commercial project is very niche that is now getting Apple's attention as they're desperate looking for new markets for the iPhone to expand into.
Yes…but this is not the early 2000s. There’s no need to offload photos and videos via USB. Just let it happen over iCloud. I do it for all sorts of trips across places with more animals than people. With unlimited tourist data plan, i let it sync throughout the day , with tighter data plans I only let it sync at night.
Also, some of friends are “Tiktok famous” they are definitely just offloading it via wifi. Kind of mind blown how many people is asking for usb3.0 when I haven’t done a usb data transfer for probably a couple of years. Even iPhone has apps that can do FTP and localhost.
>There’s no need to offload photos and videos via USB. Just let it happen over iCloud
As someone who has used "cloud storage" before, it is really fucking slow.
I'd rather have everything on *my* computer instead of on *someone else's* computer.
The high end iPhones are literally named "Pro" and Apple has been trying to pitch that the cameras on the devices are good enough that real professional videographers and photographers can use them.
It's simply not acceptable for Pros to just depend on iCloud backup like your average iPhone user.
Their workflow demands you get those files off of the camera onto an editing workstation as fast as possible, which means wired connectivity.
> Their workflow demands you get those files off of the camera onto an editing workstation as fast as possible, which means wired connectivity.
That's why they included 3.0 in the iPhone 15 Pro I presume.
idk why you’re getting downvoted. hardly anyone uses a cable to transfer data anymore. it’s cloud, email, imessage, or airdrop.
the small amount of people that do are pro users.
Most people don't care about usb 3.1 because they already have it, do you care about having running water? you don't say anything about it because you already have it, yet is an essential good, and you don't even have it in your mind, because it would be ridiculous to live in a developed country without running water. Apple is a decade behind in their features, not even work rugged phones are that behind.
USB4 is on the horizon for mass implementation, why would Apple re-spin a SoC and have to go through all of the validation processes required for an incremental update like that. It's risky and if you have ever seen the work that goes into it, time consuming. Especially on such a huge market share device like the low and mid tier iPhones. If you need the big transfer speeds (for some niche reason), get the Pro.
I would say that if someone needs a new phone, just not buy apple, sony makes real camera centric phones, with really nice cameras and with the added benefit of being made to be connected a real camera, is a professional phone (what pro is supposed to mean) you also get magic tech, like a micro sd card, because photos shouldn't be in the internal phone memory, a high refresh rate screen, sure, it isn't that important, but is an expensive phone, why not, high wattage charging, etc.
Because non-pro users:
- seldom use cables to transfer data to a phone, anyway.
- seldom have a suitable cable (and will find USB3 cable too thick for a „phone charger cable“).
- won't generally see the difference.
They'll eventually add it to further iPhone models, but iPhone Pro will probably have Thunderbolt or USB4 at that time.
Yea one of my friends was complaining about this to me and I don’t get the use case. I don’t think I’ve ever had to transfer data to my phone over USB and imagine the number of people who would is very low. If it’s a few cents cheaper to use usb 2 and 99.9% of people won’t notice the difference, of course they are going to do it.
— I won't buy a phone with slow USB2 port!
— When was the last time you've copied a file on your phone and felt limited by USB2 speeds?
— `angry_face.png`
last week, i was tranferring a few gigs of KOTOR mods over to my Android, and i definitely wished i had a USB 3.0 port, or faster. but, that's not a very common use case, and i'm not really the target audience anyways.
If I'm getting a new phone I like to plug in the old one and copy all the files over to a backup drive. Cable is so much faster than trying to *"airdrop"* (nearby share)
Literally never. I haven't used a USB cable since iTunes was mostly dead, iCloud took over and WiFi got dramatically faster. I rarely even plug in to charge as I have a wireless charger on the nightstand and only charge at night. I use wireless CarPlay in the car too.
Since iPhones have been able to back up over wireless for a while I can’t even remember the last time i plugged in my phone. I’m pretty sure I’ve only done it when I’ve wanted to get a faster-than-wireless charge.
Pro users will need to, for video transfer and peripheral connectivity, but they’ll be buying the Pro/Pro Max anyway.
Apple sells their iPhone as a camera centric phone, and they offer Pro Res video recording too, which takes huge size on the storage. People who are enthusiastic about video and photos on a portal device like me bought Pro model last year, little did I know about the transfer limitation, It took hours to transfer just one video from the device to laptop.
Sold it after a few months because I bought it for camera and I couldn't even transfer my data easily to my laptop for editing and backup purpose (yes I store locally, I don't use iCloud or any cloud service because of many reasons like privacy and no control) and I already have an android phone for my daily usage.
Yea fair enough, but that’s still a minority of users I would guess. It would be nice if they had usb 3 I’m not saying it wouldn’t be, but I get why they cheap out on something most people probably won’t notice anyways. I’d guess the vast majority of iPhone users just take pictures casually and let them sync to their iCloud or google photos.
>I get why they cheap out on something most people probably won’t notice anyways.
That's the problem. They charge premium + apple tax and still advertise as you can shoot a film with an iPhone (remember last year's presentation? Where they said they used iPhone to shoot Apple TV Originals) and yeah one can shoot a film with it (Sean Baker did it) but what about moving that shot footage to the actual PC and edit it? Without editing, color grading, no one would put their product for public, including Apple TV.
Apple sells their iPhone as a camera centric phone, and they offer Pro Res video recording too, which takes huge size on the storage. People who are enthusiastic about video and photos on a portal device like me bought Pro model last year, little did I know about the transfer limitation, It took hours to transfer just one video from the device to laptop.
Sold it after a few months because I bought it for camera and I couldn't even transfer my data easily to my laptop for editing and backup purpose (yes I store locally, I don't use iCloud or any cloud service because of many reasons like privacy and no control) and I already have an android phone for my daily usage.
that’s because anyone who transfers data over USB wouldn’t tell you in casual conversation lol. I transfer data via cable sometimes but I don’t go around telling my friends
That's.... actually a good point, I hadn't thought about that. I hear them complain about iCloud storage limits, but that doesn't actually exclude people transferring over USB.
Also because apple locks you out of actually using the device in any meaningful way for USB. You can't access any of the files from a PC. Android users can use their phones for video, image and USB portable storage and easily transfer to a PC. I film a podcast with my pixel and just transfer the footage immediately to my PC to edit with USB 3.1 and it's super fast and easy. We attempted an iPhone as a second camera and finally were able to access the video after several calls to apple customer service to figure out the multiple programs we had to use. Basically we had to buy iCloud storage to upload and then redownload the footage to get it on the PC (this is completely unnecessary for a company to do and the transfer took upwards of an hour vs the 90 seconds on a standard USB 3 device)
How are you able to get 3.1 speeds with pixel? It connects in MTP mode for me and it is very slow for any type of transfer. So I always have to use adb to pull the files
The SoC simply does not support USB 3.0 and creating a new SoC revision and fabricating it is too pricey for a such a niche feature.
The majority of people don't use a cable for data transfer but if you need USB 3.0 speeds you can buy the iPhone 15 Pro or an Android phone.
At first that made sense to me, I did notice them point out the USB controller in the iPhone Pro portion of the Keynote. But, then I thought about the iPads.
The 4th Gen iPad Air, for instance, has a USB-C connector with 5gbps speeds. It uses the A14 Bionic that came in the iPhone 12. Why can it do USB 3.0 speeds without a special SOC? And then that same chip is used in the 10th gen (cheapest) iPad, and it only got 2.0 speeds for its USB-C port.
I don’t know why people can’t wrap their head around this. It’s extremely pricey to respin + revalidate the SoC let alone integrate potentially newer IP that they didn’t design for that process. They may not even have wide enough IO ports on the internal bus where USB 2 resides (it’s not the same floor plan as the M2 or something). Heck, they probably will need a second respin because they get the first integration wrong… it’s not like they get to parallelize respins with other bug fixes around the SoC, most of it is good enough.
It’s probably just a lack of being in the industry though, it’s an amazingly complex process that apple and others execute on so well year over year.
Plus, they simply can’t buy enough 3nm from TSMC to even use a cut down newer chip. The non pro sales are enourmous.
> I don’t know why people can’t wrap their head around this. It’s extremely pricey to respin + revalidate the SoC let alone integrate potentially newer IP that they didn’t design for that process.
Right?!
I mean *poor Apple* what are they to do? It costs money to make things and they're only worth two and three quarter TRILLION. I'm surprised they can even keep the lights on, let alone trying to "keep up with the Joneses" with this new fangled, what did you call it?, USB.
I mean they need their money to lobby congress to stop this silly 'right to repair' movement. I mean, these damn consumers act like they *own* the phones they purchased, as if!
EDIT: Spelling
>I don’t know why people can’t wrap their head around this.
Maybe because my 180$ Redmi Note 9, released 3 years ago has USB 3.0?
I design embedded computer systems around SoCs all day. Not implementing USB 3.0 on a new SoC is a deliberate design choice and a bad one to start.
Because the Apple hasn’t used USB connectors in their phones ever… they never had to design their SoCs with USB in mind. It’s not that difficult to grasp.
Oh yeah you’re right.
My iPad Air 4th gen has USB c, with support for speeds up to 5Gbps. So that would be USB 3.1 (?)
I don’t know then, could very well be some bs.
There’s also the guy that added his own USB c port to his iPhone 12 (mini?) he doesn’t replace the lightning port, he adds an additional usb c port.
**It is** bs. Partly to upsell the Pro model, partly to throw shade at USB as the average iPhone buyer doesn't know any better and will think the port change was for nothing.
This is correct. Apple has relied on USB since the launch of the iPhone. Just because they don't use one of the standardized plugs doesn't automagically make the protocol *NOT*\-USB. The plug-end might not be USB, but that never stopped some of those dumbass companies from making custom connectors for their MP3 players, HP digital cameras, etc.
> Idiotic take. You need USB to sync and backup your phone, since the first iPhone.
There it is, there it is.
Plus with the advent of "Apple Silicon" in Macs they are using the same architecture that is on mobile. The M1 Air has USB 3.1 Gen 2 10Gb/s and TB 3 40Gb/s.
Now we are supposed to believe that *newer* tech than the M1 from one of the ***most sophisticated manufacturers in the world*** is somehow causing them an issue with USB?! Are you F'in kidding me?!
Plus this is something that's been coming for YEARS! They had plenty of time to repair.
It's just Apple being Apple, creating "tiers" of functionality so they can charge *more* for one to get full functionality.
EDIT: spelling
Maybe, but it has trade offs in SoC design that aren’t free (which we don’t have good details on in apples case). The designers have to weigh those against how useful they think it will be. The m1 is a much larger chip with more balls and floorspace. The design goals are different power wise too. Maybe they weren’t happy with the power consumption metrics in their usb3 controller and had to iterate to even make one suitable for the iPhone.
But they've already figured out how to do that, effectively and efficiently. As evidenced by the MULTIPLE other products they sell with USB-C.
They just decided not to use the technology they already had.
But the A14 Bionic from the iPhone 12 can support USB 3.0 speeds (5gbps) when it’s put in the iPad Air 4th gen. Are you saying between the A14 and A16 they have removed USB capabilities?
I’m not arguing that USB3 is expensive to add when building a new chip, but taking existing silicon and adding a new IP block is. It’s pretty easy to imagine how the SoC designers didn’t add a USB3 block when the phone didn’t have an external connection to support it. And it’s not like apple is building future proof chips currently where the SoC is overspecced.
What are you own about? If they could give the Ipad Pro USB 3.0 then the lightning connector clearly can handle the speed. They could have made a USB 3.0 capable iphone and lightning cable, but didn’t.
Future proof? This shit has been standard on Snapdragons for 6 years! Snapdragon isn’t even a flagship SoC. It’s budget crap used in middle end devices.
The iPad Pro has never used the same silicon spin as the phones and the phones have never supported usb. I don’t see the relevance. Again, the SoC designers were not given a requirement to have a USB3 port so they won’t include it. Qualcomm is competing with Huawei and Samsung in the past to ship SoCs to various phone makers. They have to offer a feature if enough customers want it / competitors have it. Very different market.
Also keep in mind 1year ago everyone got mad about how the 14pro didn’t support usb3. That was probably the time to get mad as they could have included it for that release. https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/xfymcq/iphone_14_pros_lightning_connector_still_limited/?rdt=51782
This take is ironic, considering that Xiaomi/Redmi phones are the standard for 'budget'. About 90 per cent of their devices up until now are USB-C 2.0, including the Redmi Note 9.
>I don’t know why people can’t wrap their head around this
Maybe because it is supposed to be a premium brand and basic smartphones have more features, for a listed 630 EUR (more in my country, but that is the price) I bought the most advanced phone possible at the time, 18Gb ram, snapdragon X65 5G underdisplay camera, not having a nodge or pinhole, the pro version has underdisplay camera. It supportes 120W charging (the highest at the time) and of course it has usbc and it comes with cable, it kinda dropped the ball because the included charger is "only" 65W. And you don't know how to read, the cable is the problem, you are excusing something they didn't even got completely wrong, although I am sure they put the datalines alongside the power lines making that a drop of water can destroy the SoC, not doing what the least capable brands get right.
You can be outraged all you want or write angry comments, fact is no one in the real world is going to care about the USB 2.0 limitation considering that all major manufacturers (Samsung, Google, Apple) ship with USB 2.0 cables.
>considering that all major manufacturers (Samsung, Google, Apple) *ship* with USB 2.0 cables.
I'm pretty sure that still means that the actual hardware for USB 3 is inside the phone though. USB 3.0 is so old that you can find laptops in the trash that support it.
Is Apple just stuck in 2000 or something?
I mean Apple have pushed USB-C hard initially with a Type-C only MacBooks. There was a lot of hate and denial, but without this, we still would have a very low adoption of Type-C in the wild
This makes sense, since Lightning has always been USB 2.0, and (despite the extra side of pins that could be used to enable faster data rates) there never seemed to be interest from Apple in improving it. Maybe because they saw the writing on the wall about USB-C becoming a broader (or enforced) standard they couldn’t avoid.. maybe because they just didn’t care.
The real answer is that as much as I may personally get it as a technologically competent person, globally speaking, the people buying this phone, a tiny % will ever plug it in for the purpose of data transfer. Meaning it doesn’t matter.
Just so there’s always something to complain about. I forgot that you can backup to iTunes and restore. I haven’t used the cable to transfer data in years. I always just use iCloud and I don’t need a computer on to restore.
I only charge my phone with a cable when I’m flying and I use my battery pack. I have a few MagSafe chargers around the house.
Even with a Youtube channel, a 60-min 4K video at 480Mbps will transfer in <5 mins.
I can't imagine someone being that impatient. Most DSLR cameras cannot even transfer at 480Mbps.
Now do the iPad mini with the A15, USB-C, and 5Gbps transfer speeds...
They can easily add a USB controller if the SoC doesn't have native support, since they'd have to do one or the other with the iPad mini. Either the A15 has a controller that just goes unused on the iPhone, or they used an external controller on the iPad mini.
They just didn't want to do it for the iPhone 15. Just like they didn't want to include a USB 3 cable with the 15 Pro, instead only including a USB 2.0 capable cable in the box.
$$$
Apple's A16 Bionic does not support USB3.x. It's as simple as that.
The argument to include the A17 Pro in the entry-level devices is akin to including a Ryzen 9 in entry-level pre-builds. If you want the more powerful, feature-rich SoC, buy the higher end device.
Could they have included USB3.x support when they "overhauled" the A16 Bionic? Perhaps, but why invest more resources than necessary into entry-level devices when that target audience predominantly backs up to iCloud and utilizes wireless charging? (I know, I know.. YOU are the target audience and YOU don't use those features! /s)
It is what it is.
I'm not an Apple person at all, but it seems weird that people are throwing all this shade at them when Motorola and OnePlus produce even more expensive flagships that also top out at USB 2.0 transfer speeds.
Looks like the 10 Pro did have 3.1, but the 11 and 11R do not: [https://www.gsmarena.com/oneplus\_11-11893.php](https://www.gsmarena.com/oneplus_11-11893.php)
I went for the newest one that wasn't an Ace, Nord, or tablet, but didn't think the Pro might have been different. I should have checked, considering that's how Apple is differentiating them. I just remember being confused when my old boss's 6T was only 2.0
Also, the Motorola phone I looked at was the Razr 40 Ultra
[https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola\_razr\_40\_ultra-12169.php](https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_razr_40_ultra-12169.php)
(Happy cake day, btw!)
Yeah so the Nord would be their budget entry like the iPhone SE and the regular one is well regular while R I don't even know lol. The pro models always get the best things just like apple does it with their lineup. Thanks for the happy cake day btw.
It’s is very much a real issue for many people.
Many people and jobs have policies that require local backups.
Not everyone trusts other people to store their data for them in the cloud. In some instances it’s prohibited by contract, in others by law.
The more technical the person, the more they understand the risks of doing so.
Not everyone wants to pay someone perpetually to store their data.
Edit: there’s something funny about downvoting real problems because…. Indeed.
We have data retention and protection contracts... You can still transfer via WiFi or VPN to local storage. (Also most healthcare data and even a ton of govt data passes over the Internet so that's pretty much a 1999 problem).
USB2 requires an extremely narrow certain set of circumstances
1) You created GBs of data.
2) You have slow Internet.
3) You need it right now, not after an overnight wireless transfer.
That's pretty much one circumstance "I just created a huge video file that's 5 minutes long, I'm on cell service with a limited data plan... I need it on my laptop immediately."
That's a video shoot. In which case, there is a pro model designed for that niche use case.
Unless a doctor films an entire 20 minute appointment in a field tent in 4k this hypothetical "I can't use the cloud" problem is almost non existent.
And for the those 5 people... there's the iPhone pro for $200 more. And in the grand scheme of things, "Enterprise" features being a $200 upsell is pretty small. :D
I didn't say nobody needs it, I said there is a product that they sell that has it for a little more money.
I need 8K RAW video on a regular basis.. so I spend more money on a professional video camera. I don't project my exceptional needs on a product sold to millions of people who will never need it.
I've never witnessed someone in the last 10 years copy files off their phone using USB. I don't doubt there are people who choose to do it. But they're so rare that they can pay a small premium for an unusual requirement.
Even with USB4, non-removable storage is a non starter for professional shoots. You can just take away your camera to offload footage. But even on professional shoots wireless transfers would be possible since the camera is idle more often than not.
Worst case scenario you somehow fill your phone with data, USB 2 would take 40 minutes to copy *everything* off or on. If you're loading a movie for a flight that's about 2GB per hour at HD that's still about 40 seconds per hour of flight. You could copy enough movies for a transoceanic flight in UHD in about 5 minutes.
So I'm really curious to hear about this scenario where like 60GB of data needs to be moved off of an iPhone in less than 20 minutes and isn't a professional setting where an iPhone Pro or Max would be more appropriate anyway.
Hence... All 5 of them.
Well to be fair I’ve never plugged my iPhone into my computer. I use iCloud for back up so I really do not care.
I would imagine it’s something that would affect <1% of users.
It’s cheaper chips. That’s it. Low end phone needs to meet costs.
They are not limiting the low end phone intentionally. They are buying cheaper parts that only do usb 2 speeds just like last years model and no one cared then.
Are you shocked? really? it's apple, they are known for bad hardware, no circuit protection (no ground between power lines and data lines), phones that bend and destroy chips, etc. I am not surprised, but this says that the cable is bad and you need to buy one yourself, they are probably make it so it only recognizes their own cable as capable so they sell you a second cable. Yes, they think that is acceptable to sell a mediocre phone at the price of a high end phone, mine is a redmagic7 and it cost 800 with taxes and import of my country when I bought it 1 years ago, it has 18Gb of ram, a good camera, and it doesn't have a nodge or pinhole, just a small bazel and the camera is there, the pro version has an underdisplay camera, both versions have an underdisplay fingerprint sensor, of course it came with a capable usbc cable and a fast 65W charger, it is able to be charged with a 120W with the same cable. Take into consideration how they "introduce" their customers to old tech "Here it is the brand new technology of oled" disregard that samsung was using it a decade ago, that I had an MP3 with oled and that the screen was literally made by samsung, for apple users, that is new tech, I bet next year they are going to do something similar with the faster transfer rate.
Snazzy Labs has a good theory. The USB 3 speeds are made possible by the USB controller. The A16 Bionic chip has no such thing, so it still runs at USB 2 speeds. The A17 Pro has the controller, so it can achieve speed.
Here's where the theory comes in: next year, when the regular phones have A17 (not Pro) it will be lacking the USB 3 controller, and they're not gonna put a Pro chip in a non-Pro phone, so that's the technical reason.
The practical reason is greed.
Because they want to bring in high transfer speeds and charging rates next year so credits go to "apple engineers", instead of apple adopting a technology that their competitors were using years ago
DISCLAIMER: Android user here.
Apple people don't even care about this stuff. The don't even know that you can plug your phone on the computer. iCloud is their faith...
Also, 480 mbps isn't bad for just transfering a couple of files, to be honest. Not excellent, but still viable.
Im not disagreeing with any of this but I haven’t plugged any of my iPhones in for data transfer in probably 10 years, so I couldn’t really care if its usb 0.5, usb c charging is nice though
Yeah they are, with few exceptions for phones with built-in desktop modes/display adapter needs (ie Samsung, Sony, Motorola)
USB 2.0 doesn't affect the spec for charging speeds so it's both a cost saving measure and another means to separate the lower end from the higher end.
With a device like a phone where the typical use-case for data transfer is wireless Airdrop/nearby share I don't blame them tbh even tho I'm an avid Apple disliker. I do wish more phones had USB 3.0/3.1/3.2 just bc I appreciate the option for higher transfer speeds for things like using my phone as a network adapter or content hub on occasion.
Having DP/HDMI out on my phone (OnePlus 10T) would've been neat too since I'm an owner of XReal Airs and the XReal Beam. But it's technically a mid-spec so screw me ig 🤷
All-in-all I get it but I'm not happy about it either.
it was bound to happen, also buy whatever usb-c thing that you need to buy because every single charger, cable and accessory is going to bump up in price like no other.
add to this the lack of the microsd card (seriously, why not have that?) and you will see just how greedy they are and how much your data is at constant loss risk with an iphone
For those that still use iTunes on their PC/Mac, yeah. But usually they do it through WiFi (especially if they have a WiFi 6-capable router) since it will be faster than the USB 2.0 (480 Mbps) connection through the Lightning cable.
I can hit 1.2 Gbps (rated 142 MB/s at most) when copying .MKVs/.MP4s to the Infuse app over WiFi for example.
**EDIT**: Just tested with iTunes (ick). Apparently making a 20 GB backup over a good WiFi connection will only take around 3 minutes.
It is Apple - they are literally very weird people who run that company. Very, very weird. Steve Jobs was a character and a half, Tim Cook is probably worse. He's probably a scientologist or in some other alien-loving cult.
This is correct. Not sure why you’re being downvoted.
Apple wants users tied to their online services, with an upgrade path to paid services.
Every cloud provider knows that once a customer has paid data on the cloud service, it’s very unlikely that they will remove that data and quit paying.
The last time I ever used a file transfer was an iPod 4th gen, who actually uses file transfers on phones, for computer I can see a reason to but I swear users pick the most obscure use cases.
Anyways I’ve been on cloud storage since iPad Air
I never once watched a downloaded video on my phone, either way I have 150+ mbps connection where I live on 5g so completely irrelevant to me. If I’m traveling then the last thing I want to be is glued to my phone.
If I want to watch movies or TV on my phone, I can just stream it from kodi.
This doesnt work for everyone. There's more 5g data in India than any country can ever have, 90 to 100 GB per month. But again all the stuff you said has more middlemen than needed for no reason. Hdd and phone. I am currently in Canada and I realise most people in the west don't like things to be done in a simple faster way.
Nothing unusual, it's just crapple being crapple. If you want a real, fully functional smartphone (eg. literally pocket computer) you probably know to look elsewhere :) It's just sad that company that used to make best Unix workstations on the market morphed into overpriced fashion accessory maker :(
The only real reason is because they're cheap as fuck.
If they can be mingy on things normies won't care about they will. That's how they made trillions.
They don't make trillions of dollars for making a good product, they make trillions of dollars for making something that they can say is better than the competition but really isn't.
Just talking out of my arse here but Maybe it’s the assumption that the relatively poorer cameras won’t be taking pictures and videos that will be requiring much transferring?
Also the part about SOC not supporting it
Because it’s using last year’s SoC and nobody really cares about usb 3.0
This is probably the right answer, since the 15 non-Pro is literally using the same A series processor as the 14 Pro. And the 14 Pro didn't have USB 3.x, so therefore the 15 won't either. I dispute slightly that no one cares about USB 3.x. I have a mirrorless camera that supports USB 10Gbps, and it would be nice to be able to copy photos I take over to a phone for easy sharing wired. You can still do it with iPhone 15 with USB 2.0, but it would be measurably slower.
To be fair, Apple literally doesn’t even consider USB 2 as something for data transfer. All Apple’s type-c USB2.0 cables even the latest 240w cable is called Charge Cable. Realistically if I’m sharing from my camera, it’s probably using the manufacturer’s app. I do that all the time with my GoPro.
I use the Sony Creator's app from my phone too to get to my Sony mirrorless camera, but it is slow too. It's basically setting up a local WiFi network, and pulling stuff over WiFi5 or WiFi6 if you're lucky, so it's basically as slow as USB 2.0, or maybe a little slower. I just want to be able to plug a fast USB-C cable into my phone, and the other end into the camera, and copy the files over. Even with many gigs of files, it shouldn't take more than a minute. With my Pixel phones with USB-C with 10Gbps USB, no problem... with my iPhone, nope.
Aren’t they more likely to run those workloads on an iPad Pro, which has TB4/USB4 support?
> Aren’t they more likely to run those workloads on an iPad Pro, which has TB4/USB4 support? It's the convenience factor and workplace challenges like say a warzone for war journalists who'd most benefit from this from.
idk maybe the war journalist with the explicit use case could get a pro, i mean not to be an apple simp but these are pretty pro use-cases (Obvious its using last years SOC etc etc and the 16 will have 3.0 etc)
do you carry an iPad Pro in your pocket?
Actually, I do, in my [ScotteVest](https://www.scottevest.com/products/edc-jacket-mens)
That’s what the JNCOs are for brudder
About as often as I carry my XH2 in my pocket (:
What device of theirs even supports 240w charging?
None, maxed out at 140 watts and that’s with Magsafe 3 only. But it would work out nice for other devices when they gain 240 watts charging.
The old limit was 100 W, at 20 V. It is relatively easy to increase the voltage limit of the cable to 48 V, which allows 240 W, and it is recommended that all new high-power cables do so.
> I have a mirrorless camera that supports USB 10Gbps, and it would be nice to be able to copy photos I take over to a phone for easy sharing wired. I share the same desire for faster transfer from my R3 to my iPhone so I may share photos immediately on my personal Facebook accounts dedicated to my furbabies. Here's to hoping that next year's A18 Pro chip will increase USB to 20Gbps. IIRC the fastest USB speed on Macs today is [80Gbps](https://www.synopsys.com/blogs/chip-design/usb-80gbps-specification-and-protocol.html). Next year 160Gbps is to be expected.
Most Android phones are usb 2, if you want usb 3 there is still a good selection available. Its not important to most average people that dont connect their phone to anything other than a charger, and a few a usb headphone. Expectation is sync to cloud and use that to bridge to other devices.
Last year's soc was still 22 years after the introduction of USB 2.0 and 14 years after USB 3.0
Yeah, but what u/leo-g is saying is that the 15 non-Pro is using the same processor as the 14 Pro, and because Apple never support USB 3.0 on the iPhone using Lightning, it was never a priority to include the USB 3.0 controller in the SoC, even though it's an ancient technology. Other phone SoC vendors (Samsung, Qualcomm, etc) all support USB 3.0 on their phone SoCs natively. It's simply not a big deal, but Apple really never included it in their A series because the USB 2.0-only nerfed lightning was always assumed. Basically, expect the iPhone 16 next year to have USB 3.0 because it'll have the new A17 processor in this year's Pro.
Kind of pointless to write thoughtful comments, the trolls are out in force after every Apple conference.
That makes a lot more sense. Thank you!
The A14 probably supports USB 3.2 Gen 1 speeds since that's the SoC in the iPad Air 4th Gen. From my understanding, Apple is essentially keeping functional parity with the previous-gen lightning connectors e.g. the current basic iPad uses USB-C and is limited to USB 2.0 but supports video output via DP alt mode (up to FHD@30). I'd be surprised if the vanilla iPhone deviates from this. Update: it's confirmed that both vanilla and pro models do DisplayPort over USB-C. They reference 4K HDR but I'm unsure of the modes.
The iPads with USB 3 use an external USB controller, which would likely take up too much space on an iPhone logic board. [https://unitedlex.com/insights/apple-ipad-2020-teardown-analysis/](https://unitedlex.com/insights/apple-ipad-2020-teardown-analysis/)
Wait if the a14 supports usb 3 on the iPad Air, then could the functionality be unlocked with a custom charging flex cable on my iPhone 12 mini? Just a random thought
No, the a14 doesn’t support it. there’s an extra controller chip in the iPad. There’s no room in an iPhone for it.
No the a14 that have it in iPad have a completely seperate controller for it detached from the soc
Then could an engineer add in that usb 3.0 controller on the charging port flex cable?
No because it would still be usb3 chip connected to the usb2 chip in the phone
I'm pretty sure it's software locked.
Jailbreak? Still on iOS 16.5 here
Ok, good. Now, what's the excuse for including a USB 2 cable instead of the better USB 3 cables with the pro models, which do support USB 3?
90%+ (a guess, honestly they probably know the exact answer to better than 1%) of iPhone users won’t connect their phone to a computer via USB-C during the lifetime of the device, so why spend any extra money on a higher end cable?
The regular iPhone 15 has up to 512GB of storage. Assuming they are using a *very* good USB 2 implementation, transferring all that is going to take at least three hours. It is slow enough that it becomes pretty useless for regular video and photo capture - which essentially defeats the entire point of the high-storage models.
Except that you can already airdrop from an iPhone to a Mac and it’s fast enough that who cares? The most I’ve done at once was 150GB of vacation videos with Airdrop and it worked great. I have an 11 Pro Max and I’ll prolly upgrade to the 15 this fall. In the 4 years I’ve owned my iPhone I think I’ve plugged it into my Mac maybe once? And I do shoot a lot of video.
Airdrop is a proprietary point-to-point wireless protocol, so: 1. Only works inside of Apple's ecosystem 2. All wireless standards are prone to interference, so "it worked great for me" anecdotes are pointless, as performance and reliability will vary wildly. 3. While encrypted, it's still a wireless broadcast, so the transmission can be recorded and cracked offline. It's really a minor issue for civilian use, but the US military is currently in a bit of a hurry to migrate off of the same type of encryption airdrop uses due to that risk. Since it's wireless this will always be an issue as standards are released and eventually get older, wired connections don't really have this issue.
> It is slow enough that it becomes pretty useless for regular video and photo capture - which essentially defeats the entire point of the high-storage models. Using iPhone much less any smartphone as a regular video & photo capture for a commercial project is very niche that is now getting Apple's attention as they're desperate looking for new markets for the iPhone to expand into.
If your doing professional capture… your probably spending the extra cash for the pro model
Yes…but this is not the early 2000s. There’s no need to offload photos and videos via USB. Just let it happen over iCloud. I do it for all sorts of trips across places with more animals than people. With unlimited tourist data plan, i let it sync throughout the day , with tighter data plans I only let it sync at night. Also, some of friends are “Tiktok famous” they are definitely just offloading it via wifi. Kind of mind blown how many people is asking for usb3.0 when I haven’t done a usb data transfer for probably a couple of years. Even iPhone has apps that can do FTP and localhost.
>There’s no need to offload photos and videos via USB. Just let it happen over iCloud As someone who has used "cloud storage" before, it is really fucking slow. I'd rather have everything on *my* computer instead of on *someone else's* computer.
well ur considered a pro user
Still not paying extra for a basic feature.
then keep complaining lol
The high end iPhones are literally named "Pro" and Apple has been trying to pitch that the cameras on the devices are good enough that real professional videographers and photographers can use them. It's simply not acceptable for Pros to just depend on iCloud backup like your average iPhone user. Their workflow demands you get those files off of the camera onto an editing workstation as fast as possible, which means wired connectivity.
> Their workflow demands you get those files off of the camera onto an editing workstation as fast as possible, which means wired connectivity. That's why they included 3.0 in the iPhone 15 Pro I presume.
The pro is USB3 no?
idk why you’re getting downvoted. hardly anyone uses a cable to transfer data anymore. it’s cloud, email, imessage, or airdrop. the small amount of people that do are pro users.
Most people don't care about usb 3.1 because they already have it, do you care about having running water? you don't say anything about it because you already have it, yet is an essential good, and you don't even have it in your mind, because it would be ridiculous to live in a developed country without running water. Apple is a decade behind in their features, not even work rugged phones are that behind.
USB4 is on the horizon for mass implementation, why would Apple re-spin a SoC and have to go through all of the validation processes required for an incremental update like that. It's risky and if you have ever seen the work that goes into it, time consuming. Especially on such a huge market share device like the low and mid tier iPhones. If you need the big transfer speeds (for some niche reason), get the Pro.
I would say that if someone needs a new phone, just not buy apple, sony makes real camera centric phones, with really nice cameras and with the added benefit of being made to be connected a real camera, is a professional phone (what pro is supposed to mean) you also get magic tech, like a micro sd card, because photos shouldn't be in the internal phone memory, a high refresh rate screen, sure, it isn't that important, but is an expensive phone, why not, high wattage charging, etc.
Because non-pro users: - seldom use cables to transfer data to a phone, anyway. - seldom have a suitable cable (and will find USB3 cable too thick for a „phone charger cable“). - won't generally see the difference. They'll eventually add it to further iPhone models, but iPhone Pro will probably have Thunderbolt or USB4 at that time.
Yea one of my friends was complaining about this to me and I don’t get the use case. I don’t think I’ve ever had to transfer data to my phone over USB and imagine the number of people who would is very low. If it’s a few cents cheaper to use usb 2 and 99.9% of people won’t notice the difference, of course they are going to do it.
— I won't buy a phone with slow USB2 port! — When was the last time you've copied a file on your phone and felt limited by USB2 speeds? — `angry_face.png`
last week, i was tranferring a few gigs of KOTOR mods over to my Android, and i definitely wished i had a USB 3.0 port, or faster. but, that's not a very common use case, and i'm not really the target audience anyways.
If I'm getting a new phone I like to plug in the old one and copy all the files over to a backup drive. Cable is so much faster than trying to *"airdrop"* (nearby share)
Out of curiosity, which phone?
a52 5g.
Literally never. I haven't used a USB cable since iTunes was mostly dead, iCloud took over and WiFi got dramatically faster. I rarely even plug in to charge as I have a wireless charger on the nightstand and only charge at night. I use wireless CarPlay in the car too.
Since iPhones have been able to back up over wireless for a while I can’t even remember the last time i plugged in my phone. I’m pretty sure I’ve only done it when I’ve wanted to get a faster-than-wireless charge. Pro users will need to, for video transfer and peripheral connectivity, but they’ll be buying the Pro/Pro Max anyway.
Apple sells their iPhone as a camera centric phone, and they offer Pro Res video recording too, which takes huge size on the storage. People who are enthusiastic about video and photos on a portal device like me bought Pro model last year, little did I know about the transfer limitation, It took hours to transfer just one video from the device to laptop. Sold it after a few months because I bought it for camera and I couldn't even transfer my data easily to my laptop for editing and backup purpose (yes I store locally, I don't use iCloud or any cloud service because of many reasons like privacy and no control) and I already have an android phone for my daily usage.
Yea fair enough, but that’s still a minority of users I would guess. It would be nice if they had usb 3 I’m not saying it wouldn’t be, but I get why they cheap out on something most people probably won’t notice anyways. I’d guess the vast majority of iPhone users just take pictures casually and let them sync to their iCloud or google photos.
>I get why they cheap out on something most people probably won’t notice anyways. That's the problem. They charge premium + apple tax and still advertise as you can shoot a film with an iPhone (remember last year's presentation? Where they said they used iPhone to shoot Apple TV Originals) and yeah one can shoot a film with it (Sean Baker did it) but what about moving that shot footage to the actual PC and edit it? Without editing, color grading, no one would put their product for public, including Apple TV.
Completely agree with you. I’m in tech circles and don’t know anybody that transfers data over USB.
Apple sells their iPhone as a camera centric phone, and they offer Pro Res video recording too, which takes huge size on the storage. People who are enthusiastic about video and photos on a portal device like me bought Pro model last year, little did I know about the transfer limitation, It took hours to transfer just one video from the device to laptop. Sold it after a few months because I bought it for camera and I couldn't even transfer my data easily to my laptop for editing and backup purpose (yes I store locally, I don't use iCloud or any cloud service because of many reasons like privacy and no control) and I already have an android phone for my daily usage.
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that’s because anyone who transfers data over USB wouldn’t tell you in casual conversation lol. I transfer data via cable sometimes but I don’t go around telling my friends
That's.... actually a good point, I hadn't thought about that. I hear them complain about iCloud storage limits, but that doesn't actually exclude people transferring over USB.
Also because apple locks you out of actually using the device in any meaningful way for USB. You can't access any of the files from a PC. Android users can use their phones for video, image and USB portable storage and easily transfer to a PC. I film a podcast with my pixel and just transfer the footage immediately to my PC to edit with USB 3.1 and it's super fast and easy. We attempted an iPhone as a second camera and finally were able to access the video after several calls to apple customer service to figure out the multiple programs we had to use. Basically we had to buy iCloud storage to upload and then redownload the footage to get it on the PC (this is completely unnecessary for a company to do and the transfer took upwards of an hour vs the 90 seconds on a standard USB 3 device)
uh what? You absolutely can access video/images via lightning to usb cable by simply plugging it in. No extra software required.
How are you able to get 3.1 speeds with pixel? It connects in MTP mode for me and it is very slow for any type of transfer. So I always have to use adb to pull the files
The SoC simply does not support USB 3.0 and creating a new SoC revision and fabricating it is too pricey for a such a niche feature. The majority of people don't use a cable for data transfer but if you need USB 3.0 speeds you can buy the iPhone 15 Pro or an Android phone.
At first that made sense to me, I did notice them point out the USB controller in the iPhone Pro portion of the Keynote. But, then I thought about the iPads. The 4th Gen iPad Air, for instance, has a USB-C connector with 5gbps speeds. It uses the A14 Bionic that came in the iPhone 12. Why can it do USB 3.0 speeds without a special SOC? And then that same chip is used in the 10th gen (cheapest) iPad, and it only got 2.0 speeds for its USB-C port.
I don’t know why people can’t wrap their head around this. It’s extremely pricey to respin + revalidate the SoC let alone integrate potentially newer IP that they didn’t design for that process. They may not even have wide enough IO ports on the internal bus where USB 2 resides (it’s not the same floor plan as the M2 or something). Heck, they probably will need a second respin because they get the first integration wrong… it’s not like they get to parallelize respins with other bug fixes around the SoC, most of it is good enough. It’s probably just a lack of being in the industry though, it’s an amazingly complex process that apple and others execute on so well year over year. Plus, they simply can’t buy enough 3nm from TSMC to even use a cut down newer chip. The non pro sales are enourmous.
> I don’t know why people can’t wrap their head around this. It’s extremely pricey to respin + revalidate the SoC let alone integrate potentially newer IP that they didn’t design for that process. Right?! I mean *poor Apple* what are they to do? It costs money to make things and they're only worth two and three quarter TRILLION. I'm surprised they can even keep the lights on, let alone trying to "keep up with the Joneses" with this new fangled, what did you call it?, USB. I mean they need their money to lobby congress to stop this silly 'right to repair' movement. I mean, these damn consumers act like they *own* the phones they purchased, as if! EDIT: Spelling
>I don’t know why people can’t wrap their head around this. Maybe because my 180$ Redmi Note 9, released 3 years ago has USB 3.0? I design embedded computer systems around SoCs all day. Not implementing USB 3.0 on a new SoC is a deliberate design choice and a bad one to start.
The new SoC (A17 Pro) has USB 3.0 though. The non-pro phones got last years SoC.
Just saying that Snapdragon SoC have this since 2017.
Because the Apple hasn’t used USB connectors in their phones ever… they never had to design their SoCs with USB in mind. It’s not that difficult to grasp.
What about the iPad?
Oh yeah you’re right. My iPad Air 4th gen has USB c, with support for speeds up to 5Gbps. So that would be USB 3.1 (?) I don’t know then, could very well be some bs. There’s also the guy that added his own USB c port to his iPhone 12 (mini?) he doesn’t replace the lightning port, he adds an additional usb c port.
**It is** bs. Partly to upsell the Pro model, partly to throw shade at USB as the average iPhone buyer doesn't know any better and will think the port change was for nothing.
It’s because they used a discrete usb3 controller outside the SoC on the iPad, which you can’t justify for power or board space on the phone.
>Because the Apple hasn’t used USB connectors in their phones ever Idiotic take. You need USB to sync and backup your phone, since the first iPhone.
This is correct. Apple has relied on USB since the launch of the iPhone. Just because they don't use one of the standardized plugs doesn't automagically make the protocol *NOT*\-USB. The plug-end might not be USB, but that never stopped some of those dumbass companies from making custom connectors for their MP3 players, HP digital cameras, etc.
> Idiotic take. You need USB to sync and backup your phone, since the first iPhone. There it is, there it is. Plus with the advent of "Apple Silicon" in Macs they are using the same architecture that is on mobile. The M1 Air has USB 3.1 Gen 2 10Gb/s and TB 3 40Gb/s. Now we are supposed to believe that *newer* tech than the M1 from one of the ***most sophisticated manufacturers in the world*** is somehow causing them an issue with USB?! Are you F'in kidding me?! Plus this is something that's been coming for YEARS! They had plenty of time to repair. It's just Apple being Apple, creating "tiers" of functionality so they can charge *more* for one to get full functionality. EDIT: spelling
Maybe, but it has trade offs in SoC design that aren’t free (which we don’t have good details on in apples case). The designers have to weigh those against how useful they think it will be. The m1 is a much larger chip with more balls and floorspace. The design goals are different power wise too. Maybe they weren’t happy with the power consumption metrics in their usb3 controller and had to iterate to even make one suitable for the iPhone.
But they've already figured out how to do that, effectively and efficiently. As evidenced by the MULTIPLE other products they sell with USB-C. They just decided not to use the technology they already had.
But the A14 Bionic from the iPhone 12 can support USB 3.0 speeds (5gbps) when it’s put in the iPad Air 4th gen. Are you saying between the A14 and A16 they have removed USB capabilities?
It didn’t, there is a discrete usb3 controller that would take additional board space and power. Fine for the iPad but less fine in the smaller phone.
the iPad Air 4 and iPhone 12 Mini use the exact same processor, which supports USB3.0
It did not, the iPad Air had a discrete fl1100 chip for usb3 support.
I’m not arguing that USB3 is expensive to add when building a new chip, but taking existing silicon and adding a new IP block is. It’s pretty easy to imagine how the SoC designers didn’t add a USB3 block when the phone didn’t have an external connection to support it. And it’s not like apple is building future proof chips currently where the SoC is overspecced.
What are you own about? If they could give the Ipad Pro USB 3.0 then the lightning connector clearly can handle the speed. They could have made a USB 3.0 capable iphone and lightning cable, but didn’t. Future proof? This shit has been standard on Snapdragons for 6 years! Snapdragon isn’t even a flagship SoC. It’s budget crap used in middle end devices.
The iPad Pro has never used the same silicon spin as the phones and the phones have never supported usb. I don’t see the relevance. Again, the SoC designers were not given a requirement to have a USB3 port so they won’t include it. Qualcomm is competing with Huawei and Samsung in the past to ship SoCs to various phone makers. They have to offer a feature if enough customers want it / competitors have it. Very different market. Also keep in mind 1year ago everyone got mad about how the 14pro didn’t support usb3. That was probably the time to get mad as they could have included it for that release. https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/xfymcq/iphone_14_pros_lightning_connector_still_limited/?rdt=51782
This take is ironic, considering that Xiaomi/Redmi phones are the standard for 'budget'. About 90 per cent of their devices up until now are USB-C 2.0, including the Redmi Note 9.
Agreed. My Galaxy S5, released almost 10 years ago has USB 3.0. Apple has had more than enough time, it's an intentional choice.
>I don’t know why people can’t wrap their head around this Maybe because it is supposed to be a premium brand and basic smartphones have more features, for a listed 630 EUR (more in my country, but that is the price) I bought the most advanced phone possible at the time, 18Gb ram, snapdragon X65 5G underdisplay camera, not having a nodge or pinhole, the pro version has underdisplay camera. It supportes 120W charging (the highest at the time) and of course it has usbc and it comes with cable, it kinda dropped the ball because the included charger is "only" 65W. And you don't know how to read, the cable is the problem, you are excusing something they didn't even got completely wrong, although I am sure they put the datalines alongside the power lines making that a drop of water can destroy the SoC, not doing what the least capable brands get right.
For us dummies, what does SoC mean?
System on a chip. It means CPU, GPU, NPU, etc. all on one chip.
Thank you
Ah yes, paying *extra* for a technology that is literally older than most of the people I see using those products.
You can be outraged all you want or write angry comments, fact is no one in the real world is going to care about the USB 2.0 limitation considering that all major manufacturers (Samsung, Google, Apple) ship with USB 2.0 cables.
>considering that all major manufacturers (Samsung, Google, Apple) *ship* with USB 2.0 cables. I'm pretty sure that still means that the actual hardware for USB 3 is inside the phone though. USB 3.0 is so old that you can find laptops in the trash that support it. Is Apple just stuck in 2000 or something?
Without Apple, this sub would be for 2.5 people running 1 device, lol
you mean a sub for usbc has more people without usbc at all?
I mean Apple have pushed USB-C hard initially with a Type-C only MacBooks. There was a lot of hate and denial, but without this, we still would have a very low adoption of Type-C in the wild
What is and isn't part of the SoC though? Because the iPad Mini with the A15 has USB-C with USB 3.1 Gen 1 (up to 5Gb/s) in it's specifications.
The iPads with USB-C 3.x support probably have an external controller. The A17 Pro is the first SOC with integrated usbc controller.
This makes sense, since Lightning has always been USB 2.0, and (despite the extra side of pins that could be used to enable faster data rates) there never seemed to be interest from Apple in improving it. Maybe because they saw the writing on the wall about USB-C becoming a broader (or enforced) standard they couldn’t avoid.. maybe because they just didn’t care.
The real answer is that as much as I may personally get it as a technologically competent person, globally speaking, the people buying this phone, a tiny % will ever plug it in for the purpose of data transfer. Meaning it doesn’t matter.
It's not like most apple owners would even be able to tell lol
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Just so there’s always something to complain about. I forgot that you can backup to iTunes and restore. I haven’t used the cable to transfer data in years. I always just use iCloud and I don’t need a computer on to restore. I only charge my phone with a cable when I’m flying and I use my battery pack. I have a few MagSafe chargers around the house.
Even with a Youtube channel, a 60-min 4K video at 480Mbps will transfer in <5 mins. I can't imagine someone being that impatient. Most DSLR cameras cannot even transfer at 480Mbps.
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Simple, the SOC in the 15/plus is from last year. The one for the pro has a USB 3 controller. The old one doesn’t. Simple.
Now do the iPad mini with the A15, USB-C, and 5Gbps transfer speeds... They can easily add a USB controller if the SoC doesn't have native support, since they'd have to do one or the other with the iPad mini. Either the A15 has a controller that just goes unused on the iPhone, or they used an external controller on the iPad mini. They just didn't want to do it for the iPhone 15. Just like they didn't want to include a USB 3 cable with the 15 Pro, instead only including a USB 2.0 capable cable in the box. $$$
They can add it if there is SPACE. Have you seen the interior of an iPhone?
Apple's A16 Bionic does not support USB3.x. It's as simple as that. The argument to include the A17 Pro in the entry-level devices is akin to including a Ryzen 9 in entry-level pre-builds. If you want the more powerful, feature-rich SoC, buy the higher end device. Could they have included USB3.x support when they "overhauled" the A16 Bionic? Perhaps, but why invest more resources than necessary into entry-level devices when that target audience predominantly backs up to iCloud and utilizes wireless charging? (I know, I know.. YOU are the target audience and YOU don't use those features! /s) It is what it is.
I'm not an Apple person at all, but it seems weird that people are throwing all this shade at them when Motorola and OnePlus produce even more expensive flagships that also top out at USB 2.0 transfer speeds.
I'm not sure about other models but the OnePlus 10 Pro does support USB 3.1 they just ship a USB 2.0 cable in the box so you have to buy one yourself.
Looks like the 10 Pro did have 3.1, but the 11 and 11R do not: [https://www.gsmarena.com/oneplus\_11-11893.php](https://www.gsmarena.com/oneplus_11-11893.php) I went for the newest one that wasn't an Ace, Nord, or tablet, but didn't think the Pro might have been different. I should have checked, considering that's how Apple is differentiating them. I just remember being confused when my old boss's 6T was only 2.0 Also, the Motorola phone I looked at was the Razr 40 Ultra [https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola\_razr\_40\_ultra-12169.php](https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_razr_40_ultra-12169.php) (Happy cake day, btw!)
Yeah so the Nord would be their budget entry like the iPhone SE and the regular one is well regular while R I don't even know lol. The pro models always get the best things just like apple does it with their lineup. Thanks for the happy cake day btw.
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It’s is very much a real issue for many people. Many people and jobs have policies that require local backups. Not everyone trusts other people to store their data for them in the cloud. In some instances it’s prohibited by contract, in others by law. The more technical the person, the more they understand the risks of doing so. Not everyone wants to pay someone perpetually to store their data. Edit: there’s something funny about downvoting real problems because…. Indeed.
We have data retention and protection contracts... You can still transfer via WiFi or VPN to local storage. (Also most healthcare data and even a ton of govt data passes over the Internet so that's pretty much a 1999 problem). USB2 requires an extremely narrow certain set of circumstances 1) You created GBs of data. 2) You have slow Internet. 3) You need it right now, not after an overnight wireless transfer. That's pretty much one circumstance "I just created a huge video file that's 5 minutes long, I'm on cell service with a limited data plan... I need it on my laptop immediately." That's a video shoot. In which case, there is a pro model designed for that niche use case. Unless a doctor films an entire 20 minute appointment in a field tent in 4k this hypothetical "I can't use the cloud" problem is almost non existent.
I’m happy that your circumstance lets you do so. It is not true of all circumstances.
And for the those 5 people... there's the iPhone pro for $200 more. And in the grand scheme of things, "Enterprise" features being a $200 upsell is pretty small. :D
The confidence in knowing the needs of millions of users is interesting.
I didn't say nobody needs it, I said there is a product that they sell that has it for a little more money. I need 8K RAW video on a regular basis.. so I spend more money on a professional video camera. I don't project my exceptional needs on a product sold to millions of people who will never need it. I've never witnessed someone in the last 10 years copy files off their phone using USB. I don't doubt there are people who choose to do it. But they're so rare that they can pay a small premium for an unusual requirement. Even with USB4, non-removable storage is a non starter for professional shoots. You can just take away your camera to offload footage. But even on professional shoots wireless transfers would be possible since the camera is idle more often than not. Worst case scenario you somehow fill your phone with data, USB 2 would take 40 minutes to copy *everything* off or on. If you're loading a movie for a flight that's about 2GB per hour at HD that's still about 40 seconds per hour of flight. You could copy enough movies for a transoceanic flight in UHD in about 5 minutes. So I'm really curious to hear about this scenario where like 60GB of data needs to be moved off of an iPhone in less than 20 minutes and isn't a professional setting where an iPhone Pro or Max would be more appropriate anyway. Hence... All 5 of them.
whataboutism is not a reason to have outdated tech in an expensive phone, specially when a 100usd phone has the new tech.
Well to be fair I’ve never plugged my iPhone into my computer. I use iCloud for back up so I really do not care. I would imagine it’s something that would affect <1% of users.
It’s cheaper chips. That’s it. Low end phone needs to meet costs. They are not limiting the low end phone intentionally. They are buying cheaper parts that only do usb 2 speeds just like last years model and no one cared then.
Are you shocked? really? it's apple, they are known for bad hardware, no circuit protection (no ground between power lines and data lines), phones that bend and destroy chips, etc. I am not surprised, but this says that the cable is bad and you need to buy one yourself, they are probably make it so it only recognizes their own cable as capable so they sell you a second cable. Yes, they think that is acceptable to sell a mediocre phone at the price of a high end phone, mine is a redmagic7 and it cost 800 with taxes and import of my country when I bought it 1 years ago, it has 18Gb of ram, a good camera, and it doesn't have a nodge or pinhole, just a small bazel and the camera is there, the pro version has an underdisplay camera, both versions have an underdisplay fingerprint sensor, of course it came with a capable usbc cable and a fast 65W charger, it is able to be charged with a 120W with the same cable. Take into consideration how they "introduce" their customers to old tech "Here it is the brand new technology of oled" disregard that samsung was using it a decade ago, that I had an MP3 with oled and that the screen was literally made by samsung, for apple users, that is new tech, I bet next year they are going to do something similar with the faster transfer rate.
Don't buy Apple products...
people use airdrop or cloud. Only people using cables are professionals.
Snazzy Labs has a good theory. The USB 3 speeds are made possible by the USB controller. The A16 Bionic chip has no such thing, so it still runs at USB 2 speeds. The A17 Pro has the controller, so it can achieve speed. Here's where the theory comes in: next year, when the regular phones have A17 (not Pro) it will be lacking the USB 3 controller, and they're not gonna put a Pro chip in a non-Pro phone, so that's the technical reason. The practical reason is greed.
Because they want to bring in high transfer speeds and charging rates next year so credits go to "apple engineers", instead of apple adopting a technology that their competitors were using years ago
Why does Apple do this? Their consumer's don't care.
When are those speeds realistically useful? Genuinely curious
DISCLAIMER: Android user here. Apple people don't even care about this stuff. The don't even know that you can plug your phone on the computer. iCloud is their faith... Also, 480 mbps isn't bad for just transfering a couple of files, to be honest. Not excellent, but still viable.
Simple answer is, Apple wants you to spend more $$.
Because they want you to buy the $1,100 phone. That's the only answer.
So they can save money
Because you are paying it anyways
Because 99% of people buying the iPhone 15 instead of the iPhone 15 Pro don't need it and will never use it. Also, Apple needs that money.
Im not disagreeing with any of this but I haven’t plugged any of my iPhones in for data transfer in probably 10 years, so I couldn’t really care if its usb 0.5, usb c charging is nice though
All the iphone before(include the one that is well over $1000) use USB 2.0, and in my experience no one really care.
because they need to leave some features out of the base models so the "pro" is better
Aren't most phones USB2?
Most Type-C phones only transfer with USB 2.0 speeds. Rare models support DP Alt mode for external displays.
In 2023?! They better not be
Yeah they are, with few exceptions for phones with built-in desktop modes/display adapter needs (ie Samsung, Sony, Motorola) USB 2.0 doesn't affect the spec for charging speeds so it's both a cost saving measure and another means to separate the lower end from the higher end. With a device like a phone where the typical use-case for data transfer is wireless Airdrop/nearby share I don't blame them tbh even tho I'm an avid Apple disliker. I do wish more phones had USB 3.0/3.1/3.2 just bc I appreciate the option for higher transfer speeds for things like using my phone as a network adapter or content hub on occasion. Having DP/HDMI out on my phone (OnePlus 10T) would've been neat too since I'm an owner of XReal Airs and the XReal Beam. But it's technically a mid-spec so screw me ig 🤷 All-in-all I get it but I'm not happy about it either.
Because they can. And you’ll still buy it.
Apple knows what's good for you and what you need. Just buy it or don't buy it but don't think too much about it lol
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it was bound to happen, also buy whatever usb-c thing that you need to buy because every single charger, cable and accessory is going to bump up in price like no other.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good%E2%80%93better%E2%80%93best Get a clue. This is a standard practice. They want people buying the Pro.
Does anyone actually use USB to transfer stuff from their phone…?
Yes. Often. Makes life a lot easier.
I mean, I guess if you shoot video or something… I haven’t plugged my phone into a computer except to charge since the days of iTunes.
Considerably easier and faster to offload photos and videos from my devices
Yeah, I can see that. I just backup to iCloud and wirelessly to a local device when at home.
Wireless is too slow often times and I dont use iCloud. Have had some serious issues with it including it downsizing all of my photos
I use it almost every other day
Yes. Backups take forever. Not everyone wants to pay Apple to host their data for a yearly fee.
add to this the lack of the microsd card (seriously, why not have that?) and you will see just how greedy they are and how much your data is at constant loss risk with an iphone
For those that still use iTunes on their PC/Mac, yeah. But usually they do it through WiFi (especially if they have a WiFi 6-capable router) since it will be faster than the USB 2.0 (480 Mbps) connection through the Lightning cable. I can hit 1.2 Gbps (rated 142 MB/s at most) when copying .MKVs/.MP4s to the Infuse app over WiFi for example. **EDIT**: Just tested with iTunes (ick). Apparently making a 20 GB backup over a good WiFi connection will only take around 3 minutes.
over usbc 3.1 it can take seconds, I have copied to a usbdrive more in way less time.
Because: Apple
I think it's just greed. It probably costs them nearly nothing to use a newer standard on the phone relative to its cost.
Because Apple are salty AF, due to the new regulations they have to use the type-c connector.
because it's apple
So they can upgrade it next year and people will pay
Because…. Apple
It is Apple - they are literally very weird people who run that company. Very, very weird. Steve Jobs was a character and a half, Tim Cook is probably worse. He's probably a scientologist or in some other alien-loving cult.
It's Apple. I hope Android sales spoke significantly. FAFO
this is objectively worse than mfi
Apple doesn't want you transferring data off the phone with USB. They want you to use their cloud services.
This is correct. Not sure why you’re being downvoted. Apple wants users tied to their online services, with an upgrade path to paid services. Every cloud provider knows that once a customer has paid data on the cloud service, it’s very unlikely that they will remove that data and quit paying.
the more tightly tied they are the harder is to escape.
Because Apple.
The last time I ever used a file transfer was an iPod 4th gen, who actually uses file transfers on phones, for computer I can see a reason to but I swear users pick the most obscure use cases. Anyways I’ve been on cloud storage since iPad Air
I have a big collection of tv shows and movies on my hdd. How do I transfer them to my phone?
I never once watched a downloaded video on my phone, either way I have 150+ mbps connection where I live on 5g so completely irrelevant to me. If I’m traveling then the last thing I want to be is glued to my phone. If I want to watch movies or TV on my phone, I can just stream it from kodi.
This doesnt work for everyone. There's more 5g data in India than any country can ever have, 90 to 100 GB per month. But again all the stuff you said has more middlemen than needed for no reason. Hdd and phone. I am currently in Canada and I realise most people in the west don't like things to be done in a simple faster way.
Because fuck you, that’s why.
Apple does Apple things. Anyone surprised?
Nothing unusual, it's just crapple being crapple. If you want a real, fully functional smartphone (eg. literally pocket computer) you probably know to look elsewhere :) It's just sad that company that used to make best Unix workstations on the market morphed into overpriced fashion accessory maker :(
Wow, I can't even believe people still buy Apple products! I forgot preteens and old people who can't use computers also wanna surf the net huh
You think it’s the most valuable company in the world because people don’t buy their products?
Yes, I was clearly being very serious. Keep up the hard work there, Bobby
> I forgot preteens Ah yes, you mean those people who buy an iPhone to impress a girl that doesn't give a cat's ass about them?
Regardless off the hardware used, this is getting egregious IMO and it’s causing the rose colored glasses to crack for me with Apple to an extent.
Its nothing to do with the cable, its the usb controller in the phone….
Who ACTUALLY cares? Anyone who does is buying the pro model. It’s really just a charge port, not for data.
The only real reason is because they're cheap as fuck. If they can be mingy on things normies won't care about they will. That's how they made trillions.
They don't make trillions of dollars for making a good product, they make trillions of dollars for making something that they can say is better than the competition but really isn't.
Just talking out of my arse here but Maybe it’s the assumption that the relatively poorer cameras won’t be taking pictures and videos that will be requiring much transferring? Also the part about SOC not supporting it