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Comment by ScottBev | Hacker News Reader

A determined individual can remove epoxy without damaging the electronics.

Apple should allow to do this in Software. Make the lockdown mentioned in the link happen immediately when USB is disconnected, forcing you to retype the PIN every time.

Could be a cool feature for the privacy concerned crowd.

Yes. I would like customized timeouts. 7 days is too long.

Unless I'm mistaken, this is the way that Android already works. If you plug in a locked phone, you must unlock it to get any USB data connection to the phone. When a phone with a data connection is unplugged, the permissions immediately reset and you have to unlock the phone again to restart a data connection.

Not only that, on my Nexus 5x, I have to manually switch from charging mode to data transfer mode every time (the setting doesn't stick).

Unless I've misunderstood the significance of this change, Android actually provides much more security since you can't download files off a locked phone, not even within 7 days.

Yes, the iPhone is the same. You get a ‘Trust this computer?’ prompt which forces you to unlock the phone first.

The trouble is, this is still a data path that has been opened via USB. This new change disables the data path altogether and just allows charging via the USB power pins only - like its a USB battery or USB fan, simply power and nothing else. Which is pretty neat.

Why doesn't the iPhone disable the data transfer pins until unlocked?

Probably because for any decent charging speed (beyond 500mA) you need to talk to the other side. Atleast per standard.

How does Android work around this?

It communicates power needs but nothing else until the user unlocks the phone and enables data transfer.

Because then you can’t plug in the device and have it sync automatically. It’s a security/convenience trade off.

By the way they don’t use the same pins as USB of course because they have their own connectors. And disabling access to the audio dongle while the device is locked wouldn’t make sense.

I think they could probably just open the case and wire a new port anyway.

I would love to know their strategy. I can barely remove lint from the lightning port without damaging the electronics!

A hair dryer would likely work.

We might be talking about different types of epoxy... I have two part "high temperature" putty epoxy at home that is stopping a loose bracket from rattling on my furnace. Significantly hotter than a hair dryer in that spot. It was $5 at Home Depot.

Acetone softens many plastics nicely

Ahhhhhh interesting! I kind of want to try it on the stuff I've got kicking around here, just to see...

There's also test pads to wire up to and/or build a new port.

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