Apple to Limit iPhone 15 USB-C Cables to USB 2.0 Speeds: Report | Hacker News Reader

Apple to Limit iPhone 15 USB-C Cables to USB 2.0 Speeds: Report

extremetech.com

62 pointsthunderbong87 comments

The headline is misleading. The cited source in the article only talks about the included charging cable and not what limitations the phone has. A more accurate headline would be "iPhone 15 to Ship with USB 2.0-Speed USB-C Cables".

All USB-C charging cables that come with phones and laptops have USB 2.0 data transfer speeds. That includes flagship Samsung phones.

"All USB-C charging cables that come with phones and laptops have USB 2.0 data transfer speeds. That includes flagship Samsung phones."

This statement is a complete nonsence. All USB-C cables I received with Windows laptops and android devices allow very fast transfer speed, way higher than 500 MB/s.

Here you have a source for flagship Samsung devices: https://www.reddit.com/r/samsung/comments/15sby2o/what_speed...

The same applies to Pixel devices and Apple devices. There might be exceptions I'm not aware of but it's definitely not the industry standard for USB-PD charging cables to come with 3.0 or faster data transfer speeds as the extra wires increase cost and decrease flexibility, which makes them less suitable for a daily charging cable.

My pixel 4a and 6a both came with usb3 usbc PD cables.

This Reddit user claims the included charging cable with the 4A is limited to 2.0 speeds.

https://old.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/14irr99/cable...

Same for the Pixel 6A. Google charging cables are all 2.0.

https://old.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/xm2fw5/why_doe...

My Pixel 1 came with a blue USB 3.0 cable, which handles 5Gbps just fine.

We are specifically talking about USB-PD fast charging cables which the Pixel 1 does not support.

Edit: The above sentence is incorrect, I misread a source. The original Pixel shipped with a USB-A to USB-C cable that supported 3.0 speeds and a USB-C to USB-C cable that supported 2.0 speeds. Since the Pixel 2 they only ship with USB-C to USB-C cables that support 2.0 speeds.

https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/7158537

It supported 18w of USB PD. Is there some further spec?

That's hilarious, so the Pixel 2 not only dropped the 2.5mm port, it also dropped the USB3 cable.

One could speculate that the moment Google knew their phone was a success, they stopped caring about open standards.

Wow, thanks for pointing this out. This is horrible journalism.

Pick nearly any topic you know a lot about and read the mainstream media reporting on it. You'll come to the realization that it's nearly all horrible journalism.

As the article says:

    The news is disappointing, but we don't think most 
    people will care too much. Few sync their phones to 
    a computer with iTunes these days.

I can imagine Apple differentiating models (duh) to entice people to buy the fancier model but I can't imagine this particular thing is part of some strategy to spur upgrades because I can't imagine this being a useful carrot to dangle.

I'm trying to think of a use case where I'd even want to plug an iPhone into my computer.

I guess if you're doing local backups, or if you have a limited internet connection and you'd like to sync downloaded media from your computer to your phone directly. That cannot even be 1% of users, though, can it? Maybe 0.1%?

I for one only do local backups of my iphone every other week to my laptop using a cable because i dont want to pay for extra icloud storage.

i also ocasionally sync some songs that way.

Im probably in the minority though.

You are in a tiny minority. One of my favourite things to do when hanging out with normies is ask how many of the iPhone users in the group pay Apple monthly for services. Usually every single one is paying at least £0.99.

I have been surprised multiple times by people who I know who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, yet complain about not having enough space on their phone or losing data when they break their phone. They have no problem spending an extra $50k on a car, or flying to a destination every other weekend, but ~$240 to $360 per year for online backup or $200 to $300 extra for more capacity is too much.

Almost like humans are not always rational /s

Paying extra for storage as your collection of Apple devices tend to grow over time always seemed like a bit of nickel and dimeing on Apple's part, but as you say, the amounts involved really aren't all that much in the scheme of things.

Given the amount of utility people get from their smartphones, I cannot even see it as nickel and dime-ing. The price to utility ratio is surely among the lowest for what people pay for things in their life.

Even if we are in the minority Apple makes the local backup a second class citizen so the experience suffers, pushing more people to pay for cloud backups.

> That cannot even be 1% of users, though, can it?

It can certainly be, worldwide. There’s people living in rural regions, and people wanting fast transfers from their digital camera, and people not wanting to back up into the cloud, or not wanting to pay for iCloud, and people wanting to quickly sync their music/photo/video collection on their PC or Mac. Several of my relatives fall into that category, despite being non-technical.

Incidentally, the current iPad mini 6 supports USB 3 transfer speeds (5 Gbps), although not being a Pro model, so it’d be disappointing if the iPhone 15 doesn’t. There doesn’t seem to be a technical reason why it shouldn’t.

At the same time, the amount of new content in a backup is negligible thanks to making OTA backups viable.

That doesn’t help when switching devices or restoring from a backup. And when you’re working with video or map data or other large data, then the new data isn’t negligible.

As an iOS developer I plug my iPhone into my computer to deploy and run the apps I'm working on onto it. Maybe it's because I work on small apps, but even then I haven't felt limited by the USB 2.0 speed. I really don't think this will be an issue for the vast majority of iPhone customers.

> I'm trying to think of a use case where I'd even want to plug an iPhone into my computer

Recording ProRes footage on iPhone writes 6GB per Minute to storage.

Sounds like you need a Mac with AirDrop to copy this off your phone quickly, as normal cables won’t be viable.

>I'm trying to think of a use case where I'd even want to plug an iPhone into my computer.

I do it periodically to pull photos off my phone to put them into my Lightroom catalog. There are other ways I could do this but this is the most straightforward for me.

Same. I have several family members and backup their pictures as well as with a dslr real camera to one location. Then they can pull whatever they want.

Or transfer ringtones, music, side loading development apps, and perform backups.

One thing I’ve noticed is sometimes when texting that pictures are sent as lower quality. Direct connect bypasses that issue. A group chat with one android phone, low power mode, and some odd phone settings cause poor quality pictures to be sent.

"but we don't think most people will care too much". This probably will not matter to me in real life. On the other hand when I read this my take away is that Apple is just trying to extract more money from people.

I really have no idea if this is the true motive. Maybe there is some reason the technology of limited speed is less expensive. I really do not know.

But I am so used to corporations treating their customers without respect, Apple included, that I assume it is true. That this is just another way to exploit a semi-captive audience.

I think apple customers are generally only semi captive in the sense that the products are so good that they find it inconceivable to pick one of the dozens of other high end smart phones.

TBH iPhones are pretty easily replaceable at this point (if you haven't bought into the whole Apple ecosystem). Folding Pixels look pretty good.

Apple Silicon Macs on the other hand... I'm still waiting for a Linux device with no fans & comparable battery life + performance.

Asahi Fedora with Gnome works fine on my M2.

Supported entirely on the back of one over worked, unpaid savant against the richest most anti-consumer company to have ever existed is not what I'd call 'fine' but YMMV.

https://asahilinux.org/about/ quite a few more people

also not that different from the state of support for other new devices out there. Apple's GPU architecture is also quite friendly to the project [1], as is the system security model, which is less janky than UEFI keys on PCs.

[1] https://asahilinux.org/2022/11/tales-of-the-m1-gpu/

Or, they could be completely open and not require a once in a lifetime dream team just to use the hardware they paid for.

Sure, but uh is there any OEM laptop vendor out there that actually provided support and/or wrote drivers for Linux? Seems to me like they all rely on third parties doing the work.

This. I was vehemently against Apple products for well over a decade. Then I got a MacBook Air in the mid 2010s, and begrudgingly admitted that they made pretty decent hardware. Still kept Android (some Samsung, then Pixels), though.

Then Apple Silicon launched, and I bought a base-spec M1 Air. Almost 3 years in, and I have never owned a better laptop in my life. It is astonishing the amount of power and battery life they've managed. It destroys my work-assigned fully-spec'd i9 MBP in every conceivable metric.

Finally, I swapped a Pixel 4a 5G (tried Pixel 5 and 6, was disappointed with both) for an iPhone 14 Pro, non-Max. After getting used to iOS, I have to admit that iPhones are better than Android in nearly every way. The only thing I really miss is Android's launcher. Everything else is just better, as long as you stay within the Apple ecosystem. Pairing new devices, Universal Clipboard, scanning PDFs from the phone directly into Preview, FaceTime, iMessage... it's better. Period.

I wouldn't use FaceTime or care about iMessage. Clipboard on Android already does what I want. All I really use on my phone is email, a web browser, navigation, and a couple apps that are identical in Android and iOS. I have a hard time imagining what's better when it just looks worse to me.

Ios I can only use one browser with different skins. Navigation on Android is as far as I know still much better. And email is no better on ios

> Clipboard on Android already does what I want.

AFAIK, the only way to get a clipboard that syncs across devices on Android requires installing 3rd party software on both devices. I could be wrong. If you don't need to copy/paste between a phone and laptop/desktop, this of course won't matter to you, but it's very useful for me. Not having to think about it is icing on the cake.

> And email is no better on iOS

Agreed. Mac/iOS email client is hot garbage, but since I use Gmail, it doesn't really matter what platform I'm on.

> iOS I can only use one browser with different skins.

You can install Chrome, Firefox, Opera, et al. on iOS...? Not sure if I understand your point. That said, I switched to Safari on the laptop purely because Netflix has nerfed HD playback on Chrome, and 720p wasn't cutting it for me. The slightly better battery life and less memory consumption is a plus. Since I was using it on the laptop, it made sense to keep using it on the phone as well so sessions and history could be shared.

I don't exactly love Safari, but I like it well enough that combined with the aforementioned benefits, it works for me.

Perhaps the person you're replying to "only one browser" forgot that what they mean by one browser is "webkit" just like for most of the world one browser means Chromium.

Kagi's Orion browser on iOS lets you use Chrome and Firefox extensions, so there's that.

Will Kagi Orion allow me to use ublock origin on ios?

I can't with chrome on android but I can with firefox. The choice of using firefox with ublock or whatever extensions is what I'm after.

> I have to admit that iPhones are better than Android in nearly every way.

I had a friend in nursing school rely on my android to edit a PDF when apple barred them from downloading apps - they somehow owed apple money. I keep hearing your anecdotes, but have to deal with things like that. They seem to be doing good things with the arm chips though.

> “[Apple] will limit the transfer speeds on the base model iPhones to just 480Mb/s, the same as Lightning and USB 2.0. It will, however, reportedly allow faster transfer speeds on its Pro models”

That’s the key sentence.

Essentially, Apple is creating more differentiation between Base model and Pro model phones.

Likely the cable but not the phone itself. The pro cameras can create images and video that have large files. Even without the EU law, Apple needed a faster way to pull these files than todays lightning connector can provide.

Lightning _can_ be faster, they've just chosen not to do so for almost every product. AFAIK, the iPad Pro is the only device that has a USB3.0 controller, which they utilize for image import [0].

[0]: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MK0W2AM/A/lightning-to-us...

It can be faster when using a specially-built adapter like that, but not with standard Lightning cables as they don’t have enough wires. Apple would have had to create a “fast data Lightning cable” standard and have different tiers of cables.

That would be a messy enough solution that they might as well have just switched to USB-C instead. Which they have done.

How much do people transfe me data via cable now? Power transfer needs to be high for charging but data transfers continuously over the air. Everything on my iPhone syncs via Wi-Fi and cellular all the time. It’s been years since I wanted to plug it in.

I just don’t see this impacting many people.

And, as for the mentioned key pro features:

> Those will include a titanium chassis, thinner bezels, and all-new 3nm silicon as exclusive features.

I know no one who’s going to upgrade just to get a phone with a chip using a 3nm process. That’s not a feature most people look for. It might express itself as lower power so better batter life, or more features on die that will get used or similar, but by itself it’s just not a thing.

Similarly I don’t think the majority care about titanium or bezel thickness per se. They’ll buy them because they’re markers for the “Pro”.

The typical distinguishing features are actually better screens, cameras, processing power for actual features (I’d bet some AI stuff in there), etc.

> How much do people transfer me data via cable now?

I don't think I've ever plugged my iPhone into my Mac. Data transfer between a computer and a phone is use-case that isn't that common these days (except maybe for video workflows?)

Even Continuity Camera, which I use, I only plug my phone into a power outlet to keep it charged.

Everything else syncs wirelessly.

I bought a USB C SanDisk 1TB external drive a few years ago. With included USB C cable it connects at 10Gbps. With the included USB A adapter it connects at 480Mbps. That's only use is connecting for transfers.

With a separately purchased USB C to USB A cable it connects to the same USB A port at 10Gbps and transfers about twice as fast.

FWIW.

“Apple to supply cheaper, slow speed USB-C cables with iPhones”

Fixed it.

If the report is true, this is the reason. It's a cost thing. Only Apple would have the numbers, but if a large majority of users only use the cable for charging, then it's easy to cut CoGS by including a cheaper cable.

A secondary reason could be sourcing. I don't know cable logistics, but anything Apple includes with the iPhone means they need 100s of millions of them per year.

You’re right. But fast-data USB-C cables are also thicker and stiffer, so there’s a UX angle too.

“Apple to supply thinner, lighter, less stiff USB-C charging cables with iPhones”

Fixed it.

USB 3.0 is 15 years old. USB 2.0 is 23 years old.

Profit maximization is even older.

The people who use the cable will just think Apple products are slow or that Apple is a cheap company that cheaps out on their customers. So much for the user experience.

I think and I hope, the actual iPhone 15 will support USB 3.0 also known as USB 3.1 Gen 1, USB 3.2 Gen 1×1 at 5Gbps. ( There isn' a USB 4 Profile that support 5Gbps in case you are wondering ). Or hopefully USB 4 which support minimum of 10Gbps. And they are only saving cost on the cable by not having the extra pins used with USB 2.0 or above.

That would be awful, if true.

I have an Apple Pro Display XDR that I love to use with my iPad. I was thinking of getting a new iPhone 15 just for the USB-C port, hoping it would drive large monitors.

I would like to see some clarity on large monitor support before I upgrade my iPhone 11, because I love my slim iPhone 11. Any information on this will be appreciated!

The USB-C port on the iPhone 15 Pro will almost certainly be able to drive large monitors (ie: 4K @ 60 Hz). Less certainty about the standard iPhone 15, which might be limited to 4K @ 30 Hz / 1080p @ 60 Hz.

It should be noted that 10Gbps USB 3 cables tend to be much stiffer and thicker than USB 2 cables. From my own experiences, I much prefer a flexible and thinner cable for charging over a stiff and thicker cable. If the iPhone 15 support 20Gbps speeds, that cable is going to be even worse than the 10Gbps cables.

Is this a deliberate limitation, or is it just that the base iPhone 15 chip does not include an USB 3.0 controller?

This original source does not say anything about what the phone will support. It is about the charging cable that is included.

It's just the charging cable, it seems it does not have all the wires to support USB 3.

I imagine it’s just the chip. It would be really weird if features like (wired) Continuity Camera just stopped working.

This is only about the included charging cable. What the iPhone 15 itself will support remains to be seen.

The rumors and articles on this are all over the place. Some are reporting that the non-pro phones will only support USB 2.0 speeds while the pro phones will support faster Thunderbolt.

Others talk about the cables saying that Apple will ship USB-PD (power delivery) cables which are specified as USB 2.0 with all of the phones.

Are the speed limits on the ports or on the cables or both? When these launch there will confusion for several days and perhaps until testers get them in their hands to try different cables.

The included cable will support USB 2.0 no matter which iPhone you buy. Just like with all USB-C MacBooks, iPads, and the vast majority of Android devices. It's a charging cable, after all.

The capabilities of the port itself may vary depending on which iPhone model you buy, with the iPhone 15 Pro supporting Thunderbolt/USB4.

Ideally, iPhone Pro with a USB-C dock would have enough bandwidth for video conferencing with rear camera and external retina display/projector, keyboard, mouse/trackpad, headphones, microphone and NIC.

Note that this is regular iPhone, not the Pro one that is _rumored_ to have Thunderbolt 4. On a Pro one, getting a 2TB model and getting 480Mbps transfers is not something Apple would do, my prediction.

So they hobble the regular phone to encourage upgrades. That would by typical of Apple.

Alternately, would increasing the cost of the base phone for a facility hardly anyone would use the right thing to do?

Especially when there is a high end model specifically for people who are willing to bear the cost for higher end features?

The cost of a usb3 module instead of usb2 is negligible. Thunderbolt is a reasonable upgrade for a pro model, but usb2 is completely unreasonable in 2023 unless the phone is <$500

The lower end is price conscious and cutting 10c here and there is meaningful, especially at the volume that Apple ships. And isn’t this for the models that are under $500?

Also note that it’s not just the module. They shipped cable would also need to be usb3. So they probably shaved $5-10 out of the BOM by using usb2 as part of an overall cost reduction effort which probably netted $20-100 in savings depending on far away this was from there target. In other words usb2 would have probably been anywhere from 5-50% of the target reduction they were seeking and even 5% would have been significant.

That being said, there may be strategic reasons why they’ve limited iPhones to 480mbps this whole time. The alternate framing is “iPhone 15 isn’t upgrading to usb3 alongside the usb-c connector migration”.

> And isn’t this for the models that are under $500?

Apple hasn't officially announced it, but the cheapest iPhone 14 is $800. So it's extremely unlikely they will have an iPhone 15 for $500 or less.

This argument doesn't make any sense at all. The price of a base model iPhone is around €800. Saving $.10 on a USB-2 module wouldn't make any difference to a consumer spending €800, but it will translate into major savings for Apple. For the individual consumer, it means being stuck with a 10-year-old standard that is exceedingly slow for the modern age. So yes, it will help somebody, but that somebody is Apple, not the average consumer. Additionally, the cost of cables produced on a large scale is negligible compared to the cost of the phone. You've conjured up an imaginary consumer who wants to buy an expensive phone without paying a little more for a cable and better data transfer. This is a standard justification given by the Apple crowd to defend their actions, and frankly, there is no justification for including a USB-2 port in a phone that will be released in 2023.

Furthermore, all of this is notwithstanding the fact that the price of the iPhone is going to go up this year. So yes, you're getting less for more.

Have you bought a new car recently? Most base and mid models are hobbled together and always lack that one cool feature. It’s typical of most mid to high end purchases.

I don’t think I have ever used the USB-to-lightning cable for data transfer on my current or previous iPhone. Maybe most users are like me.

If you do lots of data transfers this way, buy a faster USB-C cable?

This is already true for the cables that come with iPads and the ones that came with macs before MagSafe returned, so… yes?

What speed wifi is in the iPhone?

How is this a problem for most users? When was the last time someone actually plugged in an iPhone to a computer to sync data? Most syncing happens over wifi for most users (90%+ I would say). Even development happens over wifi now.

Probably more an annoyance for developers repeatedly deploying large games/apps

Doesn’t that also happen wirelessly

Probably worth it to buy a cable then. It is irritating that USB cables don’t have some markings to indicate capability.

I agree with the principle here, if not necessarily the tone ... I don't think I've used an iPhone cable to do anything other than a) charge or b) use CarPlay for probably 10 years at least.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that providing a "real" USB 3 cable for charging would not give most users what they want.

I have two USB-C cables plugged into the MacBook Pro on the desk I'm using right now. One does USB PD and also provides monitor connectivity - that's obviously a "full fat" Thunderbolt cable. The other is a Lightning cable that I need occasionally to charge my keyboard/trackpad.

The Thunderbolt cable would be a terrible phone cable. It is thick, bulky and does not want to bend - mostly because it's designed to have good signal integrity at 10Gb/s+.

And USB 2.0 tops out at about 200 GiB per hour. It's not actually slow.

The maximum net transfer rate is around 43 MB/s in practice. That’s more like 150 GB/h. Not very convenient for backing up an iPhone. With current storage sizes, it could take multiple hours.

USB 3 is faster and more reliable than Wifi.

In my experience, syncing my iphone over wifi doesn’t really work. It will start fine, then lose the connection before it’s finished. Perhaps my old (2010) airport extreme is not up to the task? But in any case, I just use the cable instead, no problem.

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