Apple finally put USB-C in new iPhone, but limited to 23-year-old USB 2.0 speeds
pcgamer.com
pcgamer.com
The pro model is $999
Out the door... Minimum $900 bucks where I live. That feels close enough to a grand that trying to explain away usb 2 speeds with "But it's a budget phone!" is pretty disingenuous.
Soooo absolutely not free?
- always on display (alongside the 120Hz and variable refresh rate)
- telephoto lens
- 3x optical zoom (versus 2x)
- macro photo
- night mode portraits
- macro video
- proraw / prores
And the macro photo could be using the telephoto lens, I’ve no idea (photography does not even remotely interest me).
(Of course I may just give in and get a personal 14" MBP, in which case they win...)
But, 14 Pro has these over the 15:
- ProMotion (120hz)
- Always-On Display
- TelePhoto lens
- 3x zoom
- 3 hours more video playback on battery
- 35 grams more weight
Apple's brand is generally pro-consumer and pro-experience. How is such dated technology (i.e., USB 2.0) anywhere close to Apple's brand (read: market expectations)? If any other company said, "Here's a brand new 2023 $800 device with USB 2.0..." there would be blood in the social media streets.
There were plenty of other ways to differentiate the pro and non-pro models. Using USB 2.0 is lazy and shortsighted. Obviously, not on-brand either.
Remember, the hacker news crowd as a group does not represent the masses of iPhone users.
"Let's go with the fax machine-y technology..." and the rest of the meeting attendees signed off? Perhaps the brand manager was on holiday? :)
p.s Put another way, I was waiting for the 15 and the USB-C. I'm not going to spend $800 on a device w/ USB 2.0, and I'm not going to spend $1000 just to get what is also a relatively dated technology (i.e., USB 3.0). Which is kinda funny...we're debating the value of USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 isn't exactly the current standard either.
Yeah, I get it. I'm an edge case. Most people don't care. I simply find it hard to believe that Apple so willing cut corners - for no reason - on the flagship devices.
Is this purely kind of on general principles, or do you have a specific use-case for USB 3.0? Because if you do, well, yeah, fair enough, you're an edge-case, but it's worth remembering that most users do not; most people never plug their phone into a computer these days, except perhaps to charge it.
Instead of assuming the millions of customers are deluding themselves into a worse experience, consider that they don't care for this particular feature, and the median user does not need it or think about it at all.
For most people, the cable is a means to keep their battery full. That's it.
I would bet against this, because I would bet 99% of people will never use a wire to transfer data from the phone.
The 1% who care will spend an extra $200 on a Pro model.
This is price segmentation / microeconomics 101, you can earn more money by asking for more money from people who want to pay more, and asking less money from people who want to pay less.
In theory, the USB C port should allow us to connect a docking station / monitor to a iPhone 15 but I'm not so sure Apple has that in mind. afaik, you need at least USB 3.0 to do that.
I also don’t want to have the photos on “my computer”. I’m really bad at hosting large amounts of data, I let professionals do it for me for a few.
I’m sitting on my couch and my phone is syncing data to multiple cloud services.
I specifically updated my camera too so I could get photos off it via Wi-Fi instead of having to faff about with memory cards or cables.
If you’re on Linux, install Jotta or Dropbox or Onedrive and the same thing happens.
I've had an iPhone since 2008 or so, and yeah, back in the day there were lots of cases where you'd want to plug it in. I'm not sure I've _ever_ plugged my current (4 year old) phone into a computer except purely to charge, though.
Yes, it is. I said that :) And it's a lazy and shite way for a brand like Apple's to go about it.
There were plenty of ways to segment the models, using a fax machine-esque technology to do is silly at best.
I personally have not used a cable to transfer anything since icloud backups came online.
It should be noted that usb-c on the non-pro models is no slower than lightning on any previous model.
As someone whose most devices are USB-C 3.0+ for the past few years and never need to think about speed, I have to say this comment is hilarious.
If the EU wanted to outlaw USB2 phones it should have done that. But there would have been pushback from other vendors too - and rightly so.
I get it, android phones have a better cost/benefit for you. Some people prefer the tradeoffs that Apple makes, like privacy, quality materials, a different OS, battery life, etc.
Yes because they had no choice! Apple literally gave them no choice to select to use a 10 year old technology. Something that has been standard in Samsung Galaxy phones since 2017.
Unless they were willing to give up an entire ecosystem they had invested thousands of dollars in have purchased apps, have their data stored everything.
It's Stockholm syndrome.
It's almost as bad as the comment above saying "yah it's reasonable to need to pay for the Pro version for USB 3.0"!
And we all know if Apple had launched with USB 3.0 6 years before the competition and called it lightning 2.0, users old never stop talking about how necessary it is, and how Apple so incredibly caters to the needs of their users and how big a difference is it.
I don't know how they do it, but that company gets people to blindly believe whatever they're told. And rationalize away any terrible decision.
There is only one other consumer company that I've seen get away with that.
Drunk on kool aid.
I know more seniors that know their way around AirDrop (or things “magically” appearing on their desktop device via iCloud, unbeknownst to them) than people that even realize that the cable they use to charge their iPhone could also transfer data.
Next you’re gonna tell me that they don’t care about Cat5 because they’re brainwashed to think WiFi is necessary to get internet.
I use SyncThing and it works fantastically, with no fees and no spying.
I don't understand why people accept that it's necessary to send that data to Apple and back in order to perform such a basic function.
It doesn't matter if it's encrypted or not, that's still an artificial limitation that Apple has put on the devices you supposedly "own", all so they can monetize your data.
But Apple will tell you these limitations are for your own good, or security or something.
And people seem to love the taste of that refreshing kool-aid.
Keep your strawmen to yourself, I never stated iCloud is the only way to transfer data.
> I use SyncThing and it works fantastically, with no fees and no spying.
Good for you. I don’t recall asking.
Grow up and accept that other people have preferences that differ from yours and maybe in the process you’ll also learn that using FOSS doesn’t make you as edgy and cool as you think.
As an aside, I can only surmise you don’t even know what iCloud entails because not only does SyncThing not officially support iOS (you know, the topic at hand), but even using the only available *paid* option, Möbius, doesn’t even come close to the iCloud experience.
You do realize that this comment only further shows how brainwashed Apple victims are, which was precisely what my initial comment was about?
That they have internalized and accept that their artificially crippled devices won't allow you to transfer data privately to your own PC without using their cloud, which comes with the associated costs and privacy implications? They are artificially crippling devices to monetize your data.
Apple is ruining computing, and Apple victims are too shortsighted to be concerned about it.
Namely that there are other factors that justify the cost of iPhones v. the cost of low to midrange Androids.
The proper counter to that would be for you to give examples of a low to midrange Android, at that low to midrange Android price, that is able to match the specs and build quality of an iPhone, besides USB speeds.
Alternatively you could also concede that they have a point of course.
Who said anything about cost? The profit accrues to Apple.
But how often do you really need to never think about speed?
Apple is an enormous company with the best engineers in the business. So I trust they are delivering exactly what we never need in this case.
If this was any other company they would be lambasted. Budget Android phones do USB-C 3.0 and have for years.
They were right. I haven't missed the headphone jack once. Bluetooth earphones are cheap and easy to come by, if you want premium sound you can buy an expensive set. The headphone jack was outdated and not needed. If you REALLY want a wired set, a dongle is <£10 from apple or <£5 from amazon. This is a stupid complaint.
By you. People with existing setups and sometimes expensive headphones would disagree. And the whole donglemania is ridiculous - especially models with only Thunderbolt ports are practically unusable without a hub.
"come on now, USB-C is the future, why won't apple implement it!?"
"no, not like that"
I actually wonder if they wanted to get rid of the headphone jack not because of the space it took up (which is significant for the number of connections) but for help with 'water-proofing'.
I also feel like one of the main reasons for at least the design of the lightning connector was multi-faceted. At the time their obvious other choice would have been micro usb B, which is a terrible connector that fails often, especially in cases where it is heavily used. It would have been a support nightmare for them. The design of lightning being a thicker 'core' type connector rather than the flimsy core of a micro usb B or even usb C probably made it easier to make water resistant and cut down on hardware support concerning the connector. I know that on the few occasions when I was having problems with cable connections to an ipad or iphone i'd grab a pair of tweezers and find some lint in the female side of the connetor.
There is no way in hell my next phone won't have a headphone jack either.
Bluetooth is a low audio quality latency filled shitshow, not to mention two more things to charge, and dongles are crap.
I like Samsung hardware but I can't go without the headphone jack.
I like large phones, so I'll probably end up with an Asus ROG phone, but they're slightly chunkier than I'd like, and I'm not really a fan of the "gaming" aesthetic.
Some do. Not every one, certainly, if that was your implication.
I’m sorry, are we still talking about Apple here?
The very same Apple that gets lambasted no matter what they do because it makes for great clickbait and fuel for fandroids?
They very same Apple that got lambasted for being the first to fully embrace USB-C on their 12” MacBook back in 2015 and now is being lambasted for being the last to adopt USB-C on their phone lineup.
I shudder to think what other companies go through if your definition’s threshold for being “lambasted” is so high.
I've read this a few times and I can't figure out what this is supposed to mean. What are you trying to ask here?
Suppose I've already sunk my money into a "special" thing and find out it lacks some bog standard goodness. Perhaps it was even designed to lack this goodness. I might reflexively ask, "Does anyone actually need that goodness?" in a desperate attempt to save face and prevent myself from feeling like a goober.
Above, my face-saving sentence was written to seem so reflexive and thoughtless that the query ends up sounding absurd. I mean, technically, it is at least coherent to ask whether the time saved by not having to deal with a particular class of problems is ever necessary, in any sense from remaining employed to the survival of the human species. In any case, it's also a red herring.
Above, someone called this face-saving tactic a "cope" which I've never heard but now love. :)
Super odd attitude to have—consumers should be a lot angrier about a mediocre offering sold at sky-high prices.
I imagine cabled data transfer is even more niche than cabled charging, especially amongst the non-pro crowd.
Can someone make a case that a large group of mainstream iPhone users are plugging in their phones and need better charging speeds? More than 480mbps? And if that were true, where was the upheaval during the Lightning port area? I look around and I just don’t see this group of people, but maybe I’m missing something.
Being different is really important to some people I guess.
Liking and owning Apple isn't being different. It's being part of the herd.
- the 4th gen ipad air supports 5Gb USB, the 10th gen iPad only supports 0.5Gb, both use an A14
- the 5th gen ipad pro supports 40Gb USB, the 5th gen ipad air only supports 10Gb, both use an M1
But I've been told these ports are not symmetrical, the highest speeds are only in host mode and come from a separate USB3 controller, and the soc integrated device mode has much lower specs (10G for the Pro, 0.5Gb on the A15-using 6th gen mini — 5Gb capable in host mode).
The 40 Gb/s speed on the iPad Pro comes from the Thunderbolt controller, which is completely unrelated to USB and disabled in software on the 5th gen iPad Air for market segmentation.
The 4th gen iPad Air and 6th gen iPad Mini use a USB 2.0 dual-role device controller integrated into the SoC, which is limited to 480 Mb/s, and a USB 3.0 controller connected over PCIe, which supports up to 5 Gb/s.
The PCIe USB controller isn't included on the 10th gen iPad. It doesn't support device mode, which explains the USB 2.0 speeds when connected to a computer.
I mean, you're going to put to market a $700 phone and cant upgrade one chip on it to do USB3?
Really!
Am I the only one who feels that 128GB is a huge amount of storage for a phone? Or is it because I still remember when even desktop computers had storage sizes best measured in megabytes?
I'm sorry to say but if you download things offline you are a power user.
Do you think your feelings might vary depending on how you use the device?
Modern customers stray further from God every day.
It’s cheaper to pay for the 2TB iCloud for 2 years than it would be to upgrade to larger storage on the phone. It’s actually even less because my whole family uses the same quota together.
Then it's easy decision to throw in a few more dollars for streaming service and you are nice recurring revenue instead one-time sell.
Also it's probably cheaper only if you consider only Apple ecosystem. Other mid-range device comparable to base iPhone with bigger storage is probably cheaper.
I want to upload it all to the cloud as fast as possible so it won't get lost if the device is stolen/breaks/gets lost.
The idea that all of my media would be stuck on one device and at risk or that I would have to go through the laborious process of manually syncing it all regularly by hooking up my devices is a nightmare.
Everything automatically syncs to all my devices, including photos and videos me and my SO take in each other’s presence, all recent media is immediately available at the highest native resolutions and I never have to worry about anything.
I’ve got terabytes full of stuff going back years and for good measure I’ve got an automated backup running to a NAS.
Out of an old fashioned mindset I’ve got a moderately upgraded iPhone with 256GB, but 200GB of it is apps because I tend to download apps from fellow developers.
A fraction of that is spend on photos and videos because of automatic storage optimization and a fraction is used for music and podcasts that’s also automatically managed for when I’m traveling.
I’ve got professional cameras and by far the most annoying part is transferring media despite having access to the highest theoretical transfer speeds available on the market today.
Like, there is a value in what Apple is offering. It means someone like my mum never ever has to think about storage or backing up anything, when she lost her phone she got a new one out of a box, signed in and all of her stuff was there without having to do anything. As a power user, could you achieve the same for less? Sure, but for average user the value is there.
Kind of like the price of a specific avocado does not exist after it has been turned into guacamole.
Photos, unless chosen to be shot in RAW and the highest resolution at all times, are comparatively not as big a deal on space used with the HEIC format (choose High Efficiency as the format in the camera settings).
Since most people tend to keep all or most of the photos they ever shot over the years on their phones, it just adds up.
Size/cost/quality wise, that’s so much better than old school VHS/camcorders it makes my head hurt.
Pretty awesome for sure. Still no free lunch though.
What do iPhone users do to get all that data off their phones and onto their macbooks?
Hell, nowadays it does the same for photos and videos taken by my SO if they took the photo/video while I was with them.
Now that I think about it, I’ve got “Optimize Storage” enabled on my devices, so if storage is running low it should keep a lower resolution instead of the original stored locally. But I suppose they must use a FIFO logic, because my most recent stuff is always available locally in full resolution.
If I need the older stuff for a project I click export on it and it’ll download the full resolution, which doesn’t take more than a few seconds because I’ve got 1Gbit fiber connection.
I guess the closest thing that comes to a manual transfer would be AirDrop where it would transfer it via a 5Ghz ad-hoc WiFi connection (or via LAN if the extra hop via the router would be faster with an ethernet connected Mac in the olden days).
In practice it reaches about 1Gbps, but I rarely to use it because by the time I need it it’s already synced. I only use it a few times a year when I’ve shot B-roll with the iPhone at my desk and immediately jump into editing.
I haven’t used a cable to transfer data to/from my iPhone in probably more than a decade with the sole exception being when I push out builds from Xcode to the iPhone.
And the other commenter that pointed out "who exactly uses USB for data transfer anyway?" is spot on. I'm not even an iPhone user and about the only time I do data transfer by USB is when I'm moving stuff to a new phone.
Point being, 99.9% of people who buy an iPhone are never going to notice the speed differential. I feel like all the people complaining are either people in that .1%, or people who just like to complain.
People just like to complain. If you were to ask someone on the street with an iphone when is the last time they manually transfered files to their iphone using a USB cable the overwhelming majority would have no idea what you are talking about.
I actually think this is a little bit Apple being spiteful for being forced to move to USB-C and honestly I'm a little bit on their side on this one.
Honestly it’s probably not even that. It’s probably a SoC limitation that the base models reuse. On the Pro line they bumped it up to 3.0.
There is exactly nothing forcing anyone to purchase an iPhone 15, and it very clear in all of the materials from Apple what the different between the Pro and non-Pro models is. The iPhone 14 Pro was discontinued (at a higher price) to make way for the non-Pro iPhone 15, since they are roughly equivalent in capabilities... including in their USB speeds.
USB speed was a non-issue 30 days ago, and now it's an emergency that is worthy of histrionics, hand-wringing, and FUD, including calling anyone pointing out how ridiculous this is a "corporate sycophant".
Please.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35014499
Son was bullied in school, then father was bullied and flagged by HN.
Do you flag other submissions where companies are called out for minor fuckups? :-)
There's a ~1000 comment thread about the new iPhone models already on the HN front page, yet this article was posted specifically to spark a flamewar and the article itself is FUD clickbait that adds nothing new to the conversation that's not explicitly stated in the press release. During every iPhone release for the last few years, they have used the previous-generation SoC for the non-Pro models, and that is the core reason the non-Pro iPhone 15 has USB 2 speeds, because that's the controller in the SoC.
This is neither surprising, nor worth litigating. It's something Apple themselves socialized over a year ago.
iPhone 14 (last year) was AFAIK the first time they did this (non-pro iPhone 14 didn’t get a new SoC and kept the one used in ALL iPhone 13 models) and there was quite an uproar.
That they only switched when forced by the EU is sadly typical of them.
That they then used this to market segment, so $800 phones still have USB speeds I expect from $15 junk I’d buy on Amazon?
That’s just irritating.
Apple promised 10 years of support for Lighting. They gave it that.
The lightning plug design on the other hand is as close to bulletproof as you can get for the size and number of connections. The only time someone has ever come to me with a problem with a lightning connector it's been quickly resolved by taking out some very fine tweezers and pulling a bit of lint or dirt out of the female connector.
Same with if they had modern speeds on their non-Pro models.
They’re just being dicks now though.
The other part is that when they went through the design work to put USB-C in (per the legal mandate), they didn’t spend the extra 2c to put a USB3.x or whatever host controller in. Because it would likely have cost them less than 2c to do it.
They didn’t just swap a plug and call it good in a rush, they made multiple new models, that they are selling as improvements and they segmented it so that the $800 model has speeds from prior ancient tech.
That’s being a dick. On top of the ‘being a dick’ of continuing to use their proprietary connector 5+ generations after it stopped being relevant.
I own an iPhone dude. I’ve used Mac’s for decades (alongside Linux and Windows machines).
Calling a spade a spade isn’t zealotry. Refusing to see the obvious is…. Something though.
I think Apple made the obviously sensible decision here.
To whom?
> there's no reason to be obstinate about it.
Strange comment. You're projecting or something.
You’ve obviously discovered step #1 of a plan for which step #3 is Profit! There must be a lot of excitement that goes along with something like that.
If the OP is correct, this is exactly not what Apple has done. They've equipped the lesser models with last year's SoC. The question of whether this is the kind of feature that ought to be gimped, ever, in 2023 remains.
> it's clear that some people just have issues with retail and companies making things they don't agree with and just come to the internet to argue, and here i am falling for it.
Perhaps you would have had a happier time if you hadn't attributed intentions to me which I did not possess, a couple of times. But if you enjoy doing that, well... enjoy!
It would be different if they wrote it in a way that suggested no personal belief.
It can only bring you down, there's no way it could make anyone like you more.
> like you more
This is all incredibly sad. You should look for affirmation in other, more meaningful places.
Huh? If you don't think this HN post or comment chain is meaningful, why are you spending your time commenting here in the first place?
Because the only think I plug my phone into is my car, and I'm pretty sure that's still running at USB 1.x speeds.
It becomes clear when you see that first party cables that enable hight transfer speeds are sold at 79, 149, and 179 bucks for the 1m, 1.8m, and 3m respectively [1]. So, in essence, they purposely did just enough to comply with EU regulations while still aiming at milking customers' wallets with crazy expensive accessories that you would take for granted from top or premium tier smartphones.
[1] https://www.apple.com/ie/shop/product/MU883ZM/A/thunderbolt-...
Also, Apple's 3m cable is actually not unreasonable when you consider that that's actually beyond what the thunderbolt spec theoretically allows, even with an active cable with a repeater chip the limit is supposed to be 2 meters.
but lol @ people objecting to apple rolling out usb-c now, that's gotta be a conspiracy too for some people. every damn apple thread.
if you want to buy a normal cable, just buy a normal cable.
Active Thunderbolt Cables run at speeds of 40Gbp at 1.8m/3m.
All of Apple's Thunderbolt 4 cables are 40Gbp, the same cannot be said about all of the cables you buy from Amazon.
If you feel the need to blame someone? I guess you can blame Intel for the design.
Unless you're filming a 4k full-hd movie with your phone and download time is critical
The fact you and others seem not to understand this should be an indication you aren’t informed enough to have a valid opinion on the topic.
EDIT: TIL more about the underlying mechanics of Airdrop than I thought I would, appreciate the lesson.
I get about that with my 13 mini on my WiFi 6 AP.
BT 5.x I have no idea.
Incidentally, I’m sure there’s a myriad of practical reasons why it would have been too early for Apple to go entirely portless, but funnily enough as it turns out, a decrease in transfer speed compared to USB 2.0 over Lightning wouldn’t have been one of them.
Modern Wi-Fi 6 (what is in the new iPhones, even in the older iPhones) is theoretically much faster. Gigabit+ speeds. In practice, you can expect similar or faster speeds vs. USB2 over Wi-Fi. If it's ad-hoc from iPhone to iPhone, it should be much closer to theoretical max since they will be in close proximity.
They might actually be asking for examples.
I do it but pretty rarely to just back up a few things manually to the point that speed doesn’t matter much.
Many parts of the world got Cell coverage before they got land lines because they were cheaper to deploy.
“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.
The Economist, December 4, 2003” ― William Gibson
iPhone 15 max storage configuration is 512 GB. So you can transfer the entirety of the phone in 10 minutes. Plug it in, have a coffee and come back. Is it changing anyone's life if it can be done in 90 seconds instead? How often do you need to transfer the entirety of your phone storage?
edit: math was indeed wrong, it takes about 2 hours. But like okay, is that too long?
512 GB (giga bytes) = 512 * 8 Gb (giga bits)
Time required to transfer 512 GB at sustained max USB 2.0 speed: 512 * 8 * 1024 / (480 * 60) minutes.
That's 145 minutes. About 2.4 hours.
I've had good luck with the bottom storage level for years...until I bought a 360 GoPro...seriously huge filesizes.
But at the same time, I don't really yield my point. 2 hours - just plug it in at night and it's done in the morning. We routinely do things where we plug in a phone for 2 hours
If you stay in hotels often, it’s also a good day if the WiFi/internet is merely unstable.
That’s all I’m saying. If you take a lot of photos/video and you’re trying to get it off the phone, it sucks if you’re travelling. You can’t even plug it into your laptop and get it off decently (though it’s still often faster than hotel Wifi).
I literally was hitting 500kB/s (hotel wifi) upload speeds this week, and it was an improvement - I had to pay extra. I ended up using lighting to USB2.0 cable to pull what I needed off.
I’ll just end up getting the Pro model anyway, but like intel disabling ECC on all but their ‘server’ CPUs - it’s unnecessary, irritating, and restrictive. Well within their rights though.
Typical Apple. They love lock-in.
Sky is blue. Water is wet.
It is not that Wi-Fi stability is a problem, but more that the broadband connection itself is unstable.
The pro upsell option would be TB3/TB4/USB4 which itself is old tech now - like on the iPad Pro.
If a large portion of the market will never use those features, why not exclude them and make the phone $200 cheaper? and thus, we arrive at the reason why "base" and "pro" model product tiering exists (not just for apple either).
would it be nice if you got the 7800X3D for 7600 prices? sure, free stuff would always be nice.
is there an argument that if you're spending $1000 you shouldn't be compromising on features? yes, that's why I buy NVIDIA products and not just "we have a bit more VRAM" or "we're 5% faster in raster perf/$".
The real and only reason for not having USB3 in the iPhone 15 and 15 plus is because them using last-gen SoCs in non-Pro phones in recent times. Not because of cost, or power, or performance - it just only had a USB2.0 port so they put in a USB2.0 controller.
Completely coincidentally they also support 10Gb USB.
(this can be seen once restored: via icloud authentication is stripped off, with local everything not relying on secure enclave or specifically tied to a device stays authenticated)
Just out of curiosity, would you still refuse to back up given this is the case?
On the flip side I can’t use Apple Pay or Find My which is a bummer.
And local backups are faster, do store more data and don’t cost a monthly subscription.
On the Pro, you can plug in a USB flash drive and back up pictures and video in the field.
It also appears there will be 4k display support on the pro which would give you an instant Apple TV while traveling and could even be a decent laptop replacement.
it doesn’t matter if it is never used for that purpose.
the connector lied to me, like a language model.
And you know what? I still don't care about the transfer speed at all. Every couple of weeks I hook my phone up to my laptop and let it do its thing while I'm working. At some point it is finished. End of story.
The few random people who do are probably videographers looking to transfer their large video files and buying the pro models anyways.
Even android users probably aren't paying attention to what speed their USB was.
I'm shocked that is even a selling point. I've been using an iPhone and iPad for about 8 years and never transferred data this way. I've only used usb for midi or keyboard inputs where data speed was not a factor.
I pay the Apple tax now, and curse Apple each time they tell me my iCloud storage is almost full. I have TERABYTES of available local storage but Apple keeps my photos hostage in their shitty iCloud world.
I would gleefully go back to managing my own photos if Apple wasn't actively trying to prevent it. /rant
Edit to add. Their Mac didn’t have usb-c ports and that’s the only charger I had with me and no adapter. They were an Android user.
Is it though? Really? 480 Mb/s is quite fast for most applications, especially those involving a smartphone.
Any user with files large enough that this transfer is ostensibly slow is a videographer of some sort and has likely bought the pro model or at least planned for this event.
What sort of file is a "random 1-off thing" that a casual user might need to transfer, unexpectedly, over the wire, which is so large that a speed of 0.48 gigabits/sec is extremely slow?
The non-pro model can transfer a 5GB file over the wire in around a minute. Again, what is the real-world use case or scenario where a non-pro, casual user would find some random 1-off file, that is so large that the 0.48 Gbps speed is lacking?
Personally I am very excited for this transfer to happen over USB3 in the future.
Out of curiosity, what client app do you use to actually view the snapshot on the iPhone?
The latest full snapshot (including low res images) is here and clocks in around 102gb: https://dumps.wikimedia.org/kiwix/zim/wikipedia/wikipedia_en...
I live on an RV and end up working off of solar power far from cell service, so when I run out of power for Starlink there's no internet and Kiwix is super handy for relevant reading material.
In my single anecdata case, out of 15ish years of owning phones, it was a 4kx60fps video of a recital and about 30gb if I recall correctly.
Also, you are doing a classic mix-up of mega-bits vs. mega-bytes. A 30 gb file transferring at 480 megabits per second takes around 5 minutes with no protocol overhead (about 20% speed reduction) and assuming the flash on the phone can keep up and isn't doing anything else on the wire (probably another 20-40% reduction in transfer speed).
How did I mix up megabits and megabytes? I mentioned a 5 gb file transferring at the same speeds takes a minute or so. That tracks with your 30 gb:5 minute calculation.
It would have been different if I wrote MB/s (all caps)
MB/s = megabytes per second
Mb/s = Mbps = megabits per second.
See also https://www.techtarget.com/searchnetworking/definition/Mbps
> Megabits per second (Mbps) are units of measurement for network bandwidth and throughput. They are used to show how fast a network or internet connection is. Each Mbps represents the capacity to transfer 1 million bits each second, or roughly one small photo per second. It may also be expressed as Mbit/s or Mb/s.
Next iPhone should have no port!
I do feel that the differences and selling points of these devices vs the previous devices have gotten so trivial though.
USB C is nice, but the suggestion in their presentation that I carry around a usb charger for my Apple Watch and would charge my Apple Watch from their device “directly” or that a millimeter this way or that way in width or thickness matters at all. These things are just the most trivial differences. I can’t believe I spent over an hour watching their stupid presentation.
USB3 / USB 4 was enabled with an external chip in select iPads. This has a power, space, and material cost. It may not even fit in the phone space or power budget at all.
For the A17, they added USB3 to the SoC. I bet the iPhone 16 non pro will have USB3, when it gets the a17 chip.
It also could be heat related in the iPad Air, it has a thinner and lighter chassis with less metal. Thunderbolt uses a fair bit of power at 40Gb/s! Let alone say, providing 15w of power to whatever device like an external SSD.
https://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/?modelList=ipad-pro-12-9-...
Scroll to the "chip" section, and straight from the horse's mouth they both use a 4+4 / 8 M1, I rather doubt Apple has a variant of that chip which removes ip blocks (AFAIK the only variant is the 4+4 / 7 chip still available on the super low end MBA).
> It also could be heat related in the iPad Air
That... does not in any way affect the point?
> That... does not in any way affect the point?
Okay…you’re right, the only reason I don’t have a 128 core epyc cpu in my iPad is market segmentation! Darn markets.
Yes. Per Apple:
> More Innovative Technologies Packed into M1
> An Apple-designed Thunderbolt controller with support for USB 4, transfer speeds up to 40Gbps, and compatibility with more peripherals than ever.
> you’d need a teardown.
You mean like the dozens of teardowns of M1 macs when it was released, which only found retimers on the motherboard but no external controller?
> Okay…you’re right, the only reason I don’t have a 128 core epyc cpu in my iPad is market segmentation! Darn markets.
I see you are wilfully obtuse and entirely unserious. I'm sorry I bothered.
Thanks for the info!
> I see you are wilfully obtuse and entirely unserious. I'm sorry I bothered.
No, you are being an asshole and a bit of idiot. I said it might be heat related - so there is a reason beyond market segmentation that apple does not include thunderbolt in the iPad air. I don't know why I am bothering either, but here we are.
Will the non-Pro version also be 3nm? Will it support USB3?
75MB per picture in pro raw 48MP mode. 6GB per minute with ProRes 4k video. 5 minutes of video and my data plan caps if uploaded to iCloud.
One nice addition is they allow hard drive data offloading for ProRes video and can record at 4k60.
I don't think it's that costly to continue to use the same SoC they just used in the outgoing models.
I care. I have a legitimate use for USB 3 on my phone.
My home ISP is unreliable. It doesn't care if I'm in a time sensitive meeting. When it does go away, I need to quickly get back into my meeting.
Sometimes it goes away for hours. It has also gone away for days sometimes. I need an alternate internet connection, and preferably one that doesn't require my neighbourhood to have electricity, because that also is unreliable where I live.
So I use my phone. For short durations of use, I use the Wi-Fi Hotspot feature, but for longer durations I switch to USB Tethering.
At USB 2 speeds, I'd guess, the Ethernet connection can only negotiate a 100 Mbps link speed. That is much slower than my home ISP.
The phone I use currently has USB 3 and cost me half the price of an iPhone 15.
USB-C is a major selling point for me, primarily for data transfer speeds.
All they did was swap out the connector. For phones with A16 chips, the USB-C port is just a differently shaped lightning port.
Apple decided not to make a new processor for an old phone... shock and awe.
I am pretty sure that this is a new phone.
"Apple is using the old stock of USB2-only processors for the non-pro phone, and it's common for the non-pro devices to use last-gen processors"
Yeah, they decided to use and old processor on a new $800 phone that can't support something my $400 phone does.
But what can you expect, they're just a poor indie company, we need to lower our expectations of them.
Announced yesterday
Checks out!
Honestly the surprising part is that Apple never felt the need to speed up Lightning; really shows how rarely wired data transfer is done on an iPhone.
The really interesting parts of USB are display port alt mode and thunderbolt. While it's technically possible and probably valuable for millions of people for Apple to do their version of Dex, I don't ever see that happening.
Personally, I've only had to do this once: when my Xperia screen totally broke but I still needed to get data off.
I manage to almost saturate my 1Gbps fiber connection when doing a Speedtest close to my router, landing at about 870Mbps down/up, which seems fair with some of the overhead that comes with my specific router.
If I use AirDrop to my Mac which is an ad-hoc connection on 5Ghz I consistently reach 1Gbps transfer speeds, sometimes a bit more.
What kind of time difference transferring data?
It hardly ever transfer mass data from my phone, when I do I honestly don’t care how long it takes provided it is “fast enough”…
What did the iPads do before A17? Did they also have this extra controller? I thought at least the Pro models already had faster speeds, so there must have been a solution already.
It's the charging, not the data transfer, that people do multiple times per day, every day, at multiple different charge points.
So basically this year they are releasing the A17 Pro on N3B, and the base-model phones get the old A16 (which does not have native USB3). Then probably next year they release A17 Bionic and update the base tier phones.
It's also highly likely that the A17 Pro itself gets refreshed, since it will be lower cost on N3E (and this matters at Apple's scale, the validation/testing costs are worth it). And that's the point when they'll start doing M3 chips in laptops too, most likely - actually some analysts thought M3 non-Pro/Max was a possibility (smaller dies/higher yields) but I guess N3B yields are that bad.
I used my Galaxy as a desktop for several years. I have separate workstation for dev, but as personal device it is perfect.
So having USB-C instead of Lightning is nice for the very occasional 'i am traveling without my magsafe charger' situation. But 0.5gbit vs 10gbit USB makes zero difference if I have not transferred more than 0bit in a decade anyway.
One can get angry about so many things. This ain't one of them.
I’d use foolish if it affected consumers purchasing decision
I don’t think people buying iPhones meaningfully care about USB data transfer rates
Edit: I read the edit in the post.
50gb of data at USB 2 speeds is minimum 14 minutes while usb 3 is 1 min 30.
Real world is probably like double the time for both as usb 2.0 definitely doesn't average 480mbps
What makes you think it's fine to use 23 year old speed limits in a $800 device, let alone attacking people who expect more?
the USB Implementation Forum, I'd expect
A) you had the same speed on existing iPhones - so it’s an upgrade you didn’t get
B) you can get the iPhone Pro and pay for it
maybe if I had macbook laptop I would connect it from time to time, but otherwise everything works fine via Wi-Fi including full system backups
> The iPhone 15 Pro sports Apple's new A17 Pro APU, complete with a new on-die USB controller block. However, the vanilla iPhone 15 makes do with the last-gen A16 Bionic chip, which lacks that new USB controller and only has the original Lightning controller onboard.
In that context it makes more sense: the cable isn't limited to USB 2.0 speeds, it's limited to lightning cable speeds (which are the same), they literally only changed the connector.
It's still annoying but it's understandable that they made the tradeoff, I imagine making a whole new "A16+USB-C controller" chipset would be expensive with little upside for most customers.
So it intuitively aligns with my personal life and career experience.
I don't use NSA scanner tools or upload my sex tapes to Google's AI training model, so I sync my photos to my local NAS once a month.
OwnCloud or any of the other automatic, fully local syncing apps do this just fine daily. Then you sync photos/videos every time you're on your local network.
Maybe the most important feature allowed by the USB 3 speeds is that iPhone 15 Pro can record directly to an external drive, so you can plug that in to your editing machine and not worry about the phone's internal storage at all. But it's not something normal people are going to do.
What makes you think any non-pro users do need data transfer capability?
Everything else goes over Wi-Fi.
Would it be nice if the cable was faster? Yes. Would I pay more for it? Dubious.
I could imagine some people do though, for transferring video or big pictures when on slow asychronous Internet at home and don't want to wait for everything to sync up to the cloud. I shovel stuff over local wireless via SFTP in such situations but that is not a man-on-the-street compatible solution.
I never thought I wouldn’t sync my phone to a computer, but here I am. If I have to, opening the case to make a debug zif connection isn’t a big deal.
So why bother to put the new hotness in if it's not going to matter to almost all users?
They could have used a 5 Gb/s USB controller for market segmentation, it would still be 10 times faster.
But integrating that controller into the phone? I assume there's a reason it's currently heavily integrated into the SoC and that not doing so would have drawbacks.