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Comment by ryaneager | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, who cares? Does anyone even transfers data via USB from their phone anymore? It’s been 4-5 years since I’ve done that. It’s all in synced via iCloud now.

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There's no shortage of people shooting 4K video on iPhone these days. Being able to get it onto a laptop to edit in a reasonable amount of time matters to them.

Those people will likely want the pro model then with better cameras and usb3 transfer speeds

And ProRes, and direct external recording.

You can AirDrop data pretty fast to a Mac, but I don’t think I’ve ever done that, Apple Photos sync reasonably fast over a 5G connection. Downloading video from my phone to a computer is not anymore a thing that I do, it just happens.

Weird take. Who cares about data transfer speeds? Lots of people. Many parts of the world dont have the same cell service coverage or wifi stability you may have.

It sounds pretty simple as a case of if it's important for you, then you should seek out other options, like the pro. Android phones also come in a mix of 2.0/3.0 speeds.

Because there's a human scale to things at the end of the day. It's why we will probably never need 16k resolution for phones - the human eye can only see so many pixels.

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?

USB 2.0 speed: 480 Mbps (mega bits per second).

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.

You're right about the math. I misread the spec

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

That's a meaningless number. When was the last time you saw anyone even attempting to transfer hundreds of gigabytes of data using their phones? Do data hoarders now see their phones as some ideal NAS or what?

Typically twice...the last time you back up your old phone and the first time you restore to your new phone.

I've had good luck with the bottom storage level for years...until I bought a 360 GoPro...seriously huge filesizes.

I did it last week and do it regularly. My (full) 512GB iPhone takes 40+ hours to transfer over USB, I presume to to lots of small files.

Genuine question: How does USB 2.0 compare to Bluetooth (Airdrop) and wifi (assume local network or ad hoc, not icloud or internet) speeds on the 15 line?

EDIT: TIL more about the underlying mechanics of Airdrop than I thought I would, appreciate the lesson.

Actual Bluetooth is slow, 1.5Mbit or so, depending on the implementation. You wouldn't transfer large amounts of data that way. Maybe a photo, or smallish files. But, as the other poster noted, Airdrop uses Wi-Fi direct now so it's at wifi speeds.

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.

I’ve seen both AirDrop and LAN over WiFi reach a steady state at around 55-60 MB/s in ideal conditions, which is remarkably similar to USB 2.0. That speed is only reached when the devices are stationary and close to each other though, any movement causes a temporary drop since wave compression or interference presumably results in signal degradation and some sort of checksumming to occur. Also I can’t recall the specifics but AirDrop only uses Bluetooth to negotiate the connection. The underlying transmission uses peer-to-peer WiFi, so it’s no surprise their speeds are similar to each other.

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.

AirDrop only uses Bluetooth for handshake and configuration. Data is then transferred over Wi-Fi Direct.

Airdrop negotiates a WiFi connection using Bluetooth but does all the data transfer at WiFi speeds.

USB 2.0 Hi Speed is 480 Mb/s

I get about that with my 13 mini on my WiFi 6 AP.

BT 5.x I have no idea.

waaay back in ancient history, we breathed a sigh of relief at the State Department of Transportation when we received the messaging that we didn't need to cater to every edge case when designing an internet facing customer (who, at the time, might have had a 9600 baud modem)

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

On the other hand, the web would be a lot better if developers tested their sites at a much reduced bandwidth.

> Lots of people.

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.

That WiFi stability is a problem is a weird take. WiFi is extremely close range. If it's a problem: 1. Get a cheap WiFi router. 2. Find a place with low wireless interference. 3. Transfer over LAN. Problem solved. Moreover, 99.99% of people can just skip over to step 3.

I think they meant that the upstream connection to the ISP and beyond is unstable. Not the literal WLAN connection between the router and device.

It is not that Wi-Fi stability is a problem, but more that the broadband connection itself is unstable.

But you don't need internet access to replace USB cables. WiFi should deliver gigabit transfer speeds between your PC and phone, however unstable the upstream connection may be.

LAN is also USB2.0 on these devices. Also SD card readers, etc.

If you stay in hotels often, it’s also a good day if the WiFi/internet is merely unstable.

I thought 802.11ax delivers gigabit transfer speeds?

Have you run across 802.11ax anywhere outside of your house, or perhaps a high end office building? When you have, was there bandwidth enough to actually use it?

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.

Both of you are right. I think the us non prosumer is entirely on icloud

they can't both be right, this is the internet! But yeah, many Wi-Fi routers are faster than USB2.0 nowadays

And those people are going to spend $800 on a cutting edge 5G phone?

In their own launch presentation, Apple was taunting how the USB-C port now enables "professional" film makers to shot 4K60FPS directly to external storage

And those professionals would be buying which model, again?

Nothing impressive about locking "meeting standards of the previous decade" behind an upsell.

The pro upsell option would be TB3/TB4/USB4 which itself is old tech now - like on the iPad Pro.

the problem is it's not just one feature, it's USB3 and ProRes and the PHYs for handling external displays, and a bunch of other stuff besides. in aggregate the cost adds up, it's a larger and more expensive SOC and a higher-end phone with more expensive hardware.

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 $1000 you shouldn't be compromising on features? yes, that's why I buy NVIDIA products and not just "we have a bit more VRAM" or "we're 5% faster in raster perf/$".

I'm sorry, but USB3 and ProRes have nothing to to do with each other, and comparing a USB3 controller with a 7600 to 7800X3D upsell - which is about yields/binning and chiplet bonding - is ridiculous.

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.

The one that shoots in ProRes or uses RAW (the pro model, which has USB3 speeds).

That's for shooting in ProRes, which only the Pro models do.

Completely coincidentally they also support 10Gb USB.

In the Pro phones, which use USB3.

I do transfer photos but, honestly, data transfer speeds within reason are pretty much a don't care.

Many older people I know with smartphones still prefer to sync their photos to a computer with the wire rather than pay money for (or trust) iCloud.

What older person is spending $800 on the top of the line phone, especially since most are limited incomes?

Maybe Apple has decided to take on the prepaid burner phone market. Most of those seem to only be USBC 2.0

Shocked. I exclusively dump on my NAS from time to time. Connecting to iPhones is my nemesis

`ifuse` effectively solves the problem.

Looks great, thanks

It does seem useful.

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.

I do because I despise the idea of iCloud, but I’m also completely happy to pay more for USB 3.0. It’s like the new MacBook Pros — ample ports (again), which for my uses are worth paying for.

I do. I don’t use iCloud or any cloud for my private pictures.

but my power cable is data shaped, and it only moves data slowly.

it doesn’t matter if it is never used for that purpose.

the connector lied to me, like a language model.

I do but I also do it so rarely that I don’t really care provided it transfers quickly enough.

Many Hacker News readers care (:

I'm one of those weirdos who still uses local-only, wired backups.

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.

So just remove data transfer all together then it's added expense...

Not everyone uses iCloud. I still refuse to have my most personal data backed up to a corp server. I’m probably in the minority but I’m sure there’s a sizable number of people like me.

Even without that philosophical angle, local backup is the only way for backup and restore a phone or tablet 1:1 (except Secure Enclave) as some bits are not backed up on iCloud.

(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)

I don't know if you heard, but Apple recently introduced full end-to-end encryption for pretty much all iCloud data, including photos [0].

Just out of curiosity, would you still refuse to back up given this is the case?

[0]: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT212520

The most secret data is data that‘s not there. Why would I choose to trust a black box cloud with any of my data not knowing what’s going to happen to it (now or in the future) when I can just use my PC for that.

And local backups are faster, do store more data and don’t cost a monthly subscription.

I do. Why would I entrust my data to external black box servers I don't control? Besides, iCloud is sync, not backup.

iCloud certainly includes a backup product

Apologies, I should have read the link. Most users conflate iCloud Photos with iCloud backup - the former being only a sync.

I know they have backed out of scanning photos on your phone but that used to be a thing they did if you did use iCloud. Plus I have several dozens of terabytes of photos and videos of my family so the storage iCloud offers (until yesterday) wouldn’t have been enough anyways. I just use backblaze and their unlimited storage feature along with historical roll back which gives me all the storage I need.

On the flip side I can’t use Apple Pay or Find My which is a bummer.

Check out PhotoSync if you want to do local transfers wirelessly. Super nice to have. I wouldn't expect the every day user to set it up but for super users its really nice to have.

Has the USB2 speeds been a huge issue for you?

I also make local backups from time to time. It hasn't been an issue for me. It takes less time for the backup to complete than the charge.

I just airdrop all my photos/videos/notes to local storage and upload encrypted bundles to backblaze so I guess to answer the GPs question the port doesn’t make much difference to me. I do make local backups but skip the photos/videos because I dislike the large single photo library bundle file it generates that has become corrupted more than once so it hasn’t taken all that long.

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