The iPhone 15 charger cable looks set to switch to USB-C, and it could even be longer and more colourful, but it probably won’t be any faster than Lightning.
That’s the fresh claim being made by Apple researcher Majin Bu. They have issued a tweet outlining the key specs of the iPhone 15’s new bundled-in charger cable.
According to this tweet, the new iPhone 15 cable will indeed be USB-C, which means Apple’s proprietary Lightning standard is indeed for chop, as rumoured. It’ll also be 1.6 metres long, which is significantly longer than the current 1 metre cable.
The tipster claims that the new cable will be “thicker and more resistant”, which would seem to tally with recent claims that the iPhone 15 will come with a sturdier colour-coded charger cable.
There’ll be no MFi requirements, apparently. This is a reference to Apple’s ‘Made For iPhone’ licensing programme, which is a licensing programme for third party accessory makers. With no stringent MFi requirements in place (such as custom chips), you should be able to use cheaper, non-custom USB-C cables to charge your iPhone 15.
All of which is good news, until you run into the claim that this iPhone 15 charger cable will support the USB-C 2.0 standard. This would mean that data transfer speeds would max out at 480 Mbps, which is exactly the same as Apple’s Lightning.
Part of the appeal of Apple switching to USB-C, admittedly well after the whole universal support angle, is that the standard supports much more rapid transfer speeds. It seems Apple is intent on artificially limiting that for its new mainstream phone.
It’s possible that Apple will retain true USB 3.2 or Thunderbolt 3 support as a feature of the iPhone 15 Pro. Physically hooking your phone up to a computer is a pretty pro pastime these days, after all.
Another possibility, as outlined by 9to5Mac, is that the iPhone 15 will indeed support Thunderbolt 3 transfer speeds, but that you’ll need to buy the pricy cable separately.
With the rumoured September 12/13 launch date fast approaching, we shouldn’t have too long to find out which of these (or something completely different) is the case.
