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I think the apple connector was a good one. Nothing wrong with it except that it was apple licensed. Whereas USB-C is a standard. Also, because of Power Delivery over USB-C I think that should make USB a standard connector on way more devices. It’s a one-stop shop for data and power needs.
I can also see PD becoming the power system used for all small devices, especially once there’s (if not already) some very low cost single chip (or very simple reference circuit) solutions for handling the negotiation. Also it will need more of the available PD chargers/supplies to support more voltages.
My work laptop already uses PD, and that was useful when I forgot to take the supply once. Just used my 45W PD charger that I DID pack, and it worked fine (it should have 65W, but it seemed not to discharge).
Who knows, maybe houses in the future will be built with some PD wiring too alongside the standard mains power.
Wall outlets exist with USB C ports built into them. It’s pretty neat, I’ve got one in my kitchen
Yeah, I’m thinking more a whole wiring solution for power delivery. Although you’d probably still need a chip per outlet to do the negotiation. So still pretty expensive I’d bet.
I may be stupid.
But I have no idea how people are comparing “better” or “worse” cables. I always just assumed they were just cables.
Edit: for people downvoting me, I’m not saying they are just cables, I’m just saying I don’t know what the difference is, and asking for an explanation. Please calm down.
Usually it’s about the time it takes to charge the phone or transfer files. I have never used the lightning cable so I can’t personally compare but as USB C is compatible with USB 3.0 whereas lightning isn’t, I assumed USB C is faster
I’m also seeing things about not using the phone while it’s charging which is a rule I’m currently breaking as we speak. Whoops!
There are different dimensions for this, balance of importance differs between users and application:
- data transfer rate
- power transfer rate
- durability
- reusability with other products
- length
- price
- someone made it white and engraved a pictogram of an incomplete apple on it
Okay, so getting information and energy to and from the phone (what a cable does), how long it lasts, how many different types of cables you’d have to buy to work with similar devices you have, length and price are self explanatory, and whether or not apple is being apple.
I think I got it, thank you!
Don’t worry, apple is still limiting data transfer to usb2 protocols except on the pro models
Oh I always expect them to find a loop hole to sell their ridiculously expensive peripherals. My best bet is a chip that forces you to use an apple usb c cable.
They planned to something like this, but EU regulators made clear that this is an violation and would lead to consequences.
Nice
See it’s at this point I get lost haha, but I think I’m starting to understand the gist of it
Apple is using the last year’s Pro chip in this year’s standard iPhone. That doesn’t have USB 3 support. They could have added a USB 3 chip for that but it’s Apple.
The newest a17 bionic chip has USB 3 support built in. It is only present in iPhone Pro hence USB 3 support for the cable.
There is zero technical reason to limit the speeds. Apple is just being an asshole and wants to misrepresent USB-C to their customers. Because again, Apple are assholes.
Well, they aren’t.
Yeah, I’m learning that, which is exactly why I asked the question
There is physical connections between devices. The pins that make electrical contact. There are 24 on UsbC and 8 on lightning making a lot more things possible.
Also there are structural benifits. Lightning connectors are held in by the device which makes replacing the clamp a lot more difficult than just switching the cable like UsbC, where that mechanism is inside the cable.
And last but not least is Usb an open protocol while you would have to pay Apple if you wanted to implement Lightning.
You just had me unplugging my cable to shine a flashlight down it to look for the pins haha. Thank you for the info!
Though lightning had 8 pins, for being reversible it is actually 2 pairs of 4 pins.
USB-C works around this by using cc1/2 pin which indicates the orientation of the connection.
I think the Lightning-Protocol was a little more difficult, because there were Display Adapters which probably need more than 4 lanes. And who could forget: some iPad actually had Usb 3 over Lightning.
Lightning is more convenient to clean the port which I like. I fully admit usb c is better in every other way. I personally don’t need it though - I don’t want to kill my battery with uber fast charging and I never connect it to my computer these days. But I’m excited to see if this makes Apple Carplay faster.
Yeah, I recently made the switch from apple to Android after my second apple device in a row had a major internal hardware malfunction out of nowhere and the people at the store just went “yeah no I can’t fix this sorry, you need a new phone”, so I’m still figuring out the complex world of not apple. I didn’t even realize you had to clean the ports, but I guess it would make sense. I recently found out my android and my computer use the same port (usb-c) and I got really excited so that’s the level of “tech savvy” I’m on haha
I’m curious what Android phone you picked up
My dad gave me his old Razer 2 since he doesn’t use it anymore. It’s not in great condition, but it works
If you are afraid of hardware malfunctions, may I propose the Fairphone?
It is literally designed so you can replace the hardware yourself. USB-C port broken? 15€ and 10 minutes later you have a new port (even if you don’t know anything about phone repair). Screen broken? 80€ and you have a complete new one. Battery replacement is 30€ and that is just pop-and-go like in the old days.
They also give at least 5 year warranty, and you can still buy parts for the Fairphone 2, which is about 7 years old at this point.
I’m all for the switch to USB C but Lightning as a connector is objectively better. It’s smaller, more durable, feels better to use and even looks better.
If it hadn’t been proprietary, it would have pretty much been the perfect connector.
Edit: hey guys instead of mindlessly downvoting without saying anything, I’d love to hear your point of view, I’m always open to changing my mind.
Lightning breakes all the time, not very durable
If it hadn’t been proprietary
It is. Case closed.
Edit: Also it would not have been the perfect connector since the supported bandwidth is absolutely pathetic.
Good thing I’m only talking about the connector then, not its performance.
The biggest issue with it, was its data transfer limitations compared to usb c standards. Though, if it weren’t proprietary, then it could have been made better in that area.
Downvoted because standards are more important than slight technical advantage locked away from other companies’ usage.
Also you’re not being “mindlessly” downvoted. There are good reasons to be annoyed by this same shit argument we’ve heard for…a decade?
We learned a while ago there is no point to discuss with appletards.
I’m pro USB C all the way, but I definitely appreciated the lightning connector. It’s smaller, fewer things to go wrong with it, less delicate… so to speak… at least the female side seems to be from my experience. The male side isn’t half bad either, but the cables apple used for their USB to lightning wires was basically trash. Every time I witnessed someone with a bad iPhone charging cable, the connector was generally fine and the wire was torn to shreds.
The biggest weakness of the standard was that it was stuck on USB 2.0. Beyond that it was pretty good.
I still like USB C more, both for speed and for how ubiquitous it is; but, being fair to lightning here, the center area were the pins are is a failure point, one wrong move and it’s toast. Granted it’s nestled in there pretty good and the chances of that actually happening is pretty small, but lightning doesn’t have this issue.
Lightning is far from perfect, but they did a good job… for the time. Right now the only benefit to lightning is twofold, it’s everywhere, and the connectors basically never broke with normal use. At the time micro-B was horribly fragile. C is way better than micro-B was, but I still think that lightning has the crown for durability IMO.
With all that being said, USB C all the things. Lightning was a shining example of a better way, and hopefully we learned from that. I don’t know what comes after USB C, but I hope the improvements are significant. It will be a while before C goes anywhere though.
Inb4 apple places a chip in the cable that only handshakes with apple devices?
Nah. The only thing usbc has over lightning is transfer rates and charging speed.
Transfer rates don’t matter because how often do you dump 128gb over the wire and 500Mbps isn’t good enough?
Charging speed kinda matters but not really because the charge controllers on the phones are throttling down the lightning chargers anyway.
Remember: the eu is forcing usbc, a port designed for general purpose use that has a bunch of delicate pins and a plastic tongue, to replace lightning, a much simpler port designed to go in pockets.
This will ultimately make you unhappy.
The only way that USB-C is better than lightning is all the things that a cable does
Begone Apple shill!
A phone cable. Lightning is a better phone cable than usbc. I say that because it’s more durable and easier to clean. Thats way, way more important than charging or transfer speed when the port knocks around in a pocket or purse 420-7/369.
But aPpLe bAd!!!
Ease of cleaning is a terrible reason to order one over the other though. Just grab a sim tool to gently scrape out fuzz, and you’re back to better charging speeds and data transfer speeds, literally the reason USB C 3.0 is superior.
When lightning came out, the other choice was MicroUSB which is an objectively bad connector that can burn in hell. I hate MicroUSB with a fiery passion. And people were really upset that Apple ditched the 30 pin connector so I cant fault them for keeping lightning so long. Either way I really don’t care because the only thing it changes for me is the cable I keep at my bedside. My data transfers are all done wirelessly. I don’t know why people think this is such a big deal, it is (mostly) just a charging port. As long as it doesn’t break if you breathe on it wrong like MicroUSB I’m happy.
I still have useless 30 pin connector accessories floating around.
Lightning is a worse cable because it is proprietary.
How many times have you encountered the problem of wanting to charge your phone at a friends place, and they don’t have your device specific cable?
In the last decade, I only encountered that with Apple devices.
I have only once encountered that problem. I don’t usually charge stuff outside home/work/car.
If I did, I’d keep my own cable because even before the advent of malicious cables people often had messed up stuff that only worked half the time.
Think “hey can I borrow that guitar cable?” “Sure!” “What the hell, this things buzzing all over the place!” “Oh, you gotta loop it around the strap peg and it doesn’t work with angled jacks.”
The idea of proprietary hardware nowadays is interesting. It used to be, especially in industrial and commercial uses, that proprietary meant you had to have something that could only be bought from one place and wasn’t publicly documented. An interface for a rohm drive for example. Those weird one-off parts and dongles were expensive and not well understood, so they definitely fit the definition and spirit of being proprietary.
It’s a little disingenuous to me to call a cable you can buy at any gas station for five bucks “proprietary”. Especially when searching “lightning pinout” gets immediate results.
Is it technically proprietary? Maybe. Is it proprietary in practice? Not in the slightest.
USB-C has higher transfer rates if the device supports USB 3 standard. Since it will have multiple serial connections as compared to a single in USB 2. Since lightning had only 4 pins it couldn’t go beyond USB 2.
Same is the matter along with USB-C PD chip. It has to support and negotiate faster charging with the charger. This can be and as far as I know Apple will be restricted to Apple certified crap.
a port designed for general purpose use that has a bunch of delicate pins and a plastic tongue, to replace lightning, a much simpler port designed to go in pockets.
This will ultimately make you unhappy.
Android phones have been using it I think for the last 8 years. We do have pockets and keep our phone without covering the port. I still have a cable bought 4 years back that still works across multiple phones.
Oh you don’t have to tell me that usb phones have been in pockets. i know.
I fix electronics and people bring in phones all the time. Even though I’m not a phone shop and don’t even have a bench set up for phones. I get way, way more usb phones in for ports than lightning ones.
Now it’s not just usbc (although nowadays it almost always is), but I keep a big ol bin of different usb ports to replace with. I have done four lightning ports in comparison.
If people are lucky they just didn’t have a small enough pin to clean out the crud from around the tongue. Some will have one of the pins on the tongue bent back and shorting something out and confusing the controller, they might be able to get by without it or it may work for a little while once it’s straightened back out but I know that one’s coming back soon. Most have damage to the tongue from cleaning too vigorously using a field expedient tool or the port component itself is ripped off the board due to how well the very strong annular connection between a usbc port and cable transfer torque.
I like usbc for a bunch of stuff, but phones ain’t it.
Well there are more USB-C devices than lightning.
That’s true, but at least one a week for a few years now versus four ever? Nah. The ports too delicate for what users put it through.
Plus I get more apple stuff in general than the marketshare numbers would dictate. It gets repaired and resold longer. Massive amounts of usbc devices are throwaway and gimmies from institutions and carriers and are just disposed of when they break.
Some of that effect is the expense of apple stuff, some of it is the emotional attachment people build with a computer after they’ve used it for ten years, some of it is just plum retained value. People aren’t gonna chuck a laptop they can resell for $400 when it needs a $100 repair.
Yes who would care about transfer rates and charging speeds on a phone cable as compared to umm…
The phones all use heuristics to charge as slow as possible anyway in order to save the battery. A faster changing standard clearly isnt the solution.
Idk what you’re doing with your phone that 500Mbps isnt good enough. If it’s about system backups the first one takes fifteen minutes and everything afterwards is a diff.
I think 500mbps is a stretch tbh, even the spec’s 480 is still a stretch considering USB protocol overhead. If your device uses the much slower MTP then you’ve got that overhead on top of the USB protocol too.
That said, in real life this is not much more than 20MB/s. That’s more than adequate for internet, but this speed is 2005 laptop hard drive territory. Forget recording in 4k or 8k, because that footage is going to take a while to pull out - airdrop would probably be much faster than using the cable, which is embarassing IMO
Even if the lightning data transfer speed is “good enough”, you’re still paying big money for a premium device, where the manufacturer made a conscious decision to use tech from over two decades ago… when just adding two more lines to the SoC and switching the connector to something compatible is all it takes to benefit from the much greater transfer speeds now.
…actually meh I don’t really care lol, nobody is going to stop Apple from milking their customers regardless of how intuitive their software is.
Oh yeah. You’re not getting 480 out of that wire and airdrop is totally faster. 4k isn’t awful over airdrop though. Maybe I’m just glad it’s not ntsc real time capture like back in the day…
Ultimately I agree with you. It would have been good to add the other “side” to the receptacle and have plenty of lanes. You’d need some way to show that a wire is new lightning, but that’s small potatoes.
Ultimately though even with the bad speeds I think lightning is the better connector for a phone. Not many people are transferring video off their phone using a wire, most upload it directly. But everyone puts their phone in their pocket. I’ll take the connector you can easily and safely clean lint out of over the one that saves time transferring video any day.
Lightning is/was actually pretty great. Also remember that it was introduced before USB-C even existed.
I think the problem is that between lightning cables and USB-C, one is made by an asshole company who wants you to use it for your phone and literally nothing else, and one is useful for your phone and literally everything else.
Funnily enough, Apple co-developed USB, introduced it in their laptops and everyone complained.
Because they ONLY did it to the laptops, you fuck. People complain about change just to complain it changed.
No need to insult me. Are you a teenager?
No need to simp for a trillion dollar company, are you a paid troll?
I’m not simping. Is that your alt?
Dafuq, also yes you are
They complained because they literally stripped away most or all the usb-a’s in that process, forcing people to have to use hubs.
Apple does this shit all the time, and people always hate it.
Apple is successful dongle company that also makes some hardware.
lightning suffered the same fate as FireWire before it: excellent protocol that would have benefited the users with mass adoption, hampered by Apple and their co-developers (in lightning’s case, Intel) charging too steep of licensing fees, rendering them niche
USB-C wasn’t really useful for anything when Lightning was introduced, on account of it not even existing as a spec, let alone actual hardware, until 2 years later.
Appledrone
Yeah alternative was MicroUSB which is dogshit.
I’m using my wife’s old android for YouTube. It has a microusb port and I really hate it.
Lighting was leaps better than that, but usb-c is really the king of ports at the moment.
This is the only valid opinion.
Perhaps one day we get a magnetic replacement for USB-C.
Why a replacement? You can already buy usb c cables with detachable magnetic heads if you fancy that
Would be a nice thing to have in the spec for the cable, as those ones aren’t compliant with the spec, and can in some cases cause problems, like on disconnect it might be possible for one of the PD pins to short against one of the data pins before the side delivering power has had time to process the disconnect.
It’s a pretty specific edge case and I’m sure not a problem most people have had or will run into, but would be nice if it could be part of the spec.
Fair enough, an officially sanctioned extension would also be fine!
Because it is usb-c, the magnetised version is also officially sanctioned.
We can call it the USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Magnets, How Do They Work Edition
No hate, but I cannot fathom feeling the way you do about Micro USB and not spending $200 on some of the very solid Android phones that have come out in the 9 years since USB C has been the standard.
I only started using it like a month ago and I’m already looking at a used galaxy s10e. They are like $140 where I live. But I will get a new iPhone first.
It’s the king of ports at the moment but I have concerns about the fact there’s that “prong” in the middle of the female connector. It seems like it could be something to break. I did like the fact there wasn’t anything in the middle of the lightning port, made it seem more durable to me over time (at least the port side, but that’s what you want with these things…)
Nevermind that the same connector could be USB 3.1 Gen X fuckton-gigabit, USB4, Thunderbolt 3 or 4… USB needs to learn from the WiFi groups recent rename scheme…
Lightening cables have easy to clean contacts and a hard to break jack, I have broken many many usb-c cables just stepping on them or rolling over them with an office chair or getting filled with lint on the inside of the jack.
At the time it came out, definitely, considering its main competitors for a standardised connector were Mini USB and Micro USB, which were serviceable but not that great…
Could be worse though, you could’ve been stuck with “superspeed” Micro USB like some folks were, those were just plain awful to use.
pretty sure my samsung Note had that
The problem with mini and micro was that they were asymmetrical and very small, imo. at least you could tell which side the indent was on without looking with superspeed. Good luck getting it in the hole without looking, though.
I’m pretty sure Samsung released a couple phones with it. The Note 3, S5, and I think the active that year had it. I worked in retail then and everyone in awhile people would come in looking for the specific cable and had no idea it would charge with standard micro USB.
No
You can always tell the Apple fans, can’t you? This cable was hated by everyone when it came out because it broke everyones docks.
It also wasnt much faster, in fact, I’m almost positive the first phones were throttled, not unlike the new iPhone’s with type c.
Yeah, it’s amazing what people will stand up for. It’s quite odd.
Connection technology was good, but materials used in cable and design of strain release was horrible. Never seen a cable disintegrate without any reason after couple of years.
Funnily enough my first ever Lightning cable that came with my iPod Touch 5G is so worn out you can see the 4 wires in it. Insulation and shield are completely gone at one end but it still works fine.
Thats how fires start.
Incidentally, I have a micro USB cable that came with my Nokia N97 (must be 2012 or something).
It’s flawless still and even after more than 10 years of service (now charging my xbox controller) it’s working fine.
I’ve tried purchasing identical “original” cables of same kind since then, but they all last a few months before getting lose our stop connecting.
5v are not going to start a fire 😅
Depends on the components you attach.
Something rated for 3v will start smoking, and if it is touching something flammable, it can start a fire.
So… every Apple first party cable?
I totally have.
Just not on a cable I paid $30 for because I don’t buy overpriced trash.
It cost tens of millions of dollars to engineer a product that disintegrates on their own
Truly revolutionary
Fun fact: Apple was part of the group that designed USB-C
Also why is it awesome on iPad Pros since years but no good on iPhones? The marketing was always contradicting itself.
I’d wager part of it was because of the outrage when they switched from the 30 pin was significant
I think they did promise to (it suggest they would?) support the lightning connector for a decade when they changed it from their original big connector.
I’m not naive enough to think that takes precedence over “money” as an answer, but maybe it was a factor?
The reason is money.
It’s more complicated than that. There are lots of people that will be very annoyed when they unbox their iPhone and their plug that they don’t think about at all doesn’t work in the 7 places they’ve left them.
Just wait.
Oh well
I already did this moving from micro to USB-C and it wasn’t that bad. Plus if they’re apple people and have MacBooks/iPads they already got a few.
Those Apple cables die very quickly, so replacing them with longer lasting cables is actually cost effective.
Sure, instead of 1 cable every 3 months it is 7 cables at the same time, but still no excuse.
deleted by creator
Nah it was a great move, earned them a couple billions in licensing fees
To the disadvantage of literally everyone
Capitalism in a nutshell.
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They never would if switched if it wasn’t forced on them. I’m glad they were forced no matter how apple spins it
would if
There is no God
would if is the new would of
Wake up babe, new torture method just dropped
They took it further than the incorrect “would of” just to fuck with us.
Boneappletea
No 🤣
I preffered lightning too usb-c i have had several phones where the usb c connector failed but my iphone was the first phone in a long time that i replaced for reasons other than the charging port. I would have been very happy if lightning had become the standard.
Yeah, the lightning connector is really great for being a reliable connection for a long period of time. If Apple had just made it an open standard that everyone could use, it would likely be the dominant connector today. At least, so long as some improvements could be made to data transfer and charging rates.
Yeah i agree. Not that i particularly need high transfer speed on my phone its unfortunate that they wanted too wanted too keep it proprietary. But they are what they are like most companies. Anyway i hope i have better luck with my new phone than my previous experiences with the connector.
The connector sure, but the cable itself sucks donkey balls.
Lmao gtfo! Lightning COULD have been a standard if Apple wasn’t so horny about stuffing their money up their walled-garden-arse. But nah you need a license to even connect to it, not to mention manufacture it. Well tough luck and good riddance to fucking Apple proprietary cables and 50.- recharging kits.
Android wins again.
Open protocol wins.
Closed, narrowinded protocol lost.
Remember when Apple was on the design committee for usb c and was the first to put it in all its MacBooks and everyone bitched and whined about dongles? How the turntables.
Remember when Apple didn’t even use the plug until the EU forced them? Get the fuck out of here with the, “they invented it” BS. Fucking pathetic cope.
And? You’re actually just accidentally pointing out how fucked up it is that they chose not to implement it on phones.
All that means is that they think certain ports have certain purposes. I don’t think that’s the win you think it is. Why not just have everything be an rj45 port then? Clearly lightning has an advantage in phone ports, as numerous others have listed.
It has the advantage of making them millions on cables and licenses. Stop pretending that USB wasn’t designed to be an all purpose bus with additionally this exact use case in mind. Which apple helped develop.
Simp harder
I bet if Apple didn’t take the leap to a USB-C only laptop design most laptops from other manufacturers would still be USB-A only.
Most peripherals still use USB-A though, so I’ve never seen the advantage of having a USB-C port on my laptop. I never use it. I guess I could connect my phone, but that seems rather pointless. (Most of the charging bricks I own still have USB-A too, and I have way too many to go buy another one. It was cheaper just to buy a new cable for me phone.)
USB-C is great for external monitor connections from laptops.
Is it better than HDMI? That’s what I typically use now. (Display port on my desktop PC.)
It’s nicer for laptops because you can have power, display, and internet in one cable going to a dock. TBH I don’t see many benefits for desktops. You could daisy chain monitors and have less cables I guess.
Oh, I see now. Yes, I can see how that would be a nice benefit for using it on a laptop. I’m not even sure my monitors have USB-C inputs, but I’m probably behind the times
Intel also had them in their higher end consumer gear (eg. their high-end NUCs etc)
It WAS a good cable about 6 years ago when even flagship phones still used micro USB. I would have killed for lightning on my old android phone. However, usb c just takes the cake, every cake. It has its own problems but the tradeoffs are miniscule compared to lightning.
Yes, Lightning was better than MicroUSB but by now I hope we can all agree, that it has overstayed its welcome
It was technically batter, but they limited it on the iPhone 5. Nobody wants to remember that, do they?
Maybe it got faster in later models, but within just two years usb-c had come out.
It was almost 4 years before the first usb c phone was released and that was only in China. No clue where you’re getting 2 years from. And even then Apple helped design the USB C standard.
Completely untrue. The Nexus 6p had USB C and it was available worldwide.
When apple changed to lightning it was in the middle of the accessory hype where there were loads of accessories using the 30-pin. People where outraged because they could no longer use any of their accessories. Apple then commited to lightning for 10 years in order to sooth the public image. This was 11 years ago, and they didn’t switch last year to cut costs, but I’d argue it only overstayed it’s welcome for a year.
USB-C that basically Apple created and started pushing hard since 2016 (only ports on MacBooks at the time) ✨ damn I love Apple
Lmao. Typical Apple user.
🌚
“Basically Apple created” is a bit reductionist. The USB-IF also includes Microsoft, HP, Intel and Texas Instruments amongst a couple of others (can’t recall them off the top of my head).
Also Thunderbolt was created by both Intel and Apple in collaboration…
I know, but there are rumors that Apple was the biggest contributor but didn’t want this to be know. Of course we’ll never know the truth
Ah yes, pushed hard for by … not even using it themselves.
Get their dick out of your mouth before you speak. It’s unsightly.
It was the only port in MacBooks since 2016, what is it if not pushing hard 😂
Or you think that they should have changed port in 2016 in phones, upsetting all the people with already a lot of lightning cables and accessories since Lightning was ahead of competition when it came out. Yeah, that would have been a dumb idea. Glad they waited myself
That argument literally does not make sense.
Do you not think people would be upset for the MacBook only having usb-c ports? They could have had both, but since the lightning port is so bad decided it wasn’t worth it.
And if they could completely remove it on the MacBook, why do you think they wouldn’t be able to do so on the Iphone?
So what, you are glad you got sucked up onto their proprietary ecosystem even more, even though better alternative cables existed for years and years?
I also surely hope all new cables are ahead of the competition when they come out …
Nothing was proprietary bar the Lightning cable, which was better than the competition at the ime. Could they have added more ports in the MacBooks? Yeah, they fucked up. They made it right with the latest Pros. With the phone it made sense because there was already an ecosystem around lightning, it would have pissed people off as it will now a bit. Apple isn’t perfect but isn’t that uber closed walled garden either
Lighting was a good cable when apple made the switch from 30 pin connector and android was still trying to figure out whether they would use microUSB, miniUSB, and whatever the sam hell
is. And there was no interoperabilityOnce USB became the standard their was no real reason to hold onto lightning other than it being proprietary and them wanting to hand hold their users
The reason to hold onto it after USB-C was the literally millions of devices that had been released at the time that used it. There’s a reason people made a stink about moving away from the 30-pin despite Lightning being objectively better. It’s the same situation here.
Once USB became the standard their was no real reason to hold onto lightning other than it being proprietary and them wanting to hand hold their users
Other than the fact that they promised when they switched to lightning they wouldn’t change connectors again for a decade.
Wow good guy EU, making them hold their word lmao. Lightning came out in 2012, so this would have been the 11th year.
At one point, after normal C came out, I gave up and threw out all the stuff I had that took the giant C connector. What an abomination.
I believe that is USB 3.0 Micro B.
That cable had one awesome feature.
You could just plug in a micro cable and get a charge, so old cables in the car or at the office worked fine (well…as fine as Micro-USB ever worked), just more slowly
That is for external hard drives, the same ones that plug into Macs…
That is micro-USB 3.0 and it’s an annoying connector that now is just as obsolete as micro-USB 2.0 and for some reason, around 2014, sone smartphone manufacturers thought it was a good idea adding it on their phones. Didn’t last long and got replaced by normal micro-USB again (which is much worse than lightning imo).
It’s for devices that require more power usually, many external harddrive/ssd cases still use them.
Yea, and since usb-c there’s no reason why. Micro b 3 is worse in every way
My Samsung S5 had one of those. You could just put a normal micro USB cable in them to charge.
Well that and the made for iPhone program made them apparently 5 billion a year on the lightning cable alone. That’s not just first party. That’s also third party connectors.
Lol what? Android used micro USB all across the board on flagships. They then went straight to usb-c.
It used to be a jungle unless the device specifically had micro-USB during the initial Android days. micro-USB funnily standardised Android devices, and now USB-C has unified everything.
I had USB-3 for a bit on my my Note.
I kinda liked it since you could still use a regular micro USB cable in a pinch.
I had one on a Samsung as well, I did enjoy how a regular micro USB was still usable, I just needed the one at home to be more powerful.
Incorrect
LoL people forgetting the massive ball of random USB styles hrydra-ing from a single cable that existed just labeled “Android” that I had clipped to my backpack to help people charge their phone.
All micro USB my ass.
I had multiple phones with mini USB-B.
That is straight up not true. I have multiple flagship devices with mini-USB and, within those, some have mini-A while others have mini-B. Google’s own Nexus devices had mini-USB connectors.
The first “Google phone” was the HTC Dream (T-Mobile G1) with MiniUSB. Next was the Nexus One with MicroUSB. Everything after used MicroUSB until the Nexus 5X with USB-C.
It feels like you’re arguing semantics. Are you only counting Google-branded devices? What about other Android flagships made by Samsung? HTC?
Google’s own Nexus devices had mini-USB connectors.
I was addressing this point in particular. There were no “Nexus” devices with MiniUSB, so it was clear quite early that Google considered MicroUSB to “the right port” for Android.
That’s not true. I have a Nexus tablet with mini-USB. So either you only mean phones or you’re wrong.
Which tablet? I checked every device on https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?sQuickSearch=yes&sName=nexus, and none have Mini USB. There were two Nexus 7 tablets with Micro USB.
This might be true for a very select few devices. Before usb-c I have never seen something else besides micro USB on an android device (besides the micro USB 3.0 connection, but you could put a normal micro USB cable in those)
Yeah, the common EPS initiative (mandating USB 2.0 micro-B) was in effect since 2009. That’s right around the time smartphones were getting popular. Even my last slide phone had micro-USB. Maybe there were different models for different markets though, a product doesn’t need to follow EU law if it’s only sold in the US.
Once USB became the standard their was no real reason to hold onto lightning other than it being proprietary and them wanting to hand hold their users
Well if the lockout chip rumors are true, they’ve basically just made Lighting 2, Electric Boogaloo that just happens to be shaped like USB-C but is incompatible with all non-Apple approved connectors.
And is now illegal lol
It was never a good cable. Only one reason is needed to prove it: it was not standardized.
