Although Apple has resisted so far, it’s a fact that due to a new EU law that says all new smartphones must have a USB-C Type-C charging port from the end of 2024, that they’ll be converting to USB-C for future iPhones.
We’d assumed Apple would release the iPhone 15 without USB-C, as the law doesn’t force them to until the year after, but now a leaker with a good track record has said it will be the first iPhone to see the switch to USB-C and that it will result in higher data transfer speeds for some of the models.
The leak comes from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo (via TechRadar), who has a decent track record for Apple information, who alleges that all models in the upcoming iPhone 15 family will have a USB-C port instead of a Lightning port.
Back in September, leaker @LeaksApplePro also alleged that all models in the iPhone 15 series will ditch the Lightning port in favor of USB Type-C. They also said that Dynamic Island could stop being a Pro exclusive and feature in all models.
In his series of tweets, Kuo goes on to claim that iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max only will benefit from the extra speed potential of USB-C. The two higher end models will supposedly support either USB-C 3.2 data transfer speeds -which can reach 20Gbps - or Thunderbolt 3 speeds - which can achieve up to 40Gbps.
Obviously, this means that the vanilla iPhone 15 and the iPhone 15 Max, will feature USB 2.0 speeds of 480Mbps. This is no different from the speed achieved by Apple Lightning, so consumers of these models won’t see any benefit in terms of speed.
There’s no way of ever knowing if a leak is correct or not, but the fact that Kuo has a good track record combined with it being the fact that Apple will switch to USB-C makes us more likely to believe it.
The iPhone 15 is expected to launch in September 2023, in line with Apple’s stand launch model, so we expect a plethora of leaks and rumors before then.
If you're wondering which iPhone 14 model you should buy, check out our iPhone 14 vs iPhone 14 Pro comparison guide to all four new models. You might also like the best iPhone for photography.
