Apple to Launch 'Completely Wireless' iPhone Without Lightning Connector in 2021. Possibly skipping USB-C adoption for iPhone completely

[vanished]

1 hour ago, dizmo said:

You'd be surprised how many people drop their phones into the toilet...or a pitcher of beer...

Honestly I think waterproofing phones was one of the better consumer focused advancements we've had in ages. It doesn't really benefit the companies to do it, it's genuinely more of a positive feature for the consumer.

Oh absolutely, I'm sure it's a feature that's used all the time and I wouldn't want to see it taken away.  I'm just saying a) that since we're to a point now where all flagships can withstand at least 30 mins in at least 1 m of water, do we really need more?, and b) sacrificing other very useful features in the name of improving something when it's not actually necessary doesn't make sense.

1 hour ago, dizmo said:

It's funny, but neither of those cons are really a company problem. They make significantly more money since it's not a standard connector, and if accidental disconnection results in damage, then they profit from that as well.

I'm sure, but imo that's irrelevant.  It's up to the company to figure out how to sell things and be profitable by some combination of offering what people want and doing what they can to charge people more for less.  It's up to consumers to pick the thing that serves them best and not worry about if it's good for the company.

[ARikozuM]

1 minute ago, Drak3 said:

That's how it's always going to be, unless manufacturers intentionally cripple charging by wire. The materials used to make phones and pads have far higher resistance than copper, meaning you'll always need more energy to overcome that resistance.

 

Wireless charging is simply inferior.

Cars used to be inferior as well. Planes used to be inferior. Everything at the outset has been inferior to its predecessor. Doesn't mean Apple, Samsung, or anyone else should avoid hitting a market segment that wants wireless everything. Hell, I wish Apple would bring Magsafe to the iPhone right now. I've been waiting for ages. 

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, Drak3 said:

That's how it's always going to be, unless manufacturers intentionally cripple charging by wire. The materials used to make phones and pads have far higher resistance than copper, meaning you'll always need more energy to overcome that resistance.

 

Wireless charging is simply inferior.

There is an argument for that, though it depends on the wired method.  If you’ve got a crap enough wired power method Qi can beat it.  I’m not sure it can beat lightning though.

 

the issue I have is lightning is power AND data. And while there might possibly be an argument for power, I don’t see anything approaching a decent argument for data.  Bluetooth pairing flat out sucks compared to wired for one thing.

 

What I personally think they should do is not remove the wired port but ADD ANOTHER on the other side.  All kinds of utility.

[Drak3]

2 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Cars used to be inferior as well. Planes used to be inferior.

False equivalence.

 

Wireless is inferior due to the physical properties of viable building materials.

[Founders]

2 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

That's how it's always going to be, unless manufacturers intentionally cripple charging by wire. The materials used to make phones and pads have far higher resistance than copper, meaning you'll always need more energy to overcome that resistance.

 

Wireless charging is simply inferior.

You'll find no argument here, and as this is still just a prediction this whole uproar could be for naught. Apple could just as easily incorporate a MagSafe connector which keeps almost everyone happy. The port no longer has a BUS, but people still have the option to charge up faster.   

[Drak3]

Just now, Founders said:

You'll find no argument here, and as this is still just a prediction this whole uproar could be for naught. Apple could just as easily incorporate a MagSafe connector which keeps almost everyone happy. The port no longer has a BUS, but people still have the option to charge up faster.   

I don't know if all that many people would be happy with replacing Lightning with a MagSafe. Since Lightning is now the ONLY connector, and there are some things you definitely don't want communicating over Bluetooth (like Square readers), it seems like they'd be alienating quite a few customers with existing peripherals.

[ARikozuM]

11 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

False equivalence.

 

Wireless is inferior due to the physical properties of viable building materials.

No, it really isn't. Efficiency will eventually catch up. It's just a matter of time. 

[Bombastinator]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

No, it really isn't. Efficiency will eventually catch up. It's just a matter of time. 

The laws of Physics beg to disagree with extreme prejudice.  Here’s the problem: wireless power is not a new invention.  Not even close.  It’s closer to 100 years old than 10.   Remember Nikolai Tesla?  Wireless power is his baby. He was one smart dude.  Wireless power came out of the gate nearly fully fledged. In the 19th century.
 

It’s got some hard limits.  One of them is it can’t get over 70% efficient. And the farther away something is from the antenna the less efficient it gets.  Qi antennas are pretty optimized for efficiency. They do fairly close to 70%. Their range is about 1/4 inch.  They COULD deliver more power, but to do it they would need radio frequencies used by other things.  It doesn’t matter though because batteries have limits too.  Limits that wired power is just as good at meeting.

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, ARikozuM said:

No, it really isn't. Efficiency will eventually catch up. It's just a matter of time. 

Unless we move to exposed metal coils on the pad and phone with direct electrical transfer, no, we won't. There are electrical components in both the base pad and phone that require power in order for wireless charging to even work in the first place. These chargers are essentially electromagnets with power regulators, those things don't run on pixie dust.

[Founders]

29 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

I don't know if all that many people would be happy with replacing Lightning with a MagSafe. Since Lightning is now the ONLY connector, and there are some things you definitely don't want communicating over Bluetooth (like Square readers), it seems like they'd be alienating quite a few customers with existing peripherals.

Square already makes a wireless reader.

[SenKa]

1 minute ago, Founders said:

Square already makes a wireless reader.

And theyre amazing. I use one

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, Founders said:

Square already makes a wireless reader.

Yeah, I've seen those.

 

 

Only on Apple's shelves collecting dust, but I've seen them.

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, Founders said:

Square already makes a wireless reader.

True.  There’s a problem with them though.  The cards they use need to be kept in a metal wallet  because a person can read those cards without your knowledge from 10 feet away right through your pants.  They wanted to put that tech in passports.  They had to give the passports metal foil covers.

[Beskamir]

I just love how inefficient wireless charging is.

 

[The Sloth]

1 hour ago, ARikozuM said:

No, it really isn't. Efficiency will eventually catch up. It's just a matter of time. 

You have an engineering degree? Do you know how wireless charging work?

 

1 hour ago, Beskamir said:

I just love how inefficient wireless charging is.

 

Love that video, watched it at least 10 times.

[Beskamir]

45 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

No, it really isn't. Efficiency will eventually catch up. It's just a matter of time. 

Only way I can see it happening is if we figure out how to break physics but as you said, just a matter of time now and we'll have a way to fix our inevitable entropy problem.

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, nerdslayer1 said:

You have an engineering degree? Do you know how wireless charging work?

 

Love that video, watched it at least 10 times.

Not sure an engineering degree is needed for this one.  Wikipedia is enough to show there are problems.

[Firewrath9]

On 12/5/2019 at 9:15 PM, DrMacintosh said:

ngl, outside of restoring, making local backups, and syncing over a wire (instead of WiFi).....there is very little reason to have a cable or port. Assuming of course a high speed wireless charger is included in the box. 

Let's say I want to use a pair of headphones/iems to listen to music, and it uses a 3.5mm jack. With no ports at all, that's impossible. At least now I can use a dongle. Not going to have to pay for 200-300$ headphones just to get the same audio quality as a pair of 50-100$ headphones.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, suchamoneypit said:

Flashing a phone and wireless are not two things that people like to go together

 

And this give the manufacturers probably an easier time to lock it so you cant

iPhones used to be able to be jailbroken, and then unlocked, through Safari. 

 

[EDIT]

 

Just because I've gotten an information react, thank you . I will say, you used to be able to use jailbreakme on safari. You could then unlock through UltraSn0w (Although you should use Redsn0w before using Ultrasn0w).

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, Founders said:

Hey, remember when Apple ditched the 30-pin and everyone got really pissed off because all their old cables and accessories wouldn't work with Apple's new products? Do you also remember people got over it when they realized the Lightning connector was better in every conceivable way? It's only a prediction at this point and one that I saw coming in the near future. Qi technology has improved quite a bit over the last couple of years, with Qi being a standard we'll see further improvements and wider integration. I can't speak for everyone but personally I won't miss having any ports on my phone.   

Because the 30-pin connector didn't use half the pins on it. Those connectors (even Nokia and Motorola had these on their highend phones at some point, meanwhile they were on ALL pre-smartphone devices like iPaq's and Palm devices) They were also super-fragile. The 30-pin connector carried analog signals and firewire pins.

 

Even computer "dock" connectors have been phased out in favor of USB-C, because they have always been fragile and easy to damage the dock connector or the PC-side connector (last year I threw out an entire box full of damaged Dell EPort II+ docks at the office.) So ultimately it's preferable that everyone switch to USB-C as the standard dock connector, EVEN if that means loss of some proprietary functionality.

 

Lightning, was a stepping stone between that 30-pin dock and USB-C, and has no value over lightning because they're still just USB 2.0 connections on the host end. Also lightning came out before USB-C and USB 3.1, so who knows. Most USB-C stuff is only started coming out last year and that was probably far too long for Apple to sit on.

 

What's interesting is that with Apple forking the iOS with iPadOS, that also means they might explore different connectivity (eg the stylus is an example of this, so is the USB-C) options. However since the iPhone's still aren't being connected with USB 3.0 or 3.1 it's becoming painfully slow to backup a 256GB device to a PC's SSD drives when the bottleneck is the pokey 480Mbit (60MB/sec) connection.

 

Like I would much prefer the USB-C connector on the iPhone, but if that has to be accomplished with a magnetic cable, I'd be OK with that. Sure it's just another propietary cable, but there's more utility in that then removing it entirely and being only able to charge slowly via wireless and only able to transfer data wirelessly, and only use crappy wireless headsets.

[theninja35]

On 12/6/2019 at 3:52 AM, porina said:

The pad will still have to be powered by something, so it'll be cube, cable and pad.

Yeah I guess for some reason I thought the pad could be wireless too lol

[vanished]

13 minutes ago, theninja35 said:

Yeah I guess for some reason I thought the pad could be wireless too lol

It could be if it was effectively a wireless battery bank.  Of course it would have to be charged by another pad of that nature... never mind the wall outlet, it will just be pads all the way down

[suicidalfranco]

 

you see that shit kids?

that shit is the future

[Drak3]

3 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

It could be if it was effectively a wireless battery bank. 

You mean the Galaxy S10?

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

Because the 30-pin connector didn't use half the pins on it. Those connectors (even Nokia and Motorola had these on their highend phones at some point, meanwhile they were on ALL pre-smartphone devices like iPaq's and Palm devices) They were also super-fragile. The 30-pin connector carried analog signals and firewire pins.

 

Even computer "dock" connectors have been phased out in favor of USB-C, because they have always been fragile and easy to damage the dock connector or the PC-side connector (last year I threw out an entire box full of damaged Dell EPort II+ docks at the office.) So ultimately it's preferable that everyone switch to USB-C as the standard dock connector, EVEN if that means loss of some proprietary functionality.

 

Lightning, was a stepping stone between that 30-pin dock and USB-C, and has no value over lightning because they're still just USB 2.0 connections on the host end. Also lightning came out before USB-C and USB 3.1, so who knows. Most USB-C stuff is only started coming out last year and that was probably far too long for Apple to sit on.

 

What's interesting is that with Apple forking the iOS with iPadOS, that also means they might explore different connectivity (eg the stylus is an example of this, so is the USB-C) options. However since the iPhone's still aren't being connected with USB 3.0 or 3.1 it's becoming painfully slow to backup a 256GB device to a PC's SSD drives when the bottleneck is the pokey 480Mbit (60MB/sec) connection.

 

Like I would much prefer the USB-C connector on the iPhone, but if that has to be accomplished with a magnetic cable, I'd be OK with that. Sure it's just another propietary cable, but there's more utility in that then removing it entirely and being only able to charge slowly via wireless and only able to transfer data wirelessly, and only use crappy wireless headsets.

While we are all speculating on what Apple ‘May’ do in a couple of years it could be they have new battery technology in the pipeline. If for instance a new form of solid state battery is utilised we could see charging times massively reduced and life increased. If we had fast charging times of 20mins and a phone that lasts a couple of days then the end of a charge socket is far less of an issue. That kind of tech is currently very expensive so it makes sense it would only be available in high end devices.

 

That leaves data communication which as we know is becoming less of a problem with the speed of various technology increasing. So if the above is true I don’t see too much of an issue loosing a mechanical connector. 
 

like the original source, this is all speculation and should be treated as such. I do love these threads where people are getting angry about something that may never happen.