This is only true for the non-Pro models. The flagship models get USB 3.0 speeds, which seems like a fair trade-off, and it seems like it's tied to the USB controller inside the SoC, since the non-Pro models get the same SoC as the iPhone 14 Pros (last gen), it is pretty clear what happened. Nothing really to see here or complain about.
Totally agree. For all the complaints about "omg they're using a 23 year old spec", the article appears to say that this is the same speed limit as the lightning controller (the one sold in their 14Pro model) that no one seemed to have an issue with data transfer speeds.
And the other commenter that pointed out "who exactly uses USB for data transfer anyway?" is spot on. I'm not even an iPhone user and about the only time I do data transfer by USB is when I'm moving stuff to a new phone.
Point being, 99.9% of people who buy an iPhone are never going to notice the speed differential. I feel like all the people complaining are either people in that .1%, or people who just like to complain.
People just like to complain. If you were to ask someone on the street with an iphone when is the last time they manually transfered files to their iphone using a USB cable the overwhelming majority would have no idea what you are talking about.
I don’t want to be super angry. That sounds awful. Am I really supposed to be?
Can someone make a case that a large group of mainstream iPhone users are plugging in their phones and need better charging speeds? More than 480mbps? And if that were true, where was the upheaval during the Lightning port area? I look around and I just don’t see this group of people, but maybe I’m missing something.
This is what Apple is like as a company though. It's always been baffling that so many people that work in IT and should know better champion them so much.
Being different is really important to some people I guess.
The Pixel 7a costs $444 for similar specs. If iOS, the Apple ecosystem, and other creature comforts aren't worth $355 to you, why complain and just buy the Pixel? Seems like less fuss and muss.
Am I the only one who feels that 128GB is a huge amount of storage for a phone? Or is it because I still remember when even desktop computers had storage sizes best measured in megabytes?
Apple's brand is generally pro-consumer and pro-experience. How is such dated technology (i.e., USB 2.0) anywhere close to Apple's brand (read: market expectations)? If any other company said, "Here's a brand new 2023 $800 device with USB 2.0..." there would be blood in the social media streets.
There were plenty of other ways to differentiate the pro and non-pro models. Using USB 2.0 is lazy and shortsighted. Obviously, not on-brand either.
> If any other company said, "Here's a brand new 2023 $800 device with USB 2.0..." there would be blood in the social media streets.
I would bet against this, because I would bet 99% of people will never use a wire to transfer data from the phone.
The 1% who care will spend an extra $200 on a Pro model.
This is price segmentation / microeconomics 101, you can earn more money by asking for more money from people who want to pay more, and asking less money from people who want to pay less.
Think of this from the point of personas and their uses. What are the personas for 95% of the market and what tasks will they do that relate to USB transfer speeds? I suspect Apple has done this analysis and that most iPhone users won't notice the difference for the non-pro models.
Remember, the hacker news crowd as a group does not represent the masses of iPhone users.
Apple wants their users to use iCloud storage. Transferring photos and video by cable is not the suggested way of usage for most iPhone users. Using iCloud sync, your photos and videos are already waiting for you on your Mac. At least, if everything works and you aren't a heavy "Pro" user. Of course, that is not only a "pro-consumer" tactic, but a "pro-service-revenue" one. And if you are a "Pro" user with lots of data to transfer, you can either but the USB 3.0 cable or subscribe to the new 6 TB and 12 TB iCloud storage options. Or just do both. Of course, you need a Pro model ... but aren't you a Pro user in that case?
To be fair to Apple, iPhone users (even those buying Pro models) have endured USB 2 data transfer rates for years. Why should they care now? Apple's customers are well-versed in apologetics.
The only people I hear complaining about the usb transfer speed are photographers/videographers who shoot using an iphone. That audience choses pro models because they have better camera already.
I personally have not used a cable to transfer anything since icloud backups came online.
It should be noted that usb-c on the non-pro models is no slower than lightning on any previous model.
They had announced that USB-C would be limited to USB2 speeds over a year ago. I don't know when I've ever felt the need to move data to or from my phone any faster over a wire. Unless backups are for some reason backups are wired, non-incremental and you have a 256+ gig drive filled up, in which case it could take just over an hour.
No, it's not clear what happened from just the transfer speeds.
It becomes clear when you see that first party cables that enable hight transfer speeds are sold at 79, 149, and 179 bucks for the 1m, 1.8m, and 3m respectively [1]. So, in essence, they purposely did just enough to comply with EU regulations while still aiming at milking customers' wallets with crazy expensive accessories that you would take for granted from top or premium tier smartphones.
those are thunderbolt cables, not usb-c cables. they're backwards compatible but they have extra signal pairs to support PCIe tunneling, and much more stringent shielding and termination that allows 40gbps bidirectional transfer (and the next thunderbolt standard goes to 120gbps).
Also, Apple's 3m cable is actually not unreasonable when you consider that that's actually beyond what the thunderbolt spec theoretically allows, even with an active cable with a repeater chip the limit is supposed to be 2 meters.
but lol @ people objecting to apple rolling out usb-c now, that's gotta be a conspiracy too for some people. every damn apple thread.
if you want to buy a normal cable, just buy a normal cable.
I would not discount market segmentation purposes, even though it seems like a bit of a mess: on the ipad front
- the 4th gen ipad air supports 5Gb USB, the 10th gen iPad only supports 0.5Gb, both use an A14
- the 5th gen ipad pro supports 40Gb USB, the 5th gen ipad air only supports 10Gb, both use an M1
But I've been told these ports are not symmetrical, the highest speeds are only in host mode and come from a separate USB3 controller, and the soc integrated device mode has much lower specs (10G for the Pro, 0.5Gb on the A15-using 6th gen mini — 5Gb capable in host mode).
There is no separate USB3 host controller on the M1, it has a dual-role device USB 3.1 controller which supports up to 10 Gb/s and can act both in host and device modes.
The 40 Gb/s speed on the iPad Pro comes from the Thunderbolt controller, which is completely unrelated to USB and disabled in software on the 5th gen iPad Air for market segmentation.
The 4th gen iPad Air and 6th gen iPad Mini use a USB 2.0 dual-role device controller integrated into the SoC, which is limited to 480 Mb/s, and a USB 3.0 controller connected over PCIe, which supports up to 5 Gb/s.
The PCIe USB controller isn't included on the 10th gen iPad.
It doesn't support device mode, which explains the USB 2.0 speeds when connected to a computer.
Because it's a feature vanishingly few users actually use. They have all the numbers, it's a very small niche of people that actually transfer things by cable. Most of that niche is photographers and videographers that shoot using their phone. For those people a Pro or Pro Max is non-negotiable already because it has the better camera. So they get the fancy camera and the fancy transfer speed. They even address this IN THE ANNOUNCEMENT VIDEO.
I assure you, I am not a corporate sycophant. However, the article linked here is a classic definition of FUD. The histrionics in the comments here seem to mostly be driven by anti-Apple zealotry rather than any reasonable analysis of the facts.
There is exactly nothing forcing anyone to purchase an iPhone 15, and it very clear in all of the materials from Apple what the different between the Pro and non-Pro models is. The iPhone 14 Pro was discontinued (at a higher price) to make way for the non-Pro iPhone 15, since they are roughly equivalent in capabilities... including in their USB speeds.
USB speed was a non-issue 30 days ago, and now it's an emergency that is worthy of histrionics, hand-wringing, and FUD, including calling anyone pointing out how ridiculous this is a "corporate sycophant".
Nothing forces Apple to use their own years-old USB controllers on brand new phones, which they're manufacturing right now. Nothing besides artificial market segmentation, I mean.
The controller is built into the SoC. As is their standard practice for many years, non-Pro models receive the SoC from the previous generation of Pro models. Because this is the case, in fact they don’t have a choice other than spending billions of dollars to retool an older SoC.
The fact you and others seem not to understand this should be an indication you aren’t informed enough to have a valid opinion on the topic.
They'd have to produce a new SoC, which would be a lot of cost (and I believe generally a small power usage increase) for a feature that, to a first approximation, no-one would use. It is really, really uncommon to transfer large amounts of data over USB on an iPhone these days.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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'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.
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)
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.
No one cares. Most people don't use the USB cable to transfer to their iPhone anyways, because it automatically backs up to iCloud every day wirelessly, and there really isn't any reason to transfer data to an iPhone via cable.
The few random people who do are probably videographers looking to transfer their large video files and buying the pro models anyways.
Even android users probably aren't paying attention to what speed their USB was.
I'm shocked that is even a selling point. I've been using an iPhone and iPad for about 8 years and never transferred data this way. I've only used usb for midi or keyboard inputs where data speed was not a factor.
I'm really curious about the reason why they did it though? Is it a significantly cheaper chipset or something? Apple, in general, has favored high throughput I/O in their devices (scsi, firewire, lightning port). The only rationale I can think of is that they felt they needed one more point of differentiation to boost the pro models.
USB3 / USB 4 was enabled with an external chip in select iPads. This has a power, space, and material cost. It may not even fit in the phone space or power budget at all.
For the A17, they added USB3 to the SoC. I bet the iPhone 16 non pro will have USB3, when it gets the a17 chip.
But when you need it for that random 1-off thing, you’ll be cursing out Apple for how slow it is. Like this one time I had to transfer over air-drop to a Mac and it took hours because their Mac was too old to transfer via wire from my iPhone. Like wtaf.
Edit to add. Their Mac didn’t have usb-c ports and that’s the only charger I had with me and no adapter. They were an Android user.
Is it though? Really? 480 Mb/s is quite fast for most applications, especially those involving a smartphone.
Any user with files large enough that this transfer is ostensibly slow is a videographer of some sort and has likely bought the pro model or at least planned for this event.
What sort of file is a "random 1-off thing" that a casual user might need to transfer, unexpectedly, over the wire, which is so large that a speed of 0.48 gigabits/sec is extremely slow?
The non-pro model can transfer a 5GB file over the wire in around a minute. Again, what is the real-world use case or scenario where a non-pro, casual user would find some random 1-off file, that is so large that the 0.48 Gbps speed is lacking?
I care. I have a legitimate use for USB 3 on my phone.
My home ISP is unreliable. It doesn't care if I'm in a time sensitive meeting. When it does go away, I need to quickly get back into my meeting.
Sometimes it goes away for hours. It has also gone away for days sometimes. I need an alternate internet connection, and preferably one that doesn't require my neighbourhood to have electricity, because that also is unreliable where I live.
So I use my phone. For short durations of use, I use the Wi-Fi Hotspot feature, but for longer durations I switch to USB Tethering.
At USB 2 speeds, I'd guess, the Ethernet connection can only negotiate a 100 Mbps link speed. That is much slower than my home ISP.
The phone I use currently has USB 3 and cost me half the price of an iPhone 15.
Up until a few years ago I still manually backed up my iPhone (x4) photos to my PC. The process was terrible, would fail frequently and was slow but I took my lumps because I wanted full control over my photos and wasn't ready to pay the Apple tax.
I pay the Apple tax now, and curse Apple each time they tell me my iCloud storage is almost full. I have TERABYTES of available local storage but Apple keeps my photos hostage in their shitty iCloud world.
I would gleefully go back to managing my own photos if Apple wasn't actively trying to prevent it. /rant
You don't have to sync your photos to iCloud. No one is forcing you to. Just go to your Photos setting and disable iCloud Photos. Use your terabytes of local storage to your heart's content!
Spot on! I read the article and for some reason thought that Apple has made a big mistake. You’ve reminded me that I literally never plug my iPhone in. I charge with MagSafe and transfer everything over the network.
I use MagSafe in my car and next to my bed, but I do appreciate the faster charging of a cable when my battery is low.
I do feel that the differences and selling points of these devices vs the previous devices have gotten so trivial though.
USB C is nice, but the suggestion in their presentation that I carry around a usb charger for my Apple Watch and would charge my Apple Watch from their device “directly” or that a millimeter this way or that way in width or thickness matters at all. These things are just the most trivial differences. I can’t believe I spent over an hour watching their stupid presentation.
Which also means they didn't implement the CC lines on the USB-C connector and just tied them down with 5.1k resistors so that actual USB-C devices provide any power at all.
Personally I'm waiting to see the iPhone SE refreshed. The last time that happened the CPU in the phone, the A15 Bionic, was the same as what was in the iPhone 13 Pro released the fall before. I'm hoping that the 4th iteration of the iPhone SE will include, if not the A17 Pro, then a slightly more modest version of the A17 that has the new USB controller (and USB-C, of course). If not then my iPhone 8 Plus will need to hold out one more year because I don't see the point of going with USB-C if the throughput is no faster than lightning when it comes to backing up all photos and video from the phone to my computers.
They were required to put in USB-C by regulations; makes sense that they wouldn't actually handle anything more than Lightning could, that's definitely what they'd be using if they were still allowed to.
Honestly the surprising part is that Apple never felt the need to speed up Lightning; really shows how rarely wired data transfer is done on an iPhone.
Yeah the only people i've talked to that are grousing about cabled transfer speeds is photographers and videographers. Those people are buying pro phones.
Real world transfer speeds are ~40 MB/s with USB 2. Wifi 6 is about ~700 MB. I struggle to find real world use cases that would hit USB 2 limits and not have wifi as an alternative.
The really interesting parts of USB are display port alt mode and thunderbolt. While it's technically possible and probably valuable for millions of people for Apple to do their version of Dex, I don't ever see that happening.
I manage to almost saturate my 1Gbps fiber connection when doing a Speedtest close to my router, landing at about 870Mbps down/up, which seems fair with some of the overhead that comes with my specific router.
If I use AirDrop to my Mac which is an ad-hoc connection on 5Ghz I consistently reach 1Gbps transfer speeds, sometimes a bit more.
Readit News
As someone whose most devices are USB-C 3.0+ for the past few years and never need to think about speed, I have to say this comment is hilarious.
But how often do you really need to never think about speed?
Apple is an enormous company with the best engineers in the business. So I trust they are delivering exactly what we never need in this case.
And the other commenter that pointed out "who exactly uses USB for data transfer anyway?" is spot on. I'm not even an iPhone user and about the only time I do data transfer by USB is when I'm moving stuff to a new phone.
Point being, 99.9% of people who buy an iPhone are never going to notice the speed differential. I feel like all the people complaining are either people in that .1%, or people who just like to complain.
People just like to complain. If you were to ask someone on the street with an iphone when is the last time they manually transfered files to their iphone using a USB cable the overwhelming majority would have no idea what you are talking about.
Super odd attitude to have—consumers should be a lot angrier about a mediocre offering sold at sky-high prices.
Can someone make a case that a large group of mainstream iPhone users are plugging in their phones and need better charging speeds? More than 480mbps? And if that were true, where was the upheaval during the Lightning port area? I look around and I just don’t see this group of people, but maybe I’m missing something.
Being different is really important to some people I guess.
Am I the only one who feels that 128GB is a huge amount of storage for a phone? Or is it because I still remember when even desktop computers had storage sizes best measured in megabytes?
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Apple's brand is generally pro-consumer and pro-experience. How is such dated technology (i.e., USB 2.0) anywhere close to Apple's brand (read: market expectations)? If any other company said, "Here's a brand new 2023 $800 device with USB 2.0..." there would be blood in the social media streets.
There were plenty of other ways to differentiate the pro and non-pro models. Using USB 2.0 is lazy and shortsighted. Obviously, not on-brand either.
I would bet against this, because I would bet 99% of people will never use a wire to transfer data from the phone.
The 1% who care will spend an extra $200 on a Pro model.
This is price segmentation / microeconomics 101, you can earn more money by asking for more money from people who want to pay more, and asking less money from people who want to pay less.
Remember, the hacker news crowd as a group does not represent the masses of iPhone users.
I personally have not used a cable to transfer anything since icloud backups came online.
It should be noted that usb-c on the non-pro models is no slower than lightning on any previous model.
I mean, you're going to put to market a $700 phone and cant upgrade one chip on it to do USB3?
Really!
But, 14 Pro has these over the 15:
- ProMotion (120hz)
- Always-On Display
- TelePhoto lens
- 3x zoom
- 3 hours more video playback on battery
- 35 grams more weight
It becomes clear when you see that first party cables that enable hight transfer speeds are sold at 79, 149, and 179 bucks for the 1m, 1.8m, and 3m respectively [1]. So, in essence, they purposely did just enough to comply with EU regulations while still aiming at milking customers' wallets with crazy expensive accessories that you would take for granted from top or premium tier smartphones.
[1] https://www.apple.com/ie/shop/product/MU883ZM/A/thunderbolt-...
Active Thunderbolt Cables run at speeds of 40Gbp at 1.8m/3m.
All of Apple's Thunderbolt 4 cables are 40Gbp, the same cannot be said about all of the cables you buy from Amazon.
If you feel the need to blame someone? I guess you can blame Intel for the design.
Also, Apple's 3m cable is actually not unreasonable when you consider that that's actually beyond what the thunderbolt spec theoretically allows, even with an active cable with a repeater chip the limit is supposed to be 2 meters.
but lol @ people objecting to apple rolling out usb-c now, that's gotta be a conspiracy too for some people. every damn apple thread.
if you want to buy a normal cable, just buy a normal cable.
- the 4th gen ipad air supports 5Gb USB, the 10th gen iPad only supports 0.5Gb, both use an A14
- the 5th gen ipad pro supports 40Gb USB, the 5th gen ipad air only supports 10Gb, both use an M1
But I've been told these ports are not symmetrical, the highest speeds are only in host mode and come from a separate USB3 controller, and the soc integrated device mode has much lower specs (10G for the Pro, 0.5Gb on the A15-using 6th gen mini — 5Gb capable in host mode).
The 40 Gb/s speed on the iPad Pro comes from the Thunderbolt controller, which is completely unrelated to USB and disabled in software on the 5th gen iPad Air for market segmentation.
The 4th gen iPad Air and 6th gen iPad Mini use a USB 2.0 dual-role device controller integrated into the SoC, which is limited to 480 Mb/s, and a USB 3.0 controller connected over PCIe, which supports up to 5 Gb/s.
The PCIe USB controller isn't included on the 10th gen iPad. It doesn't support device mode, which explains the USB 2.0 speeds when connected to a computer.
Because the only think I plug my phone into is my car, and I'm pretty sure that's still running at USB 1.x speeds.
Unless you're filming a 4k full-hd movie with your phone and download time is critical
There is exactly nothing forcing anyone to purchase an iPhone 15, and it very clear in all of the materials from Apple what the different between the Pro and non-Pro models is. The iPhone 14 Pro was discontinued (at a higher price) to make way for the non-Pro iPhone 15, since they are roughly equivalent in capabilities... including in their USB speeds.
USB speed was a non-issue 30 days ago, and now it's an emergency that is worthy of histrionics, hand-wringing, and FUD, including calling anyone pointing out how ridiculous this is a "corporate sycophant".
Please.
The fact you and others seem not to understand this should be an indication you aren’t informed enough to have a valid opinion on the topic.
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To whom?
The pro model is $999
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?
EDIT: TIL more about the underlying mechanics of Airdrop than I thought I would, appreciate the lesson.
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
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.
Completely coincidentally they also support 10Gb USB.
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.
it doesn’t matter if it is never used for that purpose.
the connector lied to me, like a language model.
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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.
Deleted Comment
(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)
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 few random people who do are probably videographers looking to transfer their large video files and buying the pro models anyways.
Even android users probably aren't paying attention to what speed their USB was.
I'm shocked that is even a selling point. I've been using an iPhone and iPad for about 8 years and never transferred data this way. I've only used usb for midi or keyboard inputs where data speed was not a factor.
USB3 / USB 4 was enabled with an external chip in select iPads. This has a power, space, and material cost. It may not even fit in the phone space or power budget at all.
For the A17, they added USB3 to the SoC. I bet the iPhone 16 non pro will have USB3, when it gets the a17 chip.
Edit to add. Their Mac didn’t have usb-c ports and that’s the only charger I had with me and no adapter. They were an Android user.
Is it though? Really? 480 Mb/s is quite fast for most applications, especially those involving a smartphone.
Any user with files large enough that this transfer is ostensibly slow is a videographer of some sort and has likely bought the pro model or at least planned for this event.
What sort of file is a "random 1-off thing" that a casual user might need to transfer, unexpectedly, over the wire, which is so large that a speed of 0.48 gigabits/sec is extremely slow?
The non-pro model can transfer a 5GB file over the wire in around a minute. Again, what is the real-world use case or scenario where a non-pro, casual user would find some random 1-off file, that is so large that the 0.48 Gbps speed is lacking?
75MB per picture in pro raw 48MP mode. 6GB per minute with ProRes 4k video. 5 minutes of video and my data plan caps if uploaded to iCloud.
One nice addition is they allow hard drive data offloading for ProRes video and can record at 4k60.
I don't think it's that costly to continue to use the same SoC they just used in the outgoing models.
I care. I have a legitimate use for USB 3 on my phone.
My home ISP is unreliable. It doesn't care if I'm in a time sensitive meeting. When it does go away, I need to quickly get back into my meeting.
Sometimes it goes away for hours. It has also gone away for days sometimes. I need an alternate internet connection, and preferably one that doesn't require my neighbourhood to have electricity, because that also is unreliable where I live.
So I use my phone. For short durations of use, I use the Wi-Fi Hotspot feature, but for longer durations I switch to USB Tethering.
At USB 2 speeds, I'd guess, the Ethernet connection can only negotiate a 100 Mbps link speed. That is much slower than my home ISP.
The phone I use currently has USB 3 and cost me half the price of an iPhone 15.
I pay the Apple tax now, and curse Apple each time they tell me my iCloud storage is almost full. I have TERABYTES of available local storage but Apple keeps my photos hostage in their shitty iCloud world.
I would gleefully go back to managing my own photos if Apple wasn't actively trying to prevent it. /rant
USB-C is a major selling point for me, primarily for data transfer speeds.
Next iPhone should have no port!
I do feel that the differences and selling points of these devices vs the previous devices have gotten so trivial though.
USB C is nice, but the suggestion in their presentation that I carry around a usb charger for my Apple Watch and would charge my Apple Watch from their device “directly” or that a millimeter this way or that way in width or thickness matters at all. These things are just the most trivial differences. I can’t believe I spent over an hour watching their stupid presentation.
All they did was swap out the connector. For phones with A16 chips, the USB-C port is just a differently shaped lightning port.
Apple decided not to make a new processor for an old phone... shock and awe.
I am pretty sure that this is a new phone.
Yeah, they decided to use and old processor on a new $800 phone that can't support something my $400 phone does.
But what can you expect, they're just a poor indie company, we need to lower our expectations of them.
Announced yesterday
Checks out!
Honestly the surprising part is that Apple never felt the need to speed up Lightning; really shows how rarely wired data transfer is done on an iPhone.
The really interesting parts of USB are display port alt mode and thunderbolt. While it's technically possible and probably valuable for millions of people for Apple to do their version of Dex, I don't ever see that happening.
I manage to almost saturate my 1Gbps fiber connection when doing a Speedtest close to my router, landing at about 870Mbps down/up, which seems fair with some of the overhead that comes with my specific router.
If I use AirDrop to my Mac which is an ad-hoc connection on 5Ghz I consistently reach 1Gbps transfer speeds, sometimes a bit more.
Personally, I've only had to do this once: when my Xperia screen totally broke but I still needed to get data off.
What kind of time difference transferring data?
It hardly ever transfer mass data from my phone, when I do I honestly don’t care how long it takes provided it is “fast enough”…
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