Ah, cables. If you’re a tech enthusiast, with a big computer you built yourself, dual monitors, surround sound speakers plus a subwoofer, a keyboard, mouse, and other good stuff, you know there’s a nightmare of cables behind your desk.
You can’t even hide it properly, and often have to crawl down there to switch what’s plugged in with something else, since your two power strips are already full.
Well, that oddly specific scenario may have been unavoidable in the early 2000s, but today things are changing.
Back in 2020 a well-publicized leak suggested that Apple‘s iPhone might be going portless soon. Naturally, this made many believe that the following year’s iPhone 13 was the one to fully drop the charging port, instead of finally switching from Lightning to USB Type-C.
And earlier this year, before the iPhone 13 was out, another leak said that Apple was testing how a portless iPhone can recover and restore data. The clues were all there – soon the iPhone might not have any ports.
But not as soon as some speculated. The 2021 iPhone 13 is here now, with a smaller notch, larger camera sensors, but essentially the same flat design with the same Lightning port on the bottom as before. No significant changes.
Naturally, speculations for dropping the charging port trickled onto the 2022 iPhone 14. Will that one be portless then? Will Apple remove its charging port like it once removed the headphone jack?
Possibly, and you needn’t worry, because it’s time. The technology is ready for us to go completely wireless, the industry just needs a company like Apple to make the first step.
And we know from past experience that when Apple makes a controversial move like removing a port or introducing a notch – almost everyone else will follow, and in some cases improve on it.
Why is that a good thing in the case of dropping the charging port? Because pushing the smartphone industry to go portless will accelerate the development of faster wireless chargers, phones will start supporting higher charging speeds, and we’ll all benefit from a more convenient charging experience. No more carrying different cables and fishing for your phone’s charging port before bed.
Wireless charging is ready to become your main charging method, the industry just needs a little push
Every iPhone since the 2017 iPhone 8 (shown here) has supported wireless charging
Today Apple’s MagSafe Charger can charge the iPhone 13 at 15 watts. In our iPhone 13 charging speed tests it took this wireless charger 2 hours and 45 minutes to fully charge the iPhone, which is an hour longer than what it takes to charge it the old fashioned way, with a cable.Now, neither of those charging speeds are particularly impressive, but Apple could easily go from 15W to higher next year and even the differences, making the iPhone 14 charge wirelessly about as fast as it would’ve charged with a cable. But hopefully even faster.
Because if we look at Apple’s competitors, the OnePlus 8 Pro, for example, can be wirelessly charged from 0% to 50% in just 29 minutes. So wireless charging today is already very impressive, can be faster than wired charging, and thus it’s more than ready to fully replace it.
You could argue that the OnePlus 8 Pro could’ve easily been a portless phone, but OnePlus doesn’t have the power of Apple to shift the smartphone industry and start a portless trend. We need Apple for that.
And Apple is well capable of adopting wireless charging as the one and only method to charge the next iPhone, unless it wants to avoid a loss in Lightning cable and Lightning accessory sales for yet another year, squeezing some extra profits from its proprietary connector for just a bit longer.
We don’t even get chargers with our iPhones anymore “for the environment”, so why not go even greener?
That’s pretty much all we get out the box right now, and soon it might just be the iPhone
Apple stopped shipping iPhones with a charging brick a while back, and the reason it gave us for this move was to reduce its carbon footprint. No chargers in the box means a smaller iPhone box, which means the company can ship more iPhones at a time and reduce the pollution caused by transporting millions of iPhones each year.
It also means that more people will start reusing their old chargers, and that Apple won’t need to produce and ship new ones every year. People reusing their old chargers also reduces landfill waste.
Of course, with all that good stuff, Apple’s profits are also increasing from paying less for shipping and selling more charging bricks separately. But in any case, we’re moving away from the concept of our phones coming with a charging brick. Even the brand new Pixel 6 Pro doesn’t come with one. And we can move away from phones coming with a charging cable just as well.
We’re already forced to buy a charger separately if we don’t own one, might as well make that a wireless charger and truly only use that one charger with its one cable for all of our devices – thus really reducing our carbon footprint.
Cables have always been a hassle – USB Type-C, Lightning, audio jacks
In my daily life I still have to drag with me several USB Type-C cables and a Lightning cable. And carrying around a bunch of cables and charging bricks feels increasingly ridiculous when I know there’s a potentially better option out there.
Qi wireless charging – it can be very fast, and it has become a dominant standard, supported by almost any smartphone with wireless charging capabilities.
One good Qi wireless charging pad should soon be able to take care of all my devices and untie me from ever needing to deal with any more cables than one – the wireless charger’s own power cable.
And yes, as unbelievable as it sounds, Apple too has adopted the Qi wireless charging standard just like many Android phone makers have, instead of using some proprietary technology like it tends to do. Although of course, it has given it a unique name – MagSafe.
So whether you’re team iPhone or team Android – one wireless charger fits all. Isn’t that great? Because that’s not the case with wired charging. Nor is it nearly as convenient as just placing your phone on a thing.
So if smartphones just drop the ports and cables and start adopting faster wireless charging, not only will it be a convenience for us, but we’ll all be able to share a single wireless charger. Some coffee shops already offer Qi charging pads, often directly embedded into the tables. Universal convenience! Let’s encourage more of that!
Everything is already as wireless as can be, except phones, and this has to change
My studio monitor speakers are wireless, my mouse is wireless, my headphones and earbuds are wireless, keyboards are wireless… All hail Bluetooth!
Granted, those devices still need to charge with a cable at some point, but if they were as essential to carry around with us in our daily lives as a smartphone is, they would’ve been switched to wireless charging too. In fact, some already are. Wireless charging mice have been a thing for a while now, even if not mass adopted yet.
Of course, as mentioned, the smartphone is a different type of device, one that keeps us connected and stays with us wherever we go everyday. It needs to be as convenient as possible, and what’s more convenient than simply placing it on your desk or on a table at Starbucks when it needs some juice, and you need some coffee?
With the iPhone dropping the charging port and going wireless, more businesses will offer convenient wireless charging embedded into the furniture, and we all win.
So there we have it, everyone wins
A few months back we ran a poll that asked – would you buy a portless iPhone? The majority of votes gave it a resounding “no”, but then again, most of us weren’t ready for the headphone jack to be gone either, yet it happened. And not just for iPhone users.
Change isn’t always easy, especially when you don’t get to choose when it happens. But the technology is ready for our phones to go completely wireless. And as usual, this new controversial trend is likely to begin with Apple’s iPhone.
It might be received negatively at first, but as we covered, if Apple removes the charging port, it would cause an industry shift towards better wireless charging technology. More and more smartphone makers will start releasing portless phones with increasingly faster wireless charging speeds.
We’ll all be able to share just one wireless charger instead of using different chargers and cables, thus much less wired chargers will be produced, sold and thrown away each year. We’ll simultaneously benefit from the convenience of faster wireless charging and reduce our impact on the environment. Is losing a port not worth all that?
