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Apple Testing iPhones That Ditch Lightning Ports in Favor of USB-C (bloomberg.com) 91

Posted by msmash from the hallelujah dept.
Apple is testing future iPhone models that replace the current Lightning charging port with the more prevalent USB-C connector, Bloomberg reported Friday, citing people with knowledge of the situation, a move that could help the company conform with looming European regulations. From the report: In addition to testing models with a USB-C port in recent months, Apple is working on an adapter that would let future iPhones work with accessories designed for the current Lightning connector, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. If the company proceeds with the change, it wouldn't occur until 2023 at the earliest. Apple is planning to retain the Lightning connector for this year's new models.
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Apple Testing iPhones That Ditch Lightning Ports in Favor of USB-C More

Apple Testing iPhones That Ditch Lightning Ports in Favor of USB-C

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  • The devil you say! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zuckie13 ( 1334005 ) on Friday May 13, 2022 @12:38PM (#62530226)

    Holy cow. Apple looking to use a standard (granted it's by force really). Never would have though I'd see the day.

    • Holy cow. Apple looking to use a standard (granted it's by force really). Never would have though I'd see the day.

      While I guess it will be nice, I don't see that is all that big of a deal. I mean, so I have a few less cables, big deal...?

      • a few less cables, big deal...

        Hotel owners agree with you! Remembering that there's more than one type of lightning connectors...

        • Remembering that there's more than one type of lightning connectors...

          There is only a single type of lightning cable...

        • a few less cables, big deal...

          Hotel owners agree with you! Remembering that there's more than one type of lightning connectors...

          Yes. Male, and Female.

          Idiot.

    • Don't worry. (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They will use the actual, physical port. The chipset will be different, and you will still have to buy an MFi USB-C cable.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by EvilSS ( 557649 )

        They will use the actual, physical port. The chipset will be different, and you will still have to buy an MFi USB-C cable.

        Mmmm.. malicious compliance, the best kind of compliance.

      • They will use the actual, physical port. The chipset will be different, and you will still have to buy an MFi USB-C cable.

        No such thing.

    • Apple has long used standards. Just not necessarily the mainstream standards. Apple was very big on SCSI when the PC world was gung-ho on the inferior IDE style. Aple embraced IEEE 1394 for high speed transfers when PCs were still sticking with the USB and it's duct tape solution to make a low speed bus work for more taxing applications (yes, Apple embraced USB too, just didn't make it the sole solution).

      As for lightning; well, it's so-so. I works great when it's new, but my iphone has difficulty chargin

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by edwdig ( 47888 )

        As for lightning; well, it's so-so. I works great when it's new, but my iphone has difficulty charging easily except for a few known good cables. Ie, it works great while still under warranty.

        That's the case with pretty much every cable that gets as much use as a lightning cable does. All cables break eventually if you bend/connect/disconnect them a lot.

        If you get the nylon braided cables, they last far longer. Looking at my receipts, I bought a bunch of Amazon Basics nylon lightning cables in 2017, and am just reaching the point where some of them need to be replaced.

        • The cables are fine. I can use the ones that don't work on the iphone on my ipad just fine, and vice versa. I think the problem is when the pins inside the connectors; they stop making reliable contact with the traces on the cable.

          • 99% of the time there is lint in the female connector. Use a pushpin or straight pin (or SIM tool) to break up compacted lint at the back of the connector, drag it to the sides, and pull it out.

            • I'll never cease to be amazed at the amount of lint or other fuzz that builds up in there. Cleaning it out is almost like watching a magician pull out the seemingly endless chain of handkerchiefs from his sleeve.

              The cables/connectors are a little less sturdy than others I've had. At the time they were released they were a big upgrade over the 40-pin connector or anything else on the market just because the plug was reversible. However, it's not durable enough and I've had to replace a lot of cables becau

            • 99% of the time there is lint in the female connector. Use a pushpin or straight pin (or SIM tool) to break up compacted lint at the back of the connector, drag it to the sides, and pull it out.

              I recommend a wooden toothpick, broken in half. Try to maximize the "furryness" of the broken-end.

              I accidentally invented this "tool", while trying to grub fuzz out of my iPhone's Lightning Port; and it seriously works a treat!

              Stick the broken-end of the toothpick into the female connector, and gently spin the toothpick like a drill.

              The "fuzzy" (splintery) end of the toothpick nicely entangles the Lint, and allows it to be pulled-out as one big Navel-Lint-Ball!

              I was truly amazed at how big of a furball came

        • As for lightning; well, it's so-so. I works great when it's new, but my iphone has difficulty charging easily except for a few known good cables. Ie, it works great while still under warranty.

          That's the case with pretty much every cable that gets as much use as a lightning cable does. All cables break eventually if you bend/connect/disconnect them a lot.

          If you get the nylon braided cables, they last far longer. Looking at my receipts, I bought a bunch of Amazon Basics nylon lightning cables in 2017, and am just reaching the point where some of them need to be replaced.

          And Apple is (finally!) supplying Nylon-covered cables as well. The Silicon Rubber jackets they used forever were nice and supple; but unfortunately didn't hold up well to the life of a mobile charging cable.

    • Apple looking to use a standard

      USB-C is a standard? I never would have guessed with all of the compatibility problems...

    • Apple is part of the USB-IF, they literally helped invent the USB-C standard.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      Apple uses standards, just not what everyone else does. SCSCI was a good standard, and allowed e trial devices to be plug and play. Most used the parallel interface instead, which required much more configuration.

      The iPod used USB and FireWire. The iPod and iPhone connector was proprietary so it could work with both. FireWire allowed rapid transfer of files, which translated to most of oneâ(TM)s music collection on one device for the first time. On the nomad 60 minutes of music took almost that much

      • The iPod used USB but you needed iTunes or some alternative to their proprietary software to use it anyway.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by fermion ( 181285 )
          Likely a defect in MS Windows. I recall mounting it as mass storage.

        • The iPod used USB but you needed iTunes or some alternative to their proprietary software to use it anyway.

          Thanks goalpost-mover.

          We were talking connector standards; not protocols.

          And FYI, there were several Third-Party Applications which allowed Music Uploading to iPods, with no iTunes in sight!

    • This will totally ruin their creativity & innovation. Without Apple iDongle ports, the sky's going to fall in.

    • Holy cow. Apple looking to use a standard (granted it's by force really). Never would have though I'd see the day.

      You are full of it!

      Only in a few places has Apple used truly-proprietary Connectors; mostly in the somewhat distant past (monitor, pre 2000's), keyboards/mice (pre 1999), and Mobile (where their connectors preceded (30-pin Dock conn.) or were vastly-superior to (Lightning), any "standard" connectors available at the time (I'm looking at you, horrible MicroUSB!)).

      Of those ancient (20 years out of use is "ancient" in tech-stuff), "sins", only the Lightning Connector (which still seems to be more rugged and re

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday May 13, 2022 @12:40PM (#62530230)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Now tell us the story about Steve Jobs and Xerox PARC.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Well if you have almost any other apple product besides an iPhone, the headphone jack will be right next to the USB-C ports as it likely was on models for several years prior. If you have an iPhone, the $7 dongle is probably hardly bigger than your headphone jack but feel free to make a giant stink about it, anyway, because you have a totally rational point.

          • You mean the dongle that you can't use while you're charging your phone? Of course, you could buy a Belkin charging + audio adapter for forty goddamned dollars...

            • You mean the dongle that you can't use while you're charging your phone? Of course, you could buy a Belkin charging + audio adapter for forty goddamned dollars...

              If you are paying $40 for a Lightning Splitter, I have some great investment real estate you might want to get in on the ground floor of!

              https://www.amazon.com/s?k=lig... [amazon.com]

              • I'm not a big enough dumbfuck to buy a phone without a headphone jack to begin with, so I am certainly not spending that.

                My Phone was a couple hundred bucks and does everything I need to do, I don't buy phones to show people how much I can waste.

          • I have iPhone 6 plus, it has the DIN jack. Very very handy, since I have a lot of headphones and earbuds that work with it. If I had a dongle, I'd probably need 3 of them (work, home, auto). Maybe an extra for the suitcase (because sometimes I forget to bring the earbuds along and end up buying a new cheap set in the airport).

          • A $7 dongle that you have to carry with you, completely negating any space savings of not including it on the phone.

            Just a week ago I had a friend in my car who wanted to connect his phone to the stereo to play a song using his phone. He couldn't, because he doesn't carry around an extra dongle for his status-symbol phone.

        • I can't. I can't figure out where to plug in my sound. Where's the 3.5mm DIN jack?

          If you're gonna try to make a Tech Joke, you might want to avoid using incorrect Tech References:

          3.5mm Phone Jack:

          https://core-electronics.com.a... [core-electronics.com.au]

          VS.

          Typical DIN Jack:

          https://www.partco.fi/en/conne... [partco.fi]

          Got it?

      • Now tell us the story about Steve Jobs and Xerox PARC.

        Exactly!

        Or the one-button mouse. That's a good one from before OS 8.0 !

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Chaset ( 552418 )

      Yeah! Apple would never use SCSI, USB, IDE/ATA, PCI/PCIe, CardBus, VGA, DVI, HDMI, Ethernet, WiFi, etc. Those products must have all been pranks!

      Or,
      Maybe Apple does adopt standards when they are fit for the purpose. Lightning predates widespread adoption of USB-C, and micro-USB before that was definitely less mechanically robust than Lightning. Once they had an installed base, they were in the dammed-either-way situation. (existing users will complain about the change, while ./ armchair quarterbacks wi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by EvilSS ( 557649 )
        Christ yes. There are still people out there (and I'd bet a few on here specifically) holding a grudge to this day over Apple retiring the 30 pin connector.

      • Ahhh yeah I recall those. Apple used SCSI (because the PC was all in on IDE). Apple didn't embrace USB. They shunned it. Firewire is where it was, afterall USB was a PC thing. But when it became clear that USB was coming out on top, what is a company to do? They couldn't be seen being like the rest of the normal world, so they had to ditch the floppy drive. Because difference is good, and while that RJ45 fitted into that Ethernet socket you were shit-outta-luck unless you were talking to an AppleTalk device

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by _merlin ( 160982 )

          Apple used SCSI (because the PC was all in on IDE).

          No, Apple adopted SCSI because they realised they needed an interface for peripherals that needed higher data rates than the RS422 serial ports and floppy port could provide. SCSI also allowed daisy-chaining several peripherals on one port. PC wasn't all-in on IDE at that point - ST506 interfaces and the like were still prolific. ATA became popular on PCs because it was cheap - basically just an extension of the ISA bus, which itself is an extension of t

    • Re:Is it April 1st again? (Score:5, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday May 13, 2022 @02:12PM (#62530474) Homepage Journal

      The iPad has had USB C for a while now.

    • Are investigating them because they no longer include a charging connector with their phones. Apple doesn't want to include the connector because it adds cost and they mostly have to eat that cost. It's usually unnecessary because a lot of their consumers already have the charging connections from previous devices. So if Apple can leave it out and keep the prices where they're at for the phones it's pure profit in their pockets. Europe seems to have noticed this and is not amused. Using a single standard wo

    • Neither of those originated with Apple, and Apple's adoption of them jump-started their respective markets.

      Yes, Apple stuck with FireWire too long, but that wasn't originated by Apple, either.

      • Neither of those originated with Apple, and Apple's adoption of them jump-started their respective markets.

        Yes, Apple stuck with FireWire too long, but that wasn't originated by Apple, either.

        Apple dropped FireWire no later than 2012 (a decade ago). My mid-2012 Non-Retina MacBook Pro was the last Mac Laptop with a FW (800) Port. But it also had a TB1/miniDisplayPort Port; too. It was also the last Mac Laptop with an Optical Drive. Kind of one foot in the Past and one in the Future.

        But Apple was involved in the early stages of the FireWire Protocol and Hardware Specifications and perhaps Design. They later kind of backed-off and let Sony run with and modify it to suit the DV Standard.

        But seriousl

        • Until USB 3.0, USB wasn't capable of isochronous throughput, which was unavoidably necessary for most AV workflows at the time. USB 3.0 isn't actually isochronous, but it's so much faster than necessary (for those bitrates) that the video gear never ran into an empty buffer.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Apple accepting a standard which isn't theirs? This has to be a prank.

      There are actually rumors that the USB-C design actually came from Apple a few years ago, back when USB-C was a somewhat intriguing thing that was forthcoming (and years after Lightning was out and everyone was still using micro-B).

      After all, Apple was one of the first companies to embrace it on computers to the point where it was highly annoying since nothing had USB-C at the time.

      As for this, just because Apple takes up USB-C doesn't re

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
      This is not new apple have accepted other standards for a long time Ethernet(on desk bound computers) wifi on everything, they where amongst the first to switch from legacy ports (whatever they used for keyboard and mouse before) to usb

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      Apple accepting a standard which isn't theirs? This has to be a prank.

      I think the EU is forcing them. So likely they'll produce a special version for the EU and charge more for it.

      If you're outside the EU, they'll just sell you their proprietary connector for the USB standard and charge more for it.

  • Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aerogems ( 339274 ) on Friday May 13, 2022 @12:55PM (#62530276)

    If a major bloc of countries is looking to impose a particular standard, the real news story would be if Apple planned on refusing to comply with the regulation and decided to just stop selling phones and other do-dads in the EU. This is just a story about Apple doing the rational thing.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Since they removed the microphone jack if I use the lighting port for headphones I can't charge it (unless I can find where I hid my splitter ). Having a usb-c and and lightning would be convenient.
      There's even use cases that don't yet exist widely. Using iPhones as device controllers for example.
      At the moment we work around this by blue tooth but I've got so many dang blue tooth birdies chirping in my work and home that my iPhone is constantly connecting to the wrong ones or jumping back and forth. I'd

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        You can get USB-C audio dongles with pass-through charging [amazon.com].

        But you’re right that it would be easier with two ports.

      • I have absolutely zero special insight, this is just me peering into my personal crystal ball... but I would expect pretty soon Apple will just add data to their magsafe system, or make people use BT/Airdrop for data syncing, and drop all external ports. The one upside to this is it should improve the water proofing of the device if there is no open port where liquids could potentially get in.

    • Agreed, not that I really care. My phone has wireless charging and I use it about 98% of the time. On the rare occasion I use a cable it is for some odd ball device I need to control or push/pull data from.

  • Why not? (Score:4, Informative)

    by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Friday May 13, 2022 @12:59PM (#62530292) Homepage

    All the current MacBook Pros have USB-C.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Xenx ( 2211586 )
      Well, computers were an established market. Apple pretty much has to continue to use standardized IO connectors. Their choice to go all in on USB-C has to do with the fact that they helped design the Thunderbolt standard.

      The problem with the mobile market is that it wasn't an established market, so they could do what they wanted from the start. Then, they got momentum behind their proprietary connector. It became an entrenched battle where they fought off standardization by having millions of users tied to

      • I haven't been able to figure out what kind of signaling is used on the lightning connector by casually browsing around. Even wikipedia doesn't say literally anything about the signaling used, only which pins are which. If Apple used PCI-E then it should be an easy transition. If they didn't then that was fucking stupid of them. But what else is new?

      • To be fair, personal computers were already an established market (despite the well-known Mac vs. PC nomenclature wars), when Apple ditched their proprietary keyboard connectors for USB, later Bluetooth. Also, who remembers AppleTalk? So it's not as if this is the first time that Apple quietly discontinued support for their in-house protocols and hardware, and replaced it with industry standards or at least more vendor neutral stacks.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Xenx ( 2211586 )

          So it's not as if this is the first time that Apple quietly discontinued support for their in-house protocols and hardware, and replaced it with industry standards or at least more vendor neutral stacks.

          At least as well as I can remember, most of their changes for computers were around making them more accessible as a home computer. Mac was more niche back in the day. It was largely schools or other work related setups. I think the more standardized connectors came about because they were trying to actually enter the PC market. I may be over generalizing, or missing something, but that at least fits from what I can recall. The distinction there is that the iPhone is one of the most popular phones on the m

          • I remember the Mac as being used mainly for desktop publishing. I'd say it was the combination of Adobe (PostScript printing) and Apple (the GUI) that popularized the notion of low-cost print publishing, at least up to the point where the "layout" needed to be mass-produced. Before that, publishing houses, if they used computers at all, used expensive systems where typesetting instructions needed to be coded, pretty much like TeX.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Megane ( 129182 )

          What about Appletalk? I'll bet it lasted a lot longer than you think. First of all, in 1984 there really weren't any dominant network standards, and certainly not ones that cost less than hundreds of dollars per node, with coaxial wires that would bring the whole segment down with a failure anywhere along the length. TCP/IP was hardly dominant either, unless you worked in a land of government contracts.

          Apple did a very good job of supporting Appletalk over Ethernet for many years, only finally ditching it

          • Actually I thought Apple still supported Appletalk. I remember Macs of the early 1990s to be way easier to network than any PC, at least when it came to small local networks. (maybe this is still true). Printing was a snap if you had a LaserWriter. I'm not sure about the security though. It seems I could just change files on another user's computer. Perhaps the setup was badly configured or unconfigured.

      • The problem with the mobile market is that it wasn't an established market, so they could do what they wanted from the start. Then, they got momentum behind their proprietary connector.

        How the fact that the top of the line iPads already have USB-C fit into your theory?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          The problem with the mobile market is that it wasn't an established market, so they could do what they wanted from the start. Then, they got momentum behind their proprietary connector.

          How the fact that the top of the line iPads already have USB-C fit into your theory?

          Volume. The model of iPad that sells in large quantities still uses Lightning.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Xenx ( 2211586 )
          Based on a quick search, there are over 4x as many iPhones sold than iPads. That's a lot more users to be cautious about. Further, people are more likely to have lightning port accessories for their phone than for their tablet. Most accessories I can think of for the iPad specifically aren't related to the lightning port. The big one I can think of would be the first generation of the Apple Pencil. Which they changed for the 2nd gen.

          • I’d be a little salty about the Lightning-attached IR camera I have, and oscilloscope I’m shopping for. And the three speaker docks. And the alarm clock with a built-in Lightning charger. And the Lightning SKAA transmitter for my party speakers. And the Lightning-native headphone cables I finally picked up for my fancy-ass headphones. And the Lightning game controller case. I guess the Elevation Dock can be upgraded, but I’d lose the line-out jack which I actually bought the fuckin’

  • The number of charging devices I have that I can plug any Android or other device into and out just charges, bit plug an apple lightning cable into (ISB A to lightning) and a second after recognising the plug had been inserted it stops charging!! Infuriating!!! Same bad experience with iPads and iPhones... Just refuses to charge with anything other than a dumb white 5w USB charger from crApple!

  • The newer iPads are using USB-C, along with the Macbooks as well. That's really the new standard they are embracing. It's more about backwards compatibility than anything else when it comes to the phones (3rd party stuff).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      The newer iPads are using USB-C, along with the Macbooks as well. That's really the new standard they are embracing. It's more about backwards compatibility than anything else when it comes to the phones (3rd party stuff).

      No, it's about rent seeking.

      Back in the day when so many people had 30-pin docks on their audio amplifiers and boom boxes and clock radios, there was a reason to not change connectors. The change to Lightning broke a lot of stuff. But most people learned their lesson and didn't buy or build docks for Lightning-equipped phones. These days, the average person has approximately no accessories for their phones other than charge cables and cases, and their cases won't fit their next phones anyway.

      There's very

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
        Or most speakers/amp etc switched tipi using bt because a lot of non slashdot users hate cables so any cable that can be eliminated is a plus, and they're used to using bt for sound anyway ( wireless headphones, car stereo connections etc) so any compression artefacts in the bt codecs will not be noticed anyway, because that is how the music they play always sounds.

  • Now, can we get Amazon to start putting USB-C ports on their Kindles?

    We have a spot in our house with multiple charging cables for different devices - three of which that look just about identical (Apple's lightning, micro-USB, USB-C) until you actually pick them up and look directly at the connector.

    I swear that, 100% of the time, the cable I actually want is always be the third one I pick up.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
      Wellin a few years ( when the older evices have rotated out of use for o ne reason or the other and only devices made after the new rules have been enacted ) you will not need the point anymore, or it will just transition into the common charging point where tere us allways a usb-c caple avaleble for charging whatever. It night take a bit of time but thst us where weveventuually will end up, until the day the usb-c connector becomes to wide/tall and de whole sage starts again with mini/micro usb-c

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
        And I firgit to answer the main point of the post, sorry about that, If the new EU rules requiring usb-c ports on all (small) consumer electronic devices Amazon will have 2 Choices 1: drop the entire EU market ( yea right) 2: make a soecific EU version with usb-c and continue whatever they have now elsewhere (supply chain management with 2 different squs insted if one for each model) 3: change to usb-c evrywere ( thus skipping the supply chain issues in 2 and the liss of EU profits in 1). I'm niy shite wha

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by splutty ( 43475 )

      Still better than the 2 sided USB connector you need to turn over 3 times to make fit.

      • You have to admit that original USB plug was quite a feat of engineering, though - a 4-dimensional connector that has to be oriented correctly in both the spacial and temporal planes!

  • All for the switch to USB-C for charging. Though they should include a lightning to USB-C convertor that fits flush with their old cables.

    Would be amazing if one could pick up a 5Pack for like $15-20.

  • Apple has made a fortune licensing the Lightning standard, in addition to what they've made selling their own crap. Every iPhone user I know goes through at least one every other month because they are junk, including the Apple-branded ones from their store. I can't quite verify that this is intentional on Apple's part.

    I still have the mini- and microUSB cables from devices that have long since died and they all work. USB-C is new enough, and with only a few of them, I do not have sufficient data on the

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Definitely anecdotal, but the usb-c port on my 7 year old ipad pro work perfectly. However the lighting connector on my 2.5 year old iphone 11 pro is very finicky, and it is lint free. I only really use it for car play the odd time I use my wife's car and occasionally with my drone. So it isn't like I even plug it in very often If it wasn't for the wireless charging it would be huge pain in the ass to get it charge on a daily basis.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      I repair a lot of electronic devices for a living, and USB C connectors have always been a significant failure point for something that experiences a high repetition of insertion and removal cycles.

      Standardization is nice, but at least pick the best connector for the job. USB C connectors are not that connector.

      Unless you are sending and receiving data, 1/8" stereo plugs are pretty close to the best connector for the job. You could even negotiate DC voltage transfer using a low-bitrate data signal on the microphone ring....

      • And if you want high-speed data, use a TRRS jack. Just like the iPod Shuffle. Bam, USB 2.0 signaling. Now be clever and run a fiber optic cable down the center of the TRRS plug. It's not full duplex, but you've got copper for negotiating turn-taking between devices. And if you have a Macbook, odds are it has mini-TOSlink in the headphone jack already, so this could be engineered in pretty remarkably cheaply.

  • Apple should have dumped Lightning way back in 2015 as soon as they started moving Macs to USB-C, ensuring that their devices would all use the same charging connector. They're fully seven years later than any sane company would have waited, and all because they can't make money on every USB-C accessory sold, but they can make a crapton of money by licensing Lightning to third parties.

    If anybody ever thought that sticking with Lightning had anything to do with doing what was best for the user, I have a br

  • Am I the only one that thinks this just plain sucks?

    Yes, apple connecting to a standard across the board is welcome news, but, as I've said before: USB-C is pretty sucky.

    For those that don't use it, the two biggest issues are:
    1) You're going to snap a head off - at least once, especially if it's just a laptop - after that you'll figure out to put the device down and then plug it in
    2) Backwards compatible support pretty much guarantees sub-optimal charging. Most people don't get that, and people (like

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