I was looking forward to the iPhone 13. Expected this fall (September or October), Apple’s next iPhone made more sense to me than buying a new iPhone. I had just purchased the iPhone 11 Pro Max in 2019, do I need another upgrade like that?
Or at least that was my opinion until a certain persistent rumor started to surface. That rumor? That at least one iPhone 2021 will not have a charging port of any kind.
We report on the alleged death of the port of Lightning, as it has been spread by everyone, from the widely respected Ming-Chi Kuo to Jon Prosser. Heck, reporting on Apple’s desire to remove the door goes back to the iPhone X, as trusted Mark Gurman reported to Bloomberg that Apple wanted to remove the door for the 2017 phone.
But during a time last week when I was particularly susceptible to retail therapy, I saw the rumor again. And this time it was on video, on my TV. YouTuber Rene Ritchie’s “Portless iPhone 13” video appeared on the home screen of my YouTube app and was as convincing as any. And that worried me about what would happen if Apple actually removed the Lightning port.
Ritchie relied on the MKBHD’s logic about Apple taking resources, saying it solved a problem and justifying the decision to remove a resource. It happened with the home button (for more screen space) and replaced it with the convenience of Face ID. It happened again with the headphone connector, so you could have more water resistance – and the success of AirPods and AirPods Pro shows that Apple had a hunch about what people wanted.
Of course, we can explain why they might want to eliminate the Lightning port. It is a water entry point and can lead to corrosion. Removing it would open Apple up to a bigger battery inside, or do something else. As Gurman told MKBHD, this space could be used for an on-screen fingerprint reader.
But all of this was known. And then Ritchie added two words: “underwater photography”. That you would get even more water resistance and that Apple camera gurus would solve computational tricks for taking photos underwater.
And that’s when I started looking at the iPhone 12
I’m not ready for an iPhone post-load port. Because? For starters, it would probably be slower than wired charging. The newly added MagSafe charging is an interesting alternative to wired charging, but wow is too slow.
And secondly, and most importantly, I have some of the best portable chargers – and I don’t want to buy new ones. I have a charger in every bag I have, so I always have a way to refill if I forget to plug in my iPhone when I went to bed the night before.
That’s why I don’t want the charging port (and Apple seems determined not to bring USB-C to the iPhone) to go away. What, will Apple offer MagSafe-to-Lightning adapters?
I can already see Anker and other companies selling MagSafe power chargers, which would fit conveniently on the back of your phone, like the existing wallet attachment. It makes sense to take the cables out of the equation when you’re using an iPhone while it’s consuming power from a portable charger. But that is asking you to throw away accessories and buy new ones – which goes against Apple’s recent message when it announced that it would remove the power adapter from the iPhone 12 case to reduce waste.
So I bought the iPhone 12 Pro Max
Although I know that the price of the iPhone 12 Pro Max will drop this fall, I ordered it as soon as I finished processing the above thoughts.
Because? In part, it’s because I want better pictures and the shopping therapy is real. But the big reason I didn’t want to wait is because, if I’m going to use it for a while, I prefer to get used to its larger size of 6.7 inches today, than this fall.
I don’t think I can wait for Apple to come out, that it can bring back the loading doors someday. It is not like the new rumor of a MacBook Pro with MagSafe and without Touch Bar (although I feel revenge for waiting to buy a new MacBook until they get rid of the “butterfly” switch design). Instead, I want to wait for iPhone 13 and later, to the point that the third-party accessory market has adapted to this iPhone without ports.
And since I’m on the iPhone update program, continuing to pay monthly fees for a better phone today seems like a better plan than replacing a ton of accessories in the future. Furthermore, it is easy. I feel bad for people with Lightning-based CarPlay connectivity, as some cars still don’t allow wireless CarPlay. Apple’s move, if the rumors materialize, will have a broad ripple effect across the industry.