iPhone Air and 17 remain with lame USB 2.0
For Apple, USB 3.0 speed is still only something for Pro iPhones. Even the expensive Air remains with the old USB standard.
iPhone 15 with USB-C port: This also only had USB 2.0.
(Image: Sebastian Trepesch)
USB-C is known to be capable of a lot—up to Thunderbolt 5 speed. However, buyers of the iPhone 17 and iPhone Air, which were unveiled on Tuesday, will unfortunately not benefit from this: Apple has decided to continue to install only lame controllers.
Standard from 2000 on board
This is clear from the official specifications of both models. They state succinctly, “USB 2 (up to 480 Mbit/s).” To put this into perspective, USB 2.0 was launched on the market in 2000, at that time still via USB-A. The theoretical maximum throughput is therefore just over 50 megabytes per second. USB 2 throughput was also the level that Apple once used for its proprietary Lightning interface, which has been history on the iPhone since 2023 (with the iPhone 15). Apple has seamlessly transferred this to USB-C.
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Apple does not provide any information as to why the company is sticking with the age-old standard. There has been criticism of this for some time. This is likely to annoy many, especially with the iPhone Air. The company is marketing the thinnest iPhone of all time (apart from the “Camera Plateau”) partly in the professional corner, which can be seen from the entry-level price of 1199 euros. In addition, an A19 Pro chip (presumably with fewer cores) is installed, which is also included in the Pro models, not the A19 as in the iPhone 17. The only thing missing is the aforementioned controller.
Better wireless transmission
The manufacturer obviously assumes that users are more likely to transfer data via mobile phone or WLAN, which now works much faster depending on the connection. However, there are still enough applications that require USB-C. These include connecting to other devices via a dock or connecting storage media, which are often cheaper than Apple's internal upgrade.
Meanwhile, Apple does not install full speed in the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max. Instead of Thunderbolt 4 or even 5, USB 3 is used as standard, with a maximum transfer rate of 10 Gb/s, which is already significantly better than the 17 and Air. Apple has not made any changes here compared to the 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max models. The iPhone 17 Pro costs at least 1299 euros with 256 GB of storage space.
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(bsc)
