Quote:
Originally Posted by capriguy84
Apple is to blame here, they moved away from a widely used micro-USB interface, so they can now charge a price for licensing the adapter.
If only all cellphone makers had 1 single type of interface, you never would have to swap your cradle.
Another point is when the whole world is moving to wireless why not make wireless charging more ubiquitous.
|
I agree that micro-USB might be nice from a standards perspective, but if you've ever looked at the pinout diagram for the 30-pin connector, you'd know that it can do a whole lot more than normal USB can: line-level analog audio, amped analog audio, digital audio, composite video, S-video, component video, HDMI video, USB traffic, and probably more I'm forgetting. I'm sure Lightning will support far more functionality than typical USB as well as it's developed over the years. I'm not arguing that that should necessarily outweigh the convenience of going with a standard port, but claiming that Apple made a new port just to charge licensing fees is ridiculous.
And a standard cradle wouldn't be possible even with a standard connector because the dimensions of the phones themselves would still vary, as would the location of the standard port on the phone.
Wireless charging is still relatively expensive and inefficient.