iPhone 8 to Use Lighting Connector With USB-C Fast Charging: KGI

There has been a bit of confusion going around as to whether or not new iPhones released this year will feature Lightning ports. Now, Ming-Chi Kuo, a respected analyst at KGI Securities, is claiming the Lightning port is staying but with a new feature, reads a new report from MacRumors.

Kuo claims that rather than changing the charging port on the iPhone itself, Apple would be modifying the charging cable included with the phone. So, the iPhone will still feature a Lightning port, but the other end of the cable will be USB-C, allowing the cable to take advantage of the faster charging spec available with the latter.

According to Kuo, all of the new iPhones released this year will feature “Type-C Power Delivery” technology as well as borrowed power management from Texas Instruments and power delivery chips from Cypress. Additionally, the flagship iPhone 8 could offer even faster charging by using a new “2-cell L-shaped battery pack design.”

Additionally, Kuo mentioned that although Apple would take advantage of the faster power delivery spec of USB-C, it may not be able to get the data transmission speed upgrade if the iPhone itself still has a Lightning jack. Kuo said this might not be a priority for Apple because transferring files via a cable is a “niche application” these days as most people sync data through the cloud.

In terms of other rumours, the premium phone will likely have a 5.8-inch OLED display, which will be slightly bigger than the 5.5-inch display iPhone 7 Plus and the 4.7-inch iPhone 7.