iPhone: an engineer manages to create a smartphone with dual Lightning and USB-C ports

Do you have an iPhone, but you regret the absence of a USB-C port, because all your other devices have already adopted universal connectivity? An engineer faced with this problem found a solution.

At the end of 2021, we saw an engineer create the first iPhone with a USB-C port, but the latter eventually replaced Apple’s proprietary port with universal connectivity. Now, another engineer has managed to do even better, since he has integrated a USB-C port without giving up the Lightning.

This first two-port iPhone is therefore capable of being recharged either with a Lightning cable or with a USB-C cable. Convenient. The most amazing thing is that the engineer modified an iPhone 12 mini, the smallest iPhone in recent years. Despite its very compact format, the engineer managed to add another port without modifying the internal components too much.

This iPhone recharges with Lightning or USB-C, as desired

In addition to recharging with the two connectors, the presence of two ports has an interesting advantage. Indeed, when the iPhone 7 came out, many users complained about the removal of the smartphone jack.

As the Lightning port was the only connector on their smartphone, it was impossible to plug in headphones and charge the device at the same time, but this concern has since been addressed with the introduction of wireless charging. With this modified iPhone, the engineer can very well plug in a Lightning cable for charging while listening to music with wired USB-C headphones.

Unfortunately for those who counted on it, this is not the solution that Apple will opt for when it replaces the Lightning port with a USB-C port in its next iPhone 15, to comply with the new legislation imposed by the European Union. We also know a little more about this, since we learned a few days ago that Apple did not intend to put an end to the MFi program, despite the arrival of universal connectivity. It means that the American giant will continue to certify cables and accessories for iOSso some of them won’t work properly with iPhones.