Previously, last October, a competent engineering student did what Apple could not do: upgrade an iPhone with a USB-C port instead of Lightning. That phone went on to sell at auction for more than $86,000, proving there was a demand for the upgrade. This time Ken Pillonel has swapped out the Android’s USB-C port with Lightning. This has created a smartphone that no one will want.
Putting a proprietary charging port on a device is a huge inconvenience to consumers who have to take care of the proprietary charging cable at all times. Although when one of the largest electronics makers in the world does it, it’s a slightly different story. Lightning was introduced by Apple to address some of the shortcomings of microUSB connectors, and as a much smaller alternative to the dock connector that iPhones had been using since launch.
USB-C is the future, and Apple has switched to using the more common port for the iPad. The interest in Pillonel’s first USB-C iPhone leaves no question as to what feature most iPhone users want to see in the future.
Pillonel doesn’t reveal a lot about how they upgraded a Samsung Galaxy A51 with a Lightning port. However, they shared a few details about the hack. The Lightning port can both charge and transfer data to the Galaxy A51, but the main obstacle they had to overcome was getting around the fact that Lightning cables are designed to only work with Apple devices, requiring Pillonel to find a smart way to trick the cable into thinking it was connected to Apple’s hardware.