Tech Train

Today as I’m writing this the iPhone 15 is expected to launch at the Wonderlust event. The big move this year will be from Lightning to USB-C, for all models! Congratulations Apple, you’ve finally joined the universal standard for charging phones. Now if only everything else you do could be so consumer friendly.

iPhone users have had to deal with a lot from Apple, from slowing down phones to the point they were sued to ongoing right-to-repair issues. Apple did recently start selling repair kits for their phones, which is a step in the right direction, but iPhones will still reject parts that are simply replaced. The screen, for example, will disable true tone and auto brightness, even if it’s swapped for an authentic Apple part. You’ll have to take the phone into an Apple Store or an Apple-certified repair shop to have your phone’s screen work at full capacity.

That said, if we’re talking about the iPhone 15, you’ll have a more pressing issue to look forward to after buying it: the charger. Instead of giving users the option to not receive a charger in the box with their iPhone if they already have one that works, Apple sends out all their devices with just a cable. It will likely be a USB-C to USB-C cable, which may be less useful if people are trying to make use of their USB A power bricks. It isn’t very good for the environment for people to throw out old charging bricks and buy new ones. It would save on packaging waste to ship the charging brick in the box if the user needs it.

What else can I complain about when it comes to iPhones? Well, they haven’t introduced one that folds in half, yet. Samsung has done 5 generations of those, and Motorola isn’t far behind. Even Huawei, which was buried in sanctions, released more than one folding phone. Apple is a much richer company, but I suppose their pie-in-the-sky project this year was the Vision Pro. Maybe after the sixth edition of the Moto RAZR comes out they’ll make a folding iPhone. Only time will tell.

And yet. After all that, I’m still excited for the iPhone announcement. We humans like cycles after all. It’s kind of like a holiday for phone geeks like me. There’s no denying that despite our many gripes, Apple still influences the rest of the market due to the sheer volume of devices they sell every year. From Google and Samsung trying to make their own hardware ecosystems to the companies that have a checkbox on their website that lets you add or remove a charging brick in the box. I only hope they’ll announce good things at this event, which is about to begin.