Some have been waiting for the move to USB-C for years, and it arrived with the iPhone 15. Others, on the other hand, are nostalgic for Lightning, because Apple’s plug was more practical than USB-C for blind insertion. Ken Pillonel, who created a USB-C iPhone X in 2021 and who sells accessories to add USB-C to Lightning iPhones, decided to do the opposite: a case to add Lightning to an iPhone 17 Pro.
Well, it’s an April Fool’s joke in a sense, that’s obvious, and the beginning of the video explains it. But the case in question still exists, and he spent some time on it, to modify a USB-C (male) to Lightning female adapter.
This is also an opportunity to remember that Lightning, which appeared in 2012, is reversible like USB-C. On paper, Apple’s connector is even better: in Lightning, the contacts are on the tab that fits into the socket. This choice has two advantages. First, it is the most fragile part, and it is on the cable side: in the event of a problem, you must replace the cable and not the device receptacle. Then, this choice also makes it possible to clean a female location without (too much) risk of damaging the socket and, as this location tends to attract dust, it is interesting.
In USB-C, the tab that contains the contacts is in the female jack and actually fits into the male jack. If this part breaks (because you tried to clean the socket with a metal tool, for example), you must replace the entire receptacle.
The main problem with the Lightning, aside from the owner side obviously, comes from the fact that Apple never really supported USB 3.0. Some iPad Pros are capable of taking advantage of it with accessories, but in iPhones, Lightning remained USB 2.0 until the end.
