I don’t know what makes any company make the decisions they do, but it’s easy to see that lightning is a better connector for a phone.
You’re right that usbc supports more lanes and by extension a higher transfer speed and that usbc has a higher voltage power delivery standard.
The better physical port to have on a phone is lightning. It’s more durable, easier to clean, and the cable breaks instead of the port.
The environment phones live in makes those much more important than faster transfers and charging speed (every phone I’ve dealt with from any manufacturer actually throttles back the charging speed to save the battery!).
So while usbc has significant advantages over lightning, it’s physically a bad port to have on a device that’s hanging around in your pocket and that makes it worse.
I’m not aware of anything to cite. It’s kinda common knowledge if you have phones with usbc ports or do microsoldering work. If you have one at hand to look at, just take a gander. The usbc receptacle has more conductors than lightning and they’re thinner and all on a flexible (and breakable) plastic tongue.
In a way it looks like an engineer was playing a cruel joke.
If you just gotta have some kind of data, look up usbc repair videos. There’s a bunch and they showcase all the ways it can get mangled.
I’m not saying it’s a bad port for a desktop or laptop. It’s kinda perfect for those circumstances. Low cycle, relatively clean, etc. A phone needs the exact opposite: high cycle, extreme durability, extreme dirt tolerance, amenable to field expedient cleaning.
I don’t know what makes any company make the decisions they do, but it’s easy to see that lightning is a better connector for a phone.
You’re right that usbc supports more lanes and by extension a higher transfer speed and that usbc has a higher voltage power delivery standard.
The better physical port to have on a phone is lightning. It’s more durable, easier to clean, and the cable breaks instead of the port.
The environment phones live in makes those much more important than faster transfers and charging speed (every phone I’ve dealt with from any manufacturer actually throttles back the charging speed to save the battery!).
So while usbc has significant advantages over lightning, it’s physically a bad port to have on a device that’s hanging around in your pocket and that makes it worse.
Citation on the durability claim?
I’ve been using USB-C since it was released, and none of them ever broke on me.
I’m not aware of anything to cite. It’s kinda common knowledge if you have phones with usbc ports or do microsoldering work. If you have one at hand to look at, just take a gander. The usbc receptacle has more conductors than lightning and they’re thinner and all on a flexible (and breakable) plastic tongue.
In a way it looks like an engineer was playing a cruel joke.
If you just gotta have some kind of data, look up usbc repair videos. There’s a bunch and they showcase all the ways it can get mangled.
I’m not saying it’s a bad port for a desktop or laptop. It’s kinda perfect for those circumstances. Low cycle, relatively clean, etc. A phone needs the exact opposite: high cycle, extreme durability, extreme dirt tolerance, amenable to field expedient cleaning.