My current bet is they go portless rather than switching to USB C, and that would be the day I move from iPhone. Hopefully these open (and privacy) oriented android/linux phones get mature in the meantime.
Wireless charging is a huge waste of energy and doesn't really go well with the environmental moves Apple has been making (if that was their real motivation).
I do understand the convenience of wireless charging in situations like driving, but like 90%+ of charging is at home during the night where there is no excuse for just plugging it in.
And I want my damn cable for data transfer (but this is just me).
The intention is clearly that the consumer be able to charge any phone using a generic usb-c charger. Apple's proprietary wireless charging would fail that criteria.
"Going portless" wouldn't save Apple they still have to use a generic technology between the wall socket and the phone.
I imagine that if Apple made their technology an industry standard, that a) others could implement, and b) Apple were themselves governed by, then the EU would consider it in addition to usb-c.
But really, why bother, it's so inefficient ... and it might get rejected by the regulators on the basis of energy wastage alone ...
We recently moved to wireless charging to reduce the number of cables that break and have to be replaced.
I don’t need the port to be removed, but I doubt I would regularly use USB-C. It is more difficult to plug in than lightning, and will still suffer from the same cable issues.
Wireless charging isn't immune to failures either. A recent example of this is Google's Pixel 4 device, introduced in Oct. 2019. Apparently if the phone chassis expands over time, the rear antennas (including wireless charging and NFC) get disconnected and stop working. People experiencing this issue, including myself, are not able to reliably use wireless charging, and using NFC (e.g. for Google Pay) requires us to put pressure on the rear of the phone.
Granted, Apple seems to have much better hardware quality control than most vendors and iPhones might not ever have this issue.
I agree portless move feels inevitable but I think we're quite some way away from that for the reasons you mentioned.
There seems to be little benefit in the jump right now; the phones are already waterproof, they already make money from the accessories, they will only anger a lot of people who still use the cable. It feels like right now portless doesn't bring that much positives over the negatives for them.
As for USB-C, I found it weird in their presentation how much they talked it up for their iPad mini, but don't want to use it on the iPhone. If EU push them into a corner they may just pay the fines year after year instead of changing, they can afford it.
The only technical reason I can thing off is that the inside space needed for the usb C port is (considerably) bigger and they don't like it. But this is just a guess...
I would expect same as you that the move to only wireless would not happen soon, but this regulation could push them to do it a lot sooner. There is a 2yrs transition period mentioned in the regulation IIRC, so that sets the stage for iPhone 15/16 to be wireless, and they just stop selling others in EU.
- Efficiency of wireless charging first of all, and I consider this to be a pretty firm reason against when there is no real benefit from wireless (nightly charging). I do recognize the added benefit from wireless charging in certain not so common situations, but not enough to justify making it the only option.
- I have been involved in project that included wireless chargers for phones used by automotive OEMs, and those can be pretty hard to qualify. On one design we had the type and level of radiation that is considered potentially harmful for pacemakers. And having in mind a lot of people would be buying these chargers from unknown and uncertified sources (cheapest one from Wish for e.g.) it makes me dislike them even more. Yes wired dodgy chargers can be bad, but the scope of failures is smaller.
- 3rd reason as I noted is a personal one, I just don't trust wireless as I do wires when it comes to data transfer (physical robustness), and I prefer to use the wired way when it's a reasonable option. This is rooted in the ethernet vs WiFi choice. But this is debatable.
Also current speed difference in transfer.
It's slow. Apple especially is far far far behind everyone else when it comes to charging speeds. Tbf Apple wired charging speeds are still very slow compared to competition, but wireless is just abysmal.
And then of course a daily occurence - I lie down in bed, about 5% battery left, want to watch some youtube or whatever - now I can just plug in a cable and continue using my phone. With portless, how exactly am I supposed to do that? With the funny magsafe dongle that you need to be super careful not to detach as you hold the phone and which doesn't really stick on unless you use one of the approved cases? No thanks.
Charging efficiency, speed, and reliability will get better. Wireless debugging will get better and we will forget it was ever buggy.
We will have plates attached to a cable we can attach (magnetic) when we need to charge a drained battery and watch tv.
These are all solvable issues. Wireless makes the most sense moving forward. That is what the EU should be pushing for. The charging/data cable is a backup and not the primary way to charge
FWIW, the EU proposal says they don't want to regulate wireless because there is still a lot of room for innovation and no established shared good solutions.
I think they are doing the right near term but not long term. For the very reason wireless charging is in its infancy they should get in front of it. They will be back at square one doing the same thing with wireless chargers in 5 years unless industry leaders agree upon a standard before them.
Sounds to me like someone at the EU saw this as low hanging fruit quick win and yeah sounds good but it’s short sighted.
They will do portless just to give a giant middle finger to the EU. Apple's attitude has gotten so bad recently, it's like they are now just choosing whatever is the worst decision in all cases.
Wireless charging is a huge waste of energy and doesn't really go well with the environmental moves Apple has been making (if that was their real motivation).
I do understand the convenience of wireless charging in situations like driving, but like 90%+ of charging is at home during the night where there is no excuse for just plugging it in. And I want my damn cable for data transfer (but this is just me).