Is that this an ‘Android’ USB-C cable, or an Apple one?
Over the weekend, a number of third-party Apple distributors in China made the extremely silly declare that utilizing Android USB-C cables would destroy your iPhone 15 — which shortly went viral. Really, the declare is bogus, and there’s no hazard.
When the iPhone 15 went on sale, a third-party retailer in Foshan, Guangdong Province was advising clients about “Android USB-C” cables within the iPhone 15. The shop identified that the one cable had 9 pins on one aspect of the bi-directional cable, versus 11-pins on an one other cable. The shops advised that the completely different variety of pins per aspect would result in injury to the iPhone.
This declare is, after all, whole nonsense.
The very poor recommendation by a supplier that wasn’t Apple was in a short time picked up by social media and wrongly attributed to Apple itself, in typical social media trend. After which, it bought printed by in any other case respected Gizchina, with little vital considering utilized for causes identified solely to the author and the publication.
The reality of the matter is evident. Each cables exist, and each are in spec. There is no such thing as a likelihood of damaging your iPhone with an “Android” USB-C cable, any greater than there may be to break an Android cellphone with an Apple cable.
There are “nine-pin” USB-C cables, however that is in spec
A USB-C cable is just not a dumb size of copper that you just plug in. It’s not the identical because the cable out of your mild to your wall socket, and it is not even shut.
In whole, there are 24 potential pins on USB-C cables, with 12 on a aspect of the interior tongue contained in the port, and ringing the within of the cable-end to make it bi-directional. The cables are used not only for information and energy switch, but in addition as a part of the handshake course of to manage information, charging, and alternate modes between a bunch and a consumer, or a bunch and an influence supply. Not each pin must be wired and even current in any respect on any given USB-C cable.
We’re not going to get too deeply into the partially Apple-designed USB-C spec, but it surely’s straightforward to do if you would like. Some USB-C fundamentals are nonetheless required to know why this declare by the third-party vendor is rubbish.
USB-C pinouts, picture credit score Tech Design Boards
Trying on the above diagram, for instance of a cable not needing each pin, a just-USB 2.0 cable would not have the pins marked within the mild blue and inexperienced related to something, and there may be probably not even contact paths on the connector for them.
Preliminary USB-C negotiation can be going to forestall injury to a tool within the handshake course of. Throughout this handshake, the cable communicates back-and-forth what energy must be distributed, and what mixture of volts and amps must be utilized from the charging system to the system that wants energy.
Throughout this handshake if the method would not present dependable info on what energy to supply, then energy will not be transferred.
There are points with USB-C, with probably the most outstanding one being that it is arduous to inform at a look what any given cable can do. However that is probably not related right here, and the spec is particularly designed to forestall a situation just like the third-party vendor generated to stoke concern — and possibly gross sales.
So, in brief, use that “Android” cable with out concern. It isn’t going to harm your iPhone.
And, frankly, Gizchina ought to have identified higher.
