Six months on from the iPhone 16 launch, rumors are beginning to crop up about what Apple has in store for us this September, when the company is due to announce its 2025 flagship phones. At the top of the list, and right on trend, could be an iPhone 17 Air, which could not only be superthin but also free of charging ports.
One perceived roadblock to making a portless iPhone was the possibility that European Union regulations might make it impossible, due to rules around universal chargers. That’s actually not the case, as 9to5Mac reported today and confirmed. According to European Commission spokesperson Federica Miccoli, Apple is free to make a port-free iPhone that could be charged only using a wireless MagSafe charger. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment about whether it had considered making an iPhone without a charging port.
If you’ve been an iPhone user for longer than the past year or so, there’s no doubt you’ll remember the now-defunct Lightning cable. Apple was forced to abandon its proprietary charging technology for the iPhone because of EU rules that went into effect last year, which dictated that all small, portable electronics with charging ports needed to be compatible with the same type of charger: USB-C.
That doesn’t mean a device must be USB-C compatible, though. Guidance issued by the European Commission last year on its Common Charger directive said it was fine for companies to sell phones and other devices that can be recharged only via wireless charging methods. So there may be one wired charger to rule them all, but Apple can opt out altogether if it chooses.
But will it? It’s possible, but probably not — and for a few reasons, starting with the company’s current design priorities.
“It always felt like having an iPhone with no ports or buttons was the ultimate endgame when Jony Ive was leading design at Apple,” said Wood. “His minimalist approach to product development saw Apple remove the home button and the SIM card slot in the US, where the iPhone is only available with eSIM now.” That’s changed since Ive’s departure, though, Wood added, pointing to the addition of the camera control button on the iPhone 16.
If anything, recent iPhones, with their bulky camera modules, have been less sleek than their earlier counterparts. And though phones have been getting consistently thinner this year, at a certain point, phone makers are restricted by the fact that the minimum size for the USB-C port is 2.6mm. No matter how much they’re able to flatten out the rest of a phone’s innards, there’s no way of compressing that port.
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That’s not to say Apple wouldn’t want to revert back to Ive’s minimalist design tendencies if tech breakthroughs allowed for it, but right now it’s willing to make small compromises to prioritize functionality, including superior cameras.
And even with MagSafe charging available, the USB-C port does still play an often vitally important role for the iPhone. It’s not just about charging, either. Over-the-air data transfers or software updates do sometimes fail, and when that happens, there’s no substitute for plugging your iPhone into your laptop. Without that port, you have no backup when other methods flop, which could render your $1,000-plus device a beautifully thin but functionally useless slab of metal and glass.
“It is difficult to believe that any company would look to remove this port in the near term, given its necessity for fail-safe charging and root device access in the instance of software failure,” said Wood.
An iPhone without charging ports sounds desirable in theory — the seamless design, combined with (presumably) better water and dust resistance. But unless Apple has some tech wizardry up its sleeve that allows it to overcome the potential drawbacks, it seems unlikely that we’ll see a USB-C-free iPhone anytime soon.
