iOS4 Blog: The iPhone 5 News Blog News Feed

Saturday, April 9, 2011

The iPhone 5 News Blog News Feed

Patents Reveal That iPhone 5 and iPod May Support USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt

Posted: 09 Apr 2011 04:07 AM PDT

Apple's Dock Patent for the USB 3 and Thunderbolt. Will it show up on the iPhone 5?

New Apple patents that feature inventions and technologies for future iPhones sometimes have to be taken with a grain of salt. But a recent patent for a new dock connector could end up on the iPhone 5 — and make syncing and data sharing lightning fast! Read how every iPhone user should hope this new technology ends up on the iPhone 5.

A recent article from AppleInsider takes a look at Apple’s most recent patent filing, which outlines the possibility of a groundbreaking new dock connector that would work in conjunction with iOS devices. What is particularly noteworthy about this filing from Cupertino is the curious language in the patent’s diagrams, which state that:

“Some embodiments of the present invention can provide support for one or more new high-speed communication standards.”

The high-speed standards that the description in the filing refers to is USB 3.0 and DisplayPort. The latter, which was recently re-branded as “Thunderbolt” by Apple and Intel, is their answer to USB 3.0, which has up this point remained unsupported by any hardware.

While it is true that patents often take years to be implemented into new technologies, this one might be an exception. Here’s why:

Apple’s decision to include the USB 3.0 protocol in the dock connector is most likely to support the multitude of new PCs that are now being designed and manufactured with USB 3.0 ports — a trend that we have seen for nearly a year now — while the Thunderbolt technology will remain exclusive to Apple for the remainder of 2011. This means that older Apple devices — which would basically include everything outside of the newest MacBook Pro — will need to install a USB 3.0 card on their MacBook Pros to plug in to this new technology,

Or, you can simply upgrade to a newer MacBook that features the Thunderbolt port when it finally becomes available.

What does all of this mean for the iPhone 5? In short — speed. By equipping the iPhone 5 with faster connectors like the Thunderbolt, we could be looking at lightning-fast sync times: syncing time could be cut in half or more in the upcoming iPhone 5 as well as the next iterations of iPods and iPads. Another possibility could be that users of the current and past iDevices would be able to tap into these faster connections and sync times simply by purchasing a new cable.

Sven Rafferty is a writer for the iPhone 5 News Blog and the Editor In Chief of SvenOnTech.com, a leading technology news source and blog.