With every dubious rumor and every fabricated analyst report, we’re slowly working out way towards the release of the iPhone 5. The latest news suggests that the new iPhone’s smaller connector will use eight pins and, more interestingly, a MagSafe-like design.
According to iLounge, the iPhone 5 will use an 8-pin connector. There have been fistfuls of reports of the phone’s smaller connector over the past months, but few have specified quite how it’ll work. The current proprietary iPhone socket uses 30 pins, and is pretty darn chunky. This new version looks to bring it down to the size of a microUSB port – which is a 5-pin design – and will reportedly work like a MacSafe connector.
Not a Mac user? The power cable of Apple’s laptops has been dubbed MagSafe, and can be used either right way up or upside down without ill effects, and employ magnets to keep the cable attached. This removes the threat of any damage if you yank the thing out accidentally. However, iLounge seems to suggest it’s the flip-over-friendly design rather than the magnetism that’s most likely to make it to the iPhone 5. We’d rather have the latter, Apple.
iLounge cites “previously reliable” sources that say the male side of the iPhone 5 connector features eight pins of each side that let it work both ways round. It’s likely that this rumour has come from an accessory manufacturer, briefed on the new connector to help avoid the heart-attack moment at the news that the 30-pin connector is being chucked out like last week’s newspapers.
Source: Trusted Reviews
