A few years ago, there was a rumour that Apple was working on a fully port-less iPhone. This was before Apple switched to USB-C. At that time, the rumour mill suggested that Apple would never go USB-C, but the Lightning port was going to disappear, and that we were all going to get another “courage” moment where Apple kills the charging port just like it did with the 3.5mm headphone jack.

Apple was supposedly figuring out a way to transfer data and charge the device without a port, signalling a future where iPhones would be completely port-free. There were even claims that Apple would somehow charge your iPhone wirelessly without needing to place it on a charging pad. How? I have no idea, neither does Apple or any other tech company, at least not yet. It all sounds a bit science fiction-y, but so did Wi-Fi once upon a time.

Now that we have seen dummy units of the iPhone 17 Air, which does seem to have a USB-C port, some rumours suggest that it will not be centred at the bottom of the iPhone. The port reportedly has to be pushed down towards the back of the device to allow the internal components to avoid interfering with the display—yet another compromise Apple has to make in order to make this phone as thin as possible.

As I wrote before, the iPhone 17 Air is about the future of iPhones. It’s Apple daring to do something a bit different with the iPhone line while also using it as an experimental playground for foldable phones. I would have loved to see this experiment pushed even further by removing the charging port entirely. But I suppose Apple knows that people will be charging this phone more often than not—owing to the smaller battery, so perhaps including a port instead of relying solely on wireless charging makes more sense.

Or perhaps the iPhone won’t feature MagSafe on the back because the phone is so slim that there’s no room for the magnets. I would have thought that since the introduction of MagSafe with the iPhone 12, MagSafe would be coming to all phones, but the iPhone 16e did not get MagSafe, that is a discussion for later. A few years ago, when we were still using Lightning iPhones, the future of a port-less iPhone sounded really futuristic and would be a reality soon, and I was all for it. But now, since the introduction of USB-C, I’m not really sure. This is mostly because of two reasons:

• Firstly, USB-C is available everywhere. Charging is easy and convenient. Another unexpected benefit is that the other day when I was at work, I plugged my USB-C iPhone 16 Pro Max into the dock we have at work to connect our laptops to the monitors, the iPhone screen appeared on the monitor, and the keyboard was working. I could reply to messages using a physical keyboard. This wasn’t necessarily a feature that Apple marketed when they switched to USB-C, it wasn’t why I plugged my iPhone in, but an added bonus you get for free because of the switch to USB-C.
• The second reason is that now the iPhone 16 Pro models allow you to shoot in ProRes, which can result in large file sizes, and transferring them over to a computer via AirDrop would take ages. Connecting them via cable speeds it up significantly. A Pro workflow requires speed, and the USB-C ports on the iPhone Pro delivers USB 3.0 speeds.

Because of these above reasons, I feel that removing the ports from the Pro iPhones would compromise functionality. But this is exactly why it makes sense to try this out on the iPhone Air. However, that might get too experimental and customers would not want to get an iPhone Air at all. It sounds intriguing and promising for someone who is into tech, and if you’re reading articles like this, you might be on board too. But would the general customer be into it? I doubt it. People did buy into dropping the 3.5mm headphone jack, but this is something different, and on a phone that is rumoured to have questionable battery life, the trade-offs might not be worth it.

All things considered, I hope Apple is experimenting with these kinds of future innovations for the iPhone. Apple had the courage to remove the 3.5mm headphone jack and introduce AirPods, which honestly has changed the way we interact with headphones and Bluetooth earphones. I hope one day they will have the courage to do something similar and give us a port-less iPhone, and maybe introduce some sort of wireless charging mechanism and transfer energy via technology that you only see in science fiction films. After all, if you were watching 2001: A Space Odyssey when it was released, video calls would have looked as if they were merely “sci-fi” too.