There has been a scare of sorts over the weekend regarding the iPhone 15 and its USB-C ports, as well as what was concerns with plugging in “Android cables” into them. There have been reports of stores in China cautioning buyers against plugging in USB-C cables that presumably came with Android devices into this year’s batch of iPhones. Specifics of the claim included the notion that one cable had nine pins on one side of the connector, while another had 11, and that this mismatch may cause damage to the fruit smartphone.
Before we get into whether there is any validity into the claim, we first need to understand what makes a USB-C cable connector. The long and short of it is that each connector can have a total of 24 pins, with 12 on either side. Not every cable has all 24 in their connectors. Each pin serves a specific purpose, with the number of pins that are present would correspond to their specification, like USB 3.0 or 3.2, and corresponding to that, their speeds.
With all that in mind, the nine-pin and 11-pin connector cables in fact represent cables of two different specifications of USB-C. The corresponding pins in the connector and the port communicate with each other to determine the amount of power that passes through. If this handshake process doesn’t happen, then no power will be transferred. And as usual, if a connector and port are of different specs, the lowest one will determine the performance of the pair. This is done so especially so that mismatched pins will not be an issue, never mind cause damage.
To sum it all up, will you damage your iPhone 15 if you plug an “Android USB-C cable” in? Unless your cable is a badly made bootleg, the answer would generally be no. So if you have an older device that came with its own USB-C cable and charging brick, as long as neither are damaged they should charge your iPhone just fine.
(Source: Gizmochina, Tech Design Forums via AppleInsider)
