When a new technology is adopted by Apple on the iPhone, the wider smartphone industry usually follows suit.

Several controversial moves the company did with the iPhone including the notch, the removal of the headphone jack, and even not including a charging brick with the phone, have all been met with criticism. But currently, those very controversial moves are an industry standard.

However, there has been one technology that has seen adoption from the wider industry that Apple has solidly refused to adopt to the iPhones. Year after year, despite speculations and rumours, the iPhones have all shipped with the proprietary lightning port.

While much of the newer android phones, and even Apple’s own iPads and MacBooks have adopted the much faster, and much more convenient USB-C ports, built on the USB 3.0 standard, iPhones have been stuck with lightning ports built on the dated USB 2.0 standard.

Tired of Apple’s refusal to put a USB-C port, one robotics engineer named Ken Pillonel, took the matters into his own hands. He spent months reverse engineering an iPhone X to replace the lightning port with a USB-C port by modifying Apple’s custom C94 connector.

“Everything I own has USB Type-C so it would be pretty neat to convert an iPhone too,” he said in a blog post.

The original prototype had the port on the outside of the phone’s body and could deliver power and transfer data. Once he made sure the prototype worked as intended, he further improved the proof-of-concept by removing all the connecting wires and managed to fit the port inside the phone itself. The entire process was filmed and uploaded onto YouTube.

Last, the European Commission announced that it was planning regulations to force consumer electronic manufacturers to install a common USB-C charging port on their devices to reduce e-waste.

However, according to reports, Apple might ditch ports on the iPhone entirely, in favour of a fully wireless smartphone.

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