We’re not sure why you’d want such a thing, but someone modified an Android phone to use Apple’s Lightning port instead of the industry standard USB-C connection.
The edit was made by Ken Pillonel, who previously made waves across the Internet for a more reasonable project: bringing USB-C to the iPhone.
Billonil Video The announcement of the Lightning Android phone went live on April 1, but while that date was a conscious choice, the edit is real. Billonel said he wanted to “balance the chaos” created by his unveiling of the USB-C iPhone.
“I don’t expect anyone in their right mind would want to do this on their devices. It was just for fun, I just wanted to see if I could do it,” Engadget said.
Pillonel chose the low-end Samsung Galaxy A51 for this project. It turns out it wasn’t an easy project. Billonel explained to Engadget, “The Lightning cables that Apple sells aren’t ‘dumb’, they’ll only charge Apple devices. So I had to find a way to trick the cable into thinking it was connected to an Apple device. Everything needed to fit into the phone, and that’s another challenge in the se se”.
A Lightning Android phone, for a reason.
There is a short video on YouTube showing the device in action (it can charge and do data transfers) and some brief glimpses of the work that went into it, but Pillonel promises that another video will be uploaded to his channel soon with a more comprehensive explanation. Take a similar cadence with the USB-C iPhone.
In the event that you want to get such a device, which is very unlikely, then you will not be lucky – he has no plans to sell it.
Apple has used Lightning cable in iPhones for nearly 10 years, returning to the iPhone 5 in September 2012. When it was introduced, Apple’s vice president of marketing Phil Schiller said it would be a “conductor for the next decade.”
Apple has started using USB-C in most of its iPads, which previously used Lightning, but iPhones still run on Lightning. Technical commentators have speculated that Apple may be swapping out its phones as well. But given the recent introduction of the new vision for MagSafe, it seems likely that Apple will abandon the port entirely in favor of wireless charging.
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