I can't wait to ditch my Mac mini for an iPhone 15 Pro

• Apple seems to be preparing the arrival of Thunderbolt 4 technology on the iPhone 15 Pro
• This would allow you to connect an external monitor to the smartphone, via USB-C
• The iPhone could then transform into a central unit and control a workstation, like the iPad

Samsung has DeX, Apple will have Continuity. According to new rumors just shared on the social network Twitter, the Apple firm could make its future iPhone 15 Pro supposedly compatible with the technologyThunderboltvia its USB-C port. This solution is already available on iPads and allows secondary screens to be connected to them, to transform the tablets into real workstations. So much so that today, many freelancers prefer this system to a real traditional computer, because the whole thing is more mobile.

Of course, the information still needs to be considered with some caution, given that the manufacturer generally does not reveal anything about its products before their official announcement. But @analyst941, the account behind this leak, is not his first attempt: we have already seen him shareadvanced featuresof iOS 17 before the operating system was released, as recently as April 12.

For what?

Still according to our source of the day, Thunderbolt support (in third generation or fourth generation, it seems) could as a bonus offer users new options coupled withiOS 17. The iPhone could in particular serve as a controller for 4K recording with 16:9 format, by transferring the video stream to an external monitor but retaining the controls on its touch panel.

As a reminder, if we base ourselves on the technical sheet shared by Apple concerning for examplethe Thunderbolt 4 Pro cable, this standard is also capable of supporting data transfers up to40 Gbit per second. In theory, we can therefore imagine that it would be easier to send photos to a third-party device (hard drive, USB key, etc.) when the file is quite large, rather than using Bluetooth.

To go further, the iPhone 15 Pro could also act as a central processing unit. The user would then only have to plug in a larger screen, a mouse and a keyboard in order to start their session on a more comfortable display.iPadOS already allows it, but with some code modifications which will obviously be necessary for iOS to achieve this assembly. What seems certain, in any case, is that the A17 Bionic chip which should power Apple's next high-end smartphones will have what it takes in its belly: it is the same range which already equips some of its best-selling tablets.

Potential release date

According to @analyst941, however, we would have to wait for the arrival of the iPhone 15 Pro on the market (inseptember, probably) so that support for the Thunderbolt standard is announced by Apple. We know that there is a good chance that the mobile will actually be revealed a few days earlier, during a keynote with great fanfare at the Steve Jobs Theater. iOS 17, for its part, should be presented a little earlier, during the Worldwide Developer Conference which will begin on June 5, also at the Cupertino headquarters.