I suspect it was give and take. Lightning was a very, very slim port, but didn’t have enough pins/shielding to do high speed. C has a boatload of pins, great shielding and picked up dual sided, but the hole needs to be thicker to do this.
Other than a rubber flap on the outside of the chassis, I can’t think of any way to protect it from the inside that wouldn’t either impede plugging in or wear out quickly.
Just picture a rectangular plunger plate with a hole in it that sits over the wafer inside the receptacle. Then when you plug in, the plunger is pushed back. Tiny springs push it back out.
I know just enough to know that something like this is more complex to engineer than you want… It’s awfully small, it needs to move freely even when crudded up, it needs to not impede plugging in, etc
Of course this won’t protect 100% from ingress, just reduce it.
It would also be interesting to make the port something like a sim tray. you could eject it and replace it with a new one for a couple bucks. You might only replace it a handful of times, enough that the internal sealed contacts wouldn’t wear out.
I suspect it was give and take. Lightning was a very, very slim port, but didn’t have enough pins/shielding to do high speed. C has a boatload of pins, great shielding and picked up dual sided, but the hole needs to be thicker to do this.
Other than a rubber flap on the outside of the chassis, I can’t think of any way to protect it from the inside that wouldn’t either impede plugging in or wear out quickly.
There’s def some need there.
Just picture a rectangular plunger plate with a hole in it that sits over the wafer inside the receptacle. Then when you plug in, the plunger is pushed back. Tiny springs push it back out.
I know just enough to know that something like this is more complex to engineer than you want… It’s awfully small, it needs to move freely even when crudded up, it needs to not impede plugging in, etc
Of course this won’t protect 100% from ingress, just reduce it.
Any reduction would be great.
It would also be interesting to make the port something like a sim tray. you could eject it and replace it with a new one for a couple bucks. You might only replace it a handful of times, enough that the internal sealed contacts wouldn’t wear out.
I like that but you have to replace your phone every year anyway so…
yeah, i’m foolishly hoping we get away from that