When Apple introduced the iPhone Air two weeks ago, one of the biggest drawbacks was that the USB-C port on both the iPhone 17 and the iPhone Air is limited to only USB-2 speeds, or up to 480 Mb/s for transfer speeds. Now you could argue that the USB-C port has the exact same specifications on both the iPhone 17 and the iPhone Air; however, there’s actually one additional drawback that only the iPhone Air has that (virtually) has never been pointed out, which is the lack of DisplayPort support. If you take a look at the Tech Specs page for the iPhone Air, you’ll see no mention of DisplayPort. On the other hand, you’ll see that both the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro support DisplayPort on their respective Tech Specs pages.
Unlike most iPhone models with USB-C, what this means is that you cannot connect the iPhone Air to external monitors or televisions via USB-C for video output, which is limited to just video mirroring (no extended display, sorry!). This isn’t the first iPhone model to lack support for DisplayPort, as the iPhone 16e, which was announced last spring, also lacks this feature. 9to5Mac even demonstrated how the lack of DisplayPort on the iPhone 16e could be a drawback for potential customers.
Here are all the iPhone models with USB-C that support DisplayPort:
- iPhone 15 / iPhone 15 Plus / iPhone 15 Pro / iPhone 15 Pro Max
- iPhone 16 / iPhone 16 Plus / iPhone 16 Pro / iPhone 16 Pro Max
- iPhone 17 / iPhone 17 Pro / iPhone 17 Pro Max
Although there’s no confirmation on this limitation for the iPhone Air, I speculate that the USB-C port had to be re-engineered using the 3D-printing process as well as using titanium for the material; that could explain why the USB-C port is also downgraded to USB 2 speeds, given the limitations of 3D-printing.
If you’re thinking about upgrading to any of the latest flagship iPhone models, this is something worth mentioning about, as this may impact your buying decision. Both the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro feature support for DisplayPort, and the iPhone 17 Pro models feature upgraded USB 3 speeds (up to 10 Gb/s), as with the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models.
