Engineer creates first USB-C AirPods charging case

The same engineer who put a USB-C port onto an iPhone, has now done the same thing with an AirPods case — specifically so all his Apple devices charge the same way.

YouTuber and engineer Ken Pillonel replaced his iPhone's Lightning port with a fully-functional USB-C connector in October 2021, then sold it for $86,000. Now he's repeated the feat with an AirPods charging case.

"Don't you find it annoying that you have to carry multiple chargers with you every day?" he asks in his new, brief YouTube video. "Let's do something about it."

Subscribe to AppleInsider on YouTube

The video is a short teaser for a fuller one which promises to go into more detail about the specific steps Pillonel took. But it shows him removing the Lightning connector, using an engineering drawing app to model what he wanted, then turning that into a component.

"And now I finally have all my Apple products charging with USB-C," he concludes. "It took a lot of effort but it was worth it."

It's previously, and widely, been reported that the European Union is pressing for all smartphone manufacturers to adopt USB-C as a charging standard. However, those same proposals are expected to cover other devices too, potentially including AirPods.

11 Comments

darkvader 1146 comments · 15 Years

About 2 years ago

The idiotic Lightning connector is obsolete, and Apple should have dumped it for USB many years ago.

Cesar Battistini Maziero 401 comments · 8 Years

Apple should have went. with all USB C in 2016.

sbdude 290 comments · 5 Years

I think, by now, we've established that anything with a lightning connector can be replaced with usb-c. The only difference being there is no MFi certification for usb-c, and your chances of picking up a nefarious, fly-by-night usb-c cable is much greater than with a lightning cable.

auxio 2762 comments · 19 Years

darkvader said:

The idiotic Lightning connector is obsolete, and Apple should have dumped it for USB many years ago.

Selective memory is nice isn't it? Remember the uproar when Apple changed from the dock connector to lightning? Remember the utterly stupid number of connector types and power levels that USB had before USB-C existed? Remember that USB-C didn't even exist until a couple of years after lightning (and took a couple more years to be adopted)?

I'm glad that everything is finally sorted out now with USB-C, and Apple has changed most of their products over to it for compatibility, but they have no apologies to make for showing the rest of the industry how a connector should be designed.

I'll never forget the quote from the Linux IEEE-1394 (aka Firewire) developer mailing list back when the USB 2.0 specification was introduced: "Polishing a turd". Such a convoluted specification. Which isn't surprising given that Intel was subsidizing USB in order to sell more CPUs (i.e. you couldn't use a USB device without having a computer to connect it to because it's so complicated to control the bus).

DangDave 98 comments · 8 Years

First, Apple is already 100% in on USB-C power adapters.

Second, Apple will switch to USB-C ports on all iPhones and iPads when Apple feels the time is right, not before. The sooner the better.

Having said both of the above, we are still stuck with all of the old USB-A power adaptors in hotels, cars, busses, planes, and our homes, meaning that we may have to carry multiple cables or use various adapters on our cables for several years.