Micro USB, Type-C And Lightning

Take a look at the picture below and see if you can guess which cable you have.

Micro USB

Micro USB is a miniaturised version of the USB (Universal Serial Bus) interface developed for connecting compact and mobile devices such as your smartphones, MP3 players, GPS devices, photo printers and digital cameras. It's a older type of connection and just like USB, they only fit into the device in a certain way because of their irregular, non-symmetrical shape. You do need to look closely into the port to figure out which way to plug in the cable into your device - which is inconvenient and time consuming.

Lightning

Apple is well known for pushing forward with standards and their own version of the charging cable is called the Lightning cable. Lightning cable has an 8 pin head and unlike the Micro USB connector, the cable can fit in your Apple device either way due to the symmetrical and reversal design. This makes it convenient to charge iPhones and iPads without having to look closely at the charging port.

However, lightning ports are not designed to be compatible with non Apple products. They only work with iPhones, iPods and iPads. But if you own an iPad Pro from 2018 onwards, you may be out of luck because Apple moved to another type of charger for their high end iPads, the iPad PROs. The iPad Pro use a connection called USB-C.

USB Type C aka USB-C

The USB Type C, also known as USB-C, is a 24 pin USB connector system that connectors to both hosts and devices. They are slowly replacing the older connection type, Micro USB in newer devices. Just like the Lightning cable, they have symmetrical and reversal design. But there's one significant difference between the two: the Type-C cable receives the pins from a tab built into the port in your phone/device, whereas a Lightning cable uses a tab with exposed pins that plugs into a socket on the phone.

Type-C charging ports are more common in newer phones, laptops and consumer devices.

What kind of connections do WILINO magnetic chargers have?

WILINO Magnetic chargers are compatible with all the 3 types of charging cables, hence you can use one cable to charge devices with different charging ports. When you get our cables, you will either get one magnetic connector or tip of your choice for WILINO V3 and Blue Diamond magnetic chargers or 3 different types of connectors, (1 x Micro USB, 1 x USB-C and 1 x Lightning) if you choose that option.

For the Flexor 540° and NEO 3.0 magnetic chargers, you will receive ALL the 3 different connectors or tips. This is excellent if you want to charge different devices that come with different charging ports.

WILINO magnetic chargers, like PD 60W and PD 100W chargers can even charge Apple laptops like MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and some compatible laptops like Huawei that USB-C at both ends of the their cable.